Guinness Foreign Extra Stout

Guinness. In my beer journey, it was one of the first beers I turned to as something different from the BMC beers. For most people, it's as far as they get from the generic American macrobrews. For others, it's something they only have on St. Patrick's Day. In Ireland it's the drink of the masses.

As I learned more about beer, I started to find Guinness to be thin bodied and low in flavor compared to a lot of the other craft stouts out there. I still have it from time to time, usually at a bar or a restaurant when there are no craft options other than Boston Lager, but it's nothing I ever look forward to at this point. That being the case, when I heard about the new release of Guinness Extra Foreign Stout, I wrote it off as a waste of my time and not worth trying. I had heard that it was the closest thing to the Guinness served in Ireland, but I figured that at best it was probably only slightly better than the normal Guinness I've had for years. It surprised me then when Dan picked up some of it and told me that I absolutely had to try a bottle of it.

The first thing I noticed upon pouring was that the had was not the foamy almost white color that I am used to from Guinness, but instead had a slightly deeper tan hue, and more of a rocky quality to it. The smell as before only has a bit of roast to it, but there's a bit of tartness to the aroma as well, with a slightly acidic twinge to it.

The taste did vary quite a bit from the standard that I'm used to as well. Initially it was light and a bit tart, but in the back of the mouth bitterness dominated the flavor strongly. It's hard to determine, but I would say that the bitterness comes less from dark malts and more from hops in this version. I've heard that in Ireland, the Guinness served is a blend of younger beer and an older version that has a strain of Lactobacillus added to provide the tartness. I can definitely see that more in this version than the Guinness I've had before.

Differences aside, there are definitely good and bad sides to this beer. It's hard to separate the expectations built up from years of drinking the standard American version of Guinness, but I'll try to talk about it as it's own entity. First, the tartness is pleasant, and works well with the beer. It adds a layer of flavor that is usually not found in a stout. On the other hand, I found the bitterness in it to be unbalanced, and having a dull quality to it that I didn't find fitting. The body is a bit on the light side. It has a decent amount of flavor to it, and certainly stands up as a real stout.

Overall, I couldn't decide if it was worth trying or not. As academic curiosity about what all the fuss over in Ireland is about, I suppose it makes sense to try. As a stout on it's own, it's ok but not great. I guess the question at this point is whether it's fair or not to consider the Foreign Extra Stout a legitimate style on it's own since the whole basis for the style is to fit this particular beer. I certainly wouldn't be upset if I didn't have it again, but I would choose it over the standard Guinness.

- Adam

Competition Results

Dan and I recently decided to give another shot to home brewing competitions. We had only entered one competition so far, the American Homebrewers Association National Homebrewing Competition. This is the largest competition of the year, with thousands of home brewers around the country entering, and over 6,000 total entries last year. Obviously it was a far shot for us to expect to win anything in our first competition with less than a year's experience under our belts. We entered our best tasting beer, our Imperial Brown Ale that we've dubbed "Aberinkula" after a song from one of our favorite bands, The Mars Volta. Of course, we did not place in the competition, but we did get a "silver certificate" for having earned a certain number of points with our beer. We also got notes saying our beer wasn't really in style for the category we entered.

The competition we decided to enter this time was the Happy Holidays Homebrew Competition sponsored by St. Louis Brews. It's a lot smaller, with only 400 some entries, but the prize for best of show was a stainless steel 15 gallon fermenter. We decided to enter two beers, the same Imperial Brown that we had entered in the previous competition, and a stout that I had put together and brewed as the first all-grain batch at my place. We had to rush around like madmen trying to get the beers packaged and shipped, as we had less than a week to get them to St. Louis before the competition deadline. After hastily getting everything put together we went to our local shipping agent, only to find out they had closed for the night. The next morning we got the bottles sent on their way, with a promise that they would get there the day of the deadline.

A few days later I got an email from the coordinator of the event letting me know that two of our bottles had broken in shipment, due to our lack of proper packing material at the time. One bottle from each entry had broken, but she offered us the choice to either stay in the competition and not be eligible to win best of show, or send another bottle of each beer before the judging took place. We opted to send the bottles again, and after securing better packaging materials they were on their way.

The results of the competition came in this past Sunday. We did not win best of show, and Aberinkula did not place at all in it's category. I went on to look for the results for the stout category, and saw that we had taken first place! I told Dan, and we were both pretty thrilled about it. What I'm most proud of though is that the recipe wasn't put together to fit to a style, but rather to taste good. We're both very happy with how the beer turned out, and I enjoy drinking it regularly. So often I hear people say that the people who are out there winning competitions aren't making the best tasting beers, just the ones that most accurately follow the style guidelines. At least in this particular case, I can honestly say that that was not true.

Because this was a qualifying event for the Masters Championship of Amateur Brewing, our gold medal allows us to enter that competition as well with the stout. I'm planning on doing it, just to see how far our little beer can go. Stay tuned.

- Adam