Murphy's Irish Stout Review

Brewery: Murphy's Brewery | Beer: Murphy's Irish Stout
Style: Irish Dry Stout | ABV: 4.0% | IBUs: Unknown
Serving Method: 16.9 oz. nitro-can poured into pint glass

Dating back to 1856, Murphy's Irish Stout is a beer with a lot of history. It's been brewed at the historic Murphy's Brewery (now known Heineken Brewery Ireland, Ltd.) in County Cork, Ireland for that entire stretch of time, which is no mean feat given the climate of the alcohol industry over the last fifty years.

Mostly a local beer until Murphy's was acquired by Heineken in 1983, Murphy's Irish Stout has grown into an international brand and established itself as the primary alternative for Guinness. It's known for being a little less bitter than Guinness and for sharing the same fascination with nitro bubbles.

Let's pop the widget and see how it stacks up, shall we?

Appearance: A dark brown, nearly black body with great red highlights. Up top, a beautifully dense tannish head that sticks around to the bottom of the pint, leaving beautiful lacing on the way down.

Aroma: Sweet, lightly grainy roasted malt with some light chocolate, coffee, and smoky tones.

Taste: A rather straightforward flavor profile consisting of a roasty malt backbone with nuttiness, a little chocolate, and some mildly sour, almost lactic-like notes mixed in. The aftertaste is roasty with just a hint of smoke.

Mouthfeel: A creamy, medium-light to medium body with smooth nitro bubbles and a drying finish.

Drinkability: An easy to drink and very sessionable brew.

Verdict: Murphy's Irish Stout is a cheerful enough Irish Dry Stout, though really nothing new if you've ever tried Guinness. So, if you're a Guinness fan looking for something just a little different, this might just be the beer for you to try next.

Grade: B

Guinness 250 Anniversary Stout Review

Brewery: Guinness Ltd. | Beer: Guinness 250 Anniversary Stout
Style: Irish Dry Stout | ABV: 5.0% | IBUs: ~45
Serving Method: 12 oz. bottle poured into pint glass

Today marks 250 years since Arthur Guinness signed the legendary 9000 year lease on the St. James Brewery. To help mark the occasion, Guinness has brewed up 250 Anniversary Stout, a new beer available in America, Australia, and Singapore.

The first new Guinness in the American product line since Guinness Draught first showed up on our shores in 1967, Guinness 250 Anniversary Stout is the biggest Guinness-related news here in quite a while. It's not meant to be a permanent change though, as Guinness only plan to brew the beer for a limited time only.

Unlike big brother Guinness Draught, 250 gets it's bubbles purely from carbonation, with no nitrogen. This makes for a sharper mouthfeel. Guinness describe 250 as "a distinctive carbonated stout with a clean, smooth finish." Why the change? According to master brewer Fergal Murray, this beer "is more about refreshment and zing" than Guinness Draught. Other changes include a different mix of malts, a higher alcohol content, and a new "triple hop regime."

There's no better day than today to raise a pint of the black stuff, so let's get to it.

Appearance: A dark brown, nearly black body with laser-red highlights. Up top, two fingers of creamy, dusty-tan head that sticks around for a while and leaves good lacing on the way down.

Aroma: Cocoa and a little dark fruit over a mild roasted-malt base. It's rather similar to Guinness Draught, but with a little more fruit character.

Taste: Roasted malt with nutty, chocolaty and dark-fruity notes. It's not exactly the most complex brew out there, but it was never meant to be. The aftertaste is nutty and roasty.

Mouthfeel: Medium bodied and creamy with a drying finish. There's certainly more carbonation than you get in nitrogenated Guinness products, but what's here is still rather smooth.

Drinkability: Like it's big brother, this goes back rather quickly.

Verdict: A decent enough brew, and a fitting tribute given the source material that is Guinness Draught, but not exactly an earth-shaker. If you are (or used to be) a Guinness fanatic, this is worth the price of admission. Congratulations to Guinness on 250 years!

Grade: B-

Guinness Draught Review (Nitro-Can)

Brewery: Guinness Ltd. | Beer: Guinness Draught
Style: Irish Dry Stout | ABV: 4.2% | IBUs: 40
Serving Method: 14.9 oz. nitro-can poured into pint glass

When discussing beer with my fellow beer geeks, time and time again Guinness Draught comes up as part of the genesis of their love of beer. It's usually a pint of Guinness that helped them realize there is more to the world of beer than soulless, fizzy yellow clones. They might have even gone as far as ending up a full-fledged brand evangelist, proudly telling anyone within in earshot that Guinness is the manliest beer ever produced and the only brand that matters.

Inevitably, they end up working their way up the craft-beer ladder, perhaps chuckling a bit when they look back at the old days. Tellingly though, they still love a pint of Guinness-at least every now and then. Not just for old time's sake, but because Guinness is just an enjoyable beer.

This is all what happened to me, I'm the cliche. I enjoyed my first pint of Guinness in a faux Irish pub here in Houston one night and a light just went off above my head. From that moment, beer was not just something to get you drunk, it was so much more. Soon, I was one of those "Guinness people" telling Bud Light drinkers off at every chance I had. I ended up with bottle openers, endless numbers of pint glasses, a real deal neon light, a closest full of Guinness shirts and sandals, and even a mini-fridge (now used as a rudimentary cellar). And though Guinness doesn't mean everything to me that it used to, I have no regrets-it helped make me the beer advocate I am today.

In my mind, regardless of what is in the actual can/bottle/keg, the craft beer world owes a hell of a lot to Guinness. The prototypical "gateway beer" (more-so even than Fat Tire, or Blue Moon), Guinness has turned a massive amount of people on to good beer and that's good for everyone. But, that being said, what's inside the pint glass is still rather important...

