Guinness question

Guinness (not Guiness) is bitter? I think you are confusing taste sensations. Try a good IPA for a bitter (and good) taste...

Please go back and reread the thread. I believe you opened the thread with this statement: "That was the first and last drink i'll ever tak of guiness. Horrible beer."

I was responding to your comment.

Sorry I was responding to Guinness sucks statement

There's hop bitter, and there's black, roasted barley bitter. Guinness is bitter, IMHO, but it is not a bitterness from hops. And yeah, that's a good bitter too.

Sure, the bitter is there as are many other tastes but it is much more in the background than with an IPA or good pils.

But if you're not accustomed to bitter at all, the roasted bitterness is going to jump out. You can't judge everything by the beer geek's battered palate standards, especially when dealing with drinkers who are just starting to explore out beyond Bud, Heiniken, Beck's, etc.

-Steve

exactly which is why I probably prefer Guiness or other Stouts over an IPA, since it seems that most IPA brewers try to play "Lets see how many IBU's I can score"

Agree - In the race to score sales brewers can get into a some-is-good-so-a-lot-must-be-better competition. Some hops as in a traditional Czech Pils gives a nice refreshing bite. As in some but certainly not all IPA's the bitter hops mask the other good flavors if taken too far.

So...I'm right, but you're righter? Dude...

I'm not sure it is a contest of someone being right but soimeone else being righter, unless I'm not understanding what you are saying.

A sensation of bitterness is present in the beers I've tried. It is more pronounced in IPA and Pils beers because the brewmaster chooses to emphasize that taste. Bitterness is is also present in stout, but is much less pronouced.

That's it and nothing more.

It's quite simple, but I'll explain. You said "Guinness (not Guiness) is bitter? I think you are confusing taste sensations." I pointed that Guinness is indeed bitter. You said sure, it's bitter, but it is more in the background than with an IPA. To sum up, you said -- or, giving you a lot of benefit of the doubt, you implied -- that Guinness was not bitter. Then when I pointed out that indeed it is bitter, you said yes, but not as bitter as an IPA...which was never an issue at all. Here, look: yes, an IPA is much more bitter than Guinness. No argument on that. But Guinness, not bitter? Sorry, chum, I think you are confusing taste sensations.

Indeed.

Don't make it more complicated than it really is. The overall taste of a given beer is a combination of many invidual sensations, some more prominent and others quite subtle. Although they all blend together to give us an overall pleasant flavor, some of them really pop out. The sensation of bitterness can be throat grabbing in an over-hopped IPA. In the right proportions bitterness gives that prominent refreshing bitterness that a good Pils or IPA is known for. A stout also has some bitterness, but the other flavors are so much more pronounced that the bitterness fades more to the background. I'm not saying it disappears, but it is decidedly less prominent.

Taste is much more than a yes/no question of it's bitter or it is not. We could say all beers are bitter because they all posess some component of bitterness. But that does little to describe the complex range of flavors that make up a good beer.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Face up, John. You said or strongly implied that stouts aren't bitter. You RIDICULED someone for saying so. Now you're saying that stouts are indeed bitter, but not so bitter as to be noticed next to an IPA, so you were actually correct in saying that they aren't bitter?

Do you intend to be taken seriously in this NG?

The world is so simple and easy to understand when all you have to deal with are absolutes. When attempting to describe beer Lew uses one sensation...bitter. So far all the beers I've heard him describe are simply "bitter". I'm sure there are some he would describe as "not bitter", thus rounding out his simple world of black and white, or bitter and not bitter.

No gradations or intensities of flavors no descriptions of how flavors and sensations come together to make the complex taste of a given beer.

Do you consider a steak dinner in the same simple manner...it's either cooked or not cooked?

Hate to think you might be denying this by ignoring it. You wouldn't do that, would you?

Tell you what, John: if that steak was rare, I'd still say it was cooked. I wouldn't say that it's not really cooked because this well-done steak over here is really cooked a lot, and the rare steak tastes of a lot of other things than just cooked beef.

The issue is not whether Guinness has other flavors: it does. The issue is that you said that Guinness was not bitter. Now you're trying real hard to make it look like I said it was ONLY bitter. Red herring. Distraction. I'm not describing any beers, I'm not attempting to. I'm just trying to get you to tell the truth, and it appears that it's not in you.

Let's focus on what you said. Twist and turn as you will, you first ridiculed someone for saying Guinness was bitter, I pointed out that it was, and now you say that it is, but that it has other flavors as well...which no one is contesting, least of all me.

Answer the question: is Guinness bitter? If yes, you owe foundryrat an apology. If no...you owe me an explanation. Either answer the question, or babble some more about what I think of Guinness, or what you think of an IPA or a good pils, or what a steak dinner tastes like when it's not cooked. What's it going to be? Sorry to be so insistent, but it really ticks me off when someone makes fun of someone else's taste like that...especially when they're wrong about it.

"Lew Bryson" wrote in news:KQfEf.10330$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr30.news.prodigy.com:

Green apple! Green apple!

I actually enjoy the odd Bud or two. Once or twice a year. There's, um, stuff there if you look for it.

Er...Arriving late, getting a kick out of this. Lew is at his best when he's right.

Of especial amusement was this from the Bitterness Disabled (BDs are always welcome at our Malt Disabled meetings. Please identify as MD, else you won't be asked to share. But we give chips for Newcomers! Heh! Try asking for a 30-day chip at a BD meeting sometime.):

"We could say all beers are bitter because they all posess some component of bitterness."

Only if 0.0 registers as bitterness.

Bud. And for those of us who extol beers that aren't all that great because we think we're supposed to say they're great in gatherings of like-minded folk: Kwak.

JS: Attend a meeting. Seriously.

Scott Kaczorowski Long Beach, CA

I think you're misunderstanding Lew a bit.

In his defense, and hopefully as an example, I have YET to witness anyone trying Guinness for the first time who hasn't made a face and said "yuck! bitter!".

You repeated yourself several times so I snipped the excess. Your statement above makes my point. You seem to want to reduce the complexities of taste to the absurd. To you a beer is either bitter or it isn't - read above. To me and many others there are gradations of all flavors including the sensation of bitterness. Bitterness can be more prominent as in an IPA or less prominent as with a good stout. By oversimplifying your descriptions you tell the reader (or listener) very little about what the beer really tastes like. Your simplistic description leads the reader to the incorrect conclusion that an IPA and a stout are both bitter in the same intensity, which they clearly are not.

Hmmmm, a John S. being bizarrely argumentative, putting words into people's mouths, using twisted (at best) logic... are we back in the 90's?

Circle the Black Helicopters! Nick, where are you when we need you?!