You may have stumbled on to something there.
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Next is a bottle of Guinness West Indies Porter 6% that I picked up at the Co-op last Friday. [I wasn't planning on going there, but when I walked down the hill to the large Tesco at the bottom, the queue went half-way round the car park. So I walked into town and found myself one of only three customers in the Co-op. This Co-op has seen better days - it was part of a large department store, including grocery and travel agent, opposite the Castle Market, but when that was demolished a few years back (and the market rebuilt on the other side of the city centre) the Co-op lost so many customers that they scaled right back. There's now just the grocery store on the lower ground floor and a post office above; a lot of the space in this 1960s building is now made over to Kommune, a food hall with drinking options.]
The beer offering is a little limited for choice, and their 4-for-£7 offer pales into insignificance by comparison with other supermarket groups. I bought a bottle of Lagunitas IPA plus a couple of Vocation cans - I never can remember which beers of theirs I have been drinking as they're all named in a very similar style. These were Heart & Soul and Pride & Joy, and those three comprised my Monday night at the Sheffield Hatters Inn. I quite like the Lagunitas, but I don't think Vocation beers are really my thing.
Anyway, back to the Windies porter. The label describes "a group of enterprising brewers on a quest to explore new recipes, reinterpret old ones and collaborate freely to bring exciting beers to life [and provide employment for writers of crap blurb, clearly]. With origins in an 1801 entry in our brewers' diaries, Guinness West Indies Porter is complex yet mellow, hoppy with notes of toffee and chocolate."
[I actually have a genuine Guinness glass that wasn't stolen from a pub: I won it in a quiz at a pub in Leeds in about 1986. We (my girlfriend who became the mother of my daughters, and a friend of hers plus her boyfriend, when she had one) would sometimes go to The Primrose on Meanwood Road (when it was a little better than OB's review of last October). I can't remember how we heard about the quiz, because it was at an estate pub (now demolished - and its name is beyond my recall) further down the road. It was sponsored by the Guinness area rep, so there were balloons and streamers and prizes. We'd never been there before (or since) so we got some dirty looks when the three of us won the quiz and walked off with a little plastic trophy, a Guinness tie (which I've never worn) and a glass, which is now about 34 years old. I think there might have been some beer tokens too, but we gave those to the third member of our team as she said she was more likely to come back than we were.]
Pouring Guinness takes me back to when bottled Guinness was bottle-conditioned and was a reasonable alternative drink when in a keg-only pub. My glass is a brim measure pint, of course, and pouring a 500ml bottle into it shows how much space the head takes up. About 10%, I reckon.
The first sip immediately shows that there'll be no need to stir this one with a fork to disperse the carbon dioxide. It's just lightly carbonated, a bit more than a cask beer, but nothing like most bottled or canned beers. Partly this may be because the thick maltiness of the beer hides the bubbles from the tongue (I'm just making this up as I go along, you know), but whatever the reason the first sip suddenly becomes a mouthful and before you know it half the beer is gone. There's that old familiar roasted malt, not familiar so much from Guinness these days but in better versions of stout porters from modern brewers. Then quite a strong hint of molasses, a hit of alcohol and then a bitter finish and a residual liquorice aftertaste. It reminds me a little of Gorlovka 6%, the slightly-low-alcohol-for-its-type-but-very-nice-anyway Imperial Stout from Acorn Brewery, which appears from time to time in the Kelham Island Tavern and the University Arms (sorry, which used to appear...).
I may have to return to the Co-op for some more essential supplies.
Started off with a couple of Roosters Yankees followed by a couple of Magic Rock Cannonballs, both in kiddie cans, curry for tea so a chilled bottle of Augustiner Helles to wash it down. Sadly I haven't been able to source any of the superior Edelstof but I'm not complaining; anything from my favourite Munich brewery is fine, all rounded off with a small (275ml) bottle of Harvey's Imperial Extra Double Stout. An excellent beer, many thanks to Sheffield Hatter for alerting me it was available on-line, so I have case of 12. Fairly close in taste to the wonderful Courage (Barclay Perkins) Imperial Russian Stout I used to enjoy as a lad, sadly it suffers from the low (9%) strength rather than the more robust 11.5% of the Courage version.
This beer has taken a bit of a pasting from Beer Nut on his blog today.
"I despair for anyone who considers this a good beer or somehow progress. I've had worse, for sure, but here's a deliberately poor and unfinished-tasting beer..."
Yeah, well, he's obviously totally on the ball as he apparently paid €4.40 in a Tesco Express. Pretty sure our local one doesn't take the Euro!
Personally I quite like it and I've never paid that much for it either.
A pint was £3.80 at The Flyer (The Flying Horse) minus a 50p CAMRA discount a week or two before lockdown!
Just about to kick off a Zoom quiz with a Vocation Love & Hate.If the blogger in question doesn't like it that's up to him,it's a personal taste thing.
Must be tough in the Republic of Ireland with so little real ale availability.