Appearance: Guinness Draught is truly a beautiful thing. Perhaps the prettiest glass of beer I have ever seen, a tulip-shaped pint glass filled with a properly pulled Guinness Draught is as iconic as it gets. It's dark reddish-brown (not quite black), pierced by laser beams of red light, and capped by a creamy tan head. And my god, the bubbles-I could get lost watching the head settle on a pint, it's simply hypnotic.

Aroma: Chocolaty, roasty, and slightly sour malt with a little dark fruit thrown in. It's lacking a bit in intensity, but some of that's probably due to the dense nature of the nitro-head.

Taste: Quite similar to what the nose promised: mild milk chocolate, weak coffee, dark fruit, and sour roasted malt predominate, with a little light bitterness thrown in to help balance everything. There's some metallic iron-like flavors from time to time, but they don't ruin everything. It's not a particularly intense as far as flavor goes, but it gets the job done as a session brew. The aftertaste is roasted malt with mild bitterness.

Mouthfeel: A creamy as hell and amazingly silky medium-light body with smooth carbonation to match. Dries out in the finish.

Drinkability: While it's not exactly my first choice for a hot Summer's day, Guinness is still an amazingly drinkable beer.

Verdict: Chances are, if you're reading this you know exactly what it's like to have a pint of Guinness Draught. Inoffensive and generally uninteresting, yet highly recognizable and iconic, it's quite the paradox. Just the kind of paradox that's perfect to ponder over a familiar pint.

Grade: B

Homemade Guinness Ice Cream Recipe

A few years ago while visiting an Amy's Ice Cream parlor in Austin, I came across a truly heavenly concoction. Amongst the list of amazing flavors, there it was: Guinness. This was back in my Guinness phase, before I had really started exploring the world of beer, so I was ecstatic. I stepped up to the counter and placed an order that I had placed a thousand times before: "I'll have a pint of Guinness, please."

The concoction lived up to my greatest expectations, and with no Amy's locations within 150 miles of my apartment, I decided it was finally time to take matters into my own hands in order to furnish a steady supply of the stuff. Since my wife and I received an ice cream maker attachment for our stand mixer at our wedding, there was really no excuse not to give it a try. After some basic research (also known as Googling "Guinness ice cream recipe" and clicking the first result), I found a recipe from The Boston Globe to try out (check it out here).

Here's the ingredient list the recipe calls for:

• 1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 2/3 cup Guinness stout
• 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons molasses
• 4 egg yolks
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  

We decided to make some slight adjustments. We cut the molasses in half, subbed coconut extract for the vanilla (both extract and bean), and instead of Guinness Draught, we went with some Guinness 250 Anniversary Stout.

The first step was heating the cream, milk, and a dash of the extract to a boil and setting it aside to cool. Next, we whisked together the Guinness and molasses, heated the mixture to a boil and cooked it until it reduced to about a quarter of its original volume, and set it aside along side the cream. While both saucepans cooled, we mixed the sugar and yolks together into a mixing bowl. Then, we slowly whisked the warm cream mixture into the mixing bowl and poured the mix into the saucepan along with the beer mixture. Finally, we heated the mixture for about six minutes, until it was nicely thick, strained it, and placed it in the fridge for two hours. Simple as that.

After waiting for the excruciating two hours, we pulled out the pre-frozen freezing bowl (it takes 15 hours to freeze the bloody thing, so plan ahead) and the stand mixer to get to the exciting part. Before dumping our mix into the bowl, I decided to take a quick sample, and... it tasted horrible. It was savory, salty, and totally wrong - my first thought was the molasses. I was wary of the stuff from the beginning, hence cutting the amount included by over half. I took a whiff of the molasses in the jar just to be sure, and it certainly seemed like the culprit. Who knew molasses was so gross?

So now what? Well, I like to see things through, so I did what anyone would do: I poured a shitload of sugar and coconut extract in the mix and crossed my fingers. It tasted a lot better when I sampled it, but was still rather off. However, we hadn't come this far for nothing, so I dumped it in the freezing bowl, turned it on, and walked away from 25 minutes. It certainly looked the part after it's time in the mixer, and the texture was awesome, but it still tasted terrible. We're talking soy sauce flavored ice cream here - no offense Boston Globe, but that was bullshit.

Okay, okay, okay. That sucked. Badly. Luckily we still had eggs, milk, and cream left in the fridge so we decided to give it another whirl (pun intended). At least we knew that the ice cream maker works like a charm and that most of what we did worked. So, the next day we set out again, but with a few changes.

After researching some different recipes for Guinness ice cream and reflecting on the previous day's events we decided it was best to rule out as many variables as possible to avoid another wasted bowl of ice cream. So instead of the new Guinness 250 Anniversary (which is tasty enough, and I'm sure can be made into a delicious ice cream) we went with regular old Guinness Draught, instead of coconut extract we went back to vanilla, and instead of adding molasses to the mix we threw the jar in the trash. Besides those swaps, everything was exactly the same.

This time, we hit paydirt. All of the flavors mesh perfectly together with none of the offending flavors from the first batch present. It's tastes like rich, incredibly creamy vanilla ice cream with subtle Guinness flavors (toasted malt with coffee and chocolate) mixed in (imagine that). The texture is perfectly fluffy and creamy, I'm shocked how perfectly it came out. I think this is just the first batch in a very long line of beer flavored ice creams coming out of our kitchen. Stay tuned for new flavors coming soon and feel free to leave a comment with any suggestions.

So, to anyone thinking about making their own beer flavored ice cream, or any kind of ice cream really, I encourage you to go for it. Just hold the molasses.