Re: Guinness rules.

You pompous f*ck, you could take the time to cultivate your taste buds to aquire the taste of shit or urine, speaking of urine, I bet you drink scotch too.

on 2003-06-07 10:17:55 PST, Ubergeek ( snipped-for-privacy@sympatico.ca) stated in tor.eats an interesting post which had this (among other things) to say, and it's quite relevant to what you just said above:

I'm sure we've all had a drink from time to time. But has anyone paused to reflect on what alcohol truly is? Essentially it is a mild toxin caused by a three stage process: yeast (live bacteria) are introduced to a sugar source (grapes, barley, rye, etc.) and proceed to eat the sugar, then they poop out alcohol and exhale CO2 followed by a slow death in a pool of their own excrement. So, what you are drinking is the collective shit and corpses of billions of microscopic animals.

Not really

If by "from time to time" you mean "this morning", then yes.

Anyone? Sure. Like the Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers.

Yeast are fungi. Bacteria are bacteria. Yeast have nuclei, while bacteria do not.

Meh.

Now they're animals? I thought you said they were bacteria. And unless you're drinking a hefe, it's largely corpse-free.

Oh, and if you're bothered by the idea of consuming something that was produced ("excreted") by some other organism, you're a complete twit.

Hell, with every breath he takes in loads of plant excrement.

-Steve

Truthfully, you're a person of higher intellect and taste then the average guinness drinker.

If it tastes like shit or urine and you drink it for pleasure, I would say that you're the TWIT.

I don't believe that anything I drink for pleasure tastes like shit or urine, and I'm not interested in trying them, so I'll leave the comparisons to the experts (presumably you).

My friends and I are fascinated by a Belgian beer that comes in a white bottle, sorry forget the name but had a dragon on the label. anyway, we knicknamed it primordial stout after pouring into into pint glass once. there was more stuff floating around doing the complete life cycle of yeast than I would think possible to sell in the US.

kegwasher

Heh. Guinness is usually okay, depending where you get it. No excrementy odors, which is all I can really compare. It's not one of my favorite beers though.

Gulden Draak?

A friend of my girlfriend brought some of that to a party we had. One bottle remained in the fridge for about a year or so, based on our experience with the other one being really nasty.

Anyway, we cleaned out the fridge a couple of weeks ago, and the bottle was still there -- but empty! The cap was still on, but I guess not tightly enough to prevent ALL THE BEER from EVAPORATING.

Good riddance, I says.

That's the one. long time without one. May need to road trip into Belgum. Rather nice taste. Not to strong if I remember correctly, but what a friend calls a meaty taste. no not like raw steak, meaning very full bodied. Only one with more mouth feel is Hair of the Dog Fred, but after the first one there is little feeling left in your mouth.

I haven't seen it in several years myself. I remember it as very toffeeish and with a high abv.

There's no brettanomyces in any breed Guinness to the best of my knowledge. I know certain versions have some sourness to them due to a small amount of beer that's undergone a lactic fermentation introduced into the beer. Brettanomyces is tyipcally a feature of either infections or, in the right circumstances, Belgian lambics. And, as I recall, brett. doesn't really add sourness, but rather a lot of phenols.

-Steve

Google "Guinness" and "brettanomyces".

Hmm. All the associations described in the top hits look anecdotal or historical to me. Are you seeing something more objective and contemporary than I'm seeing?

This link entirely backs up Steve's point. The compounds described are phenolics, higer alcohols, and a few other odd organics. The flavors described have nothing to do with sourness, and resemble nothing in the flavor profile of contemporary Guinness. What was your point in linking to it?

THe links I scanned in the first couple pages largely appeared to be anecdotal - most of them citing the same anecdote.

I've never detected any profile of brett. in Guinness

Thanks for backing up my point. Lots of talk about phenols and the like, but nothing about souring. In fact, the word "sour" doesn't appear once in teh entire document.

-Steve

And, as far as I could track, all references to lactic acid in Guinness are either anecdotal (from the same anecdote, actually) or accounts of homebrewers attempts to imitate Guinness.

While the level of funkiness I've noticed in Draught Guinness is quite low (under nitrogen, all taste characteristics are diminished), I've never detected a hint of lactic acid sourness.

I know of a number of home-brew imitations that do, but versions brewed by Arth and Company? Which ones?

Sorry. Sourness wasn't the issue. As stated above, I don't find Guinness particularly sour, nor does a friend who is particularly sensitive to lactic acid. The question was the prime odour active compound in brett, an acid other than lactic, which is listed on page 11 and shown in a graph on page 12.

[...]

Indeed, brettanomyces is responsible for that particular aroma and flavor some describe as "horse blanket," and which I sense as closer to wet leather than anything else. Sourness in lambics (and other beers, generally unintended) generally comes from various acetobacter and/or lactobacillus.

-- Joel