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As if 2020 couldn’t get any worse, could it be going down in history as the year they ruined Guinness?
A version of the national nonalcoholic stout is about to hit the shelves, and it’s no exaggeration to imagine Flann O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, Brendan Behan and generations of lesser-known pint lovers spinning in their graves at the thought .
But before someone storms the door of St. James in protest, they might want to try a can of the new Guinness 0.0. as Diageo claims that it not only looks, smells and emerges like the real thing, it tastes a lot like it too.
The company says that at a corporate event at St James’s Gate earlier this year, when such events were still allowed, guests were mistakenly served from a secret keg of the non-alcoholic version instead of actual food for an hour. Dozens of pints were swallowed and not a single person noticed the difference. And there are probably some people who still marvel at how lucid they felt after their night at the whip in Dublin 8.
Innovation
Aisling Ryan is the innovation brewer at St James’s Gate and has spent the last four years on the project working closely with Padraig Fox, the general manager of the Guinness Open Gate Brewery, where all these products are born.
The couple joined The Irish Times for a Zoom tasting session before launch and even before the cans were opened in the most sober drinking session of all time, they both seemed confident in their product, despite the obvious skepticism of this writer and longtime fan. of black matter.
“So you’re the woman who ruined Guinness,” we began, making sure to quickly put our cards on the table so everyone was clear on where we were.
Unfazed, Ryan insisted that, far from ruining Guinness, she and her team had developed a strong beer that has the look, taste and feel of the real deal.
He said that when they started they realized they had two options. They could brew the beer without alcohol or take a ready-made product and remove the alcohol after the fact.
Cold filtration
They opted for option two. He said the most common way to get the alcohol out of a beer is with heat, but accepted that simply trying to boil the alcohol would have resulted in a disgusting beer that would have put the name to shame.
“We wanted to find a gentle way to remove the alcohol that didn’t put the beer under heat stress,” he said.
They opted for cold filtration. Ryan admitted that he felt the weight of a history spanning more than 200 years on his shoulders as he embarked on the task.
“It is such an iconic and different product.
“We wanted to make sure it had the same look and feel, the same aromas, and the same rise and set. Everyone wanted it to be the best possible version. “
“We are not going to take away the Guinness,” Fox emphasized. “Many people who do not want to drink in a pub are not well served and may not want to spend the night drinking soda.”
When asked what literary alcoholics of developmental ages would think, he laughed and said simply.
“I’d love to give them a pint on a blind taste test to see what they’d do with it.”
With neither of them available to test the product, The Irish Times stepped into the breach.
First sip
The blue tinted can was opened in exactly the same way as a normal can and the widget worked its magic identically as well. The pour was the same as always and the creamy foam settled anyway.
Holding a pint of it, everyone looked like a real pint.
And then the first sip. OMG my Guinness tasted like always in a can.
Was it the best pint ever served or drank? No, it was not. But it was very, very close to a regular can of Guinness with the only real difference being that it might actually be good for us or at least not that bad for our liver.
It will be available in Britain’s home counties from next week and before you can say cultural misappropriation tá siad ag teach your hometown and an unlicensed or supermarket near you in early November.
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