Guinness - declining standards

[gerrykeegan]

But yes - a bad pint tastes sour with a lingering aftertaste of what dirty socks smell like. Most of the Guinness you get now, even in the revered Dublin pubs of old, tastes like that.

Agreed Hardy..Mulligans of Poolebeg Street a prime example. Poor pint these days.

[AbbeySider]

But yes - a bad pint tastes sour with a lingering aftertaste of what dirty socks smell like. Most of the Guinness you get now, even in the revered Dublin pubs of old, tastes like that.

Agree, a bad pint will have a rotten coffee after taste. Often your saliva will have more of a mucus than usual and it will get flat faster than usual.

There are a number of causes including:
Poor Draw - If there isnt much movement in the guinness lines then it wont be great. Never get the first couple of pints of the black stuff if nobody else is drinking it. Also the distance of the barrel to the tap has an effect on it, the shorter the lines the less draw and the better the stuff.

Bad Pour - if the pints isnt left to settle for long enough, If there is any swirling by the barman holding the glass. If its poured too high, or not at a good angle.

Bad Batch - This was mentioned earlier. I know of Guinness reps that took back bad barrels marked by a pub in exchange for better Guinness.

Warm Glasses - Any pint poured into a warm glass will be quite frankly rotten. Often, in a busy pub glasses wont have time to cool down and they pour cool pints into them which makes them septic to drink.

Bad Lines - If the Guinness lines especially are not cleaned out regularly then it can be rotten. I know Guinness themselves try to get to every pub but I know barmen that clean the lines themselves regularly.

Distance to Travel - I heard that Guinness doesnt travel well down the country and I tend to agree. The Guinness in Dublin is much better than down the country in Mayo or Galway. Simple fact and I think its down to it not travelling well.

[Aerlik]

Tasted like shite there on Saturday night in McGee's, Leederville.  Had to slake me drooth in the Irish club on Sunday night instead.

[delboy]

Distance to Travel - I heard that Guinness doesnt travel well down the country and I tend to agree. The Guinness in Dublin is much better than down the country in Mayo or Galway. Simple fact and I think its down to it not travelling well.

Thats a throwback from the days before guiness was filtered and pasteurised (kills the flavours big time), whilst this older version of guiness was more flavoursome unfortunatetly it didn't travel well (issues with conditiong and oxidation etc) however dublin and its environs with its close proximity to the brewery and high turnover had the best kept freshest guinness.

When they started pasterusing and filtering draught guiness it was orginally sent out to the other parts of the country where as dublin and the surronding area still got the unpasteursised stuff. Of course in the end even the draught version of guiness in dublin was pasteurised and filtered (in the 60s i believe), thats when a lot of people would have then regarded the bottled (again unpasteurided/unfiltered version) as the best. Of course nowadays its all just pasteurised and filtered be it bottle or draught in dublin or dungannon, its been turned into a keg beer specifically so that it can travel and taste the same.

Basically the stuff about the best stuff being in dublin and it not travelling well is an an artefact from a bygone age when it wasn't just keg beer and it did actually make a difference. Now its just bar-room folk lore getting passed along from one set of drinkers to the next.   
   

[brokencrossbar1]

Good, bad or indeifferent, there is still some hum from your shote the next day! 

I will always try to drinkk it when I'm out but the good pints are fewer and farther between.  I haven't had a real run at a night of them in months now but I have a thirst on me and might blast a dozen or so on Saturday night!

[tyssam5]

I had a pint of Guinness in the Big Tree before them match and was handed it in a Magner's glass. Not impressed at all and Jury's wasn't the best either.

Brennan's bar in Bundoran does a great pint of Guinness.

Correct!

[Hurler on the Bitch]

It used to be that when you went to dublin for a match you could be virtually guaranteed pure nectar when you ordered your pint of stout. Now it seems you have to be very careful where you go if you want a good pint.
What mystified me was that on Sunday we were swallowing pints in Tom Mayes and they were top drawer, yet on Monday afternoon they were rotten and no better than you would get in Birmingham. One of the lads with us reckoned that it was down to different grades of Guinness i.e there are 3 different grades. Surely not? Anyone ever heard of this?

Perhaps pyschology built on the anticipation of a great match. Before last Sunday's match at Casement even the Harp tasted good in the Whitefort.  also after a "win" in Dublin, those last pints skulled in Amien Street were nectar.. I think its all down to expectation. Also, you could have got the leftovers on Monday...

[Puckoon]

Im feeling the urge for a couple of creamy pints this evening after work.

My love affair with Pints of Guinness is an interesting one.

[Puckoon]

Doing my best here to determine the quality in the local.

Hard feckin work.

[Zapatista]

Doing my best here to determine the quality in the local.

Hard feckin work.

Keep going even if it means you need to go back at another time, say tomorrow!! It's important work

[Lar Naparka]

Up to the early 60s, publicans bottled their own from a barrel. Guinness supplied them with the labels and caps.  Some of the bigger and busier premises had their own names overprinted on the labels. Guinness also supplied the pubs with a contraption to put the caps on and I've seen a few of them that pubs have held on to as curiosity pieces.
The standards of hygiene wouldn't be acceptable today as the bottles had to be filled from a jug or similar and would have been left standing until the person doing the capping had enough filled for his needs. In earlier times, wooden corks were used as well. I suppose that was because publican bottled just enough for their immediate needs and the bottled porter wouldn't have had a long shelf life.
Wholesalers around the country did the bottling for their customers who didn't have enough of a turnover to warrant the cost of the capping machine. Gleesons in Tippperay were one of those companies and I've seen samples of their bottles on display in a number of pubs.
I never drank a pint from a wooden barrel or hogshead but many old timers swore that the stuff from a hogshead was far superior to what we get nowadays. That just can't be true as the pints were topped off from an earthenware jug that was used to collect spillage from the barrel. It seems that when a barrel had been broached and not used for a while, the first few pints drawn off were very frothy and the excess was collected in this jug. This was the 'ullage' that old boys loved to reminisce about but it must have been badly tainted when left lying around for any length of time.
Cigarette smoke would have been bad enough but a lot of drinkers in those days were pipe smokers. 

[delboy]

Those old timers knew a thing or two, beer is like wine in that a certain amount of exposure to air will improve the flavours to much of course will ruin it but that should take several days.

[tyssam5]

Up to the early 60s, publicans bottled their own from a barrel. Guinness supplied them with the labels and caps.  Some of the bigger and busier premises had their own names overprinted on the labels. Guinness also supplied the pubs with a contraption to put the caps on and I've seen a few of them that pubs have held on to as curiosity pieces.
The standards of hygiene wouldn't be acceptable today as the bottles had to be filled from a jug or similar and would have been left standing until the person doing the capping had enough filled for his needs. In earlier times, wooden corks were used as well. I suppose that was because publican bottled just enough for their immediate needs and the bottled porter wouldn't have had a long shelf life.
Wholesalers around the country did the bottling for their customers who didn't have enough of a turnover to warrant the cost of the capping machine. Gleesons in Tippperay were one of those companies and I've seen samples of their bottles on display in a number of pubs.
I never drank a pint from a wooden barrel or hogshead but many old timers swore that the stuff from a hogshead was far superior to what we get nowadays. That just can't be true as the pints were topped off from an earthenware jug that was used to collect spillage from the barrel. It seems that when a barrel had been broached and not used for a while, the first few pints drawn off were very frothy and the excess was collected in this jug. This was the 'ullage' that old boys loved to reminisce about but it must have been badly tainted when left lying around for any length of time.
Cigarette smoke would have been bad enough but a lot of drinkers in those days were pipe smokers.

Lot of beer makers are starting to sell cask-aged (eg. oak) beer in the last few years. Wouldn't be a fan myself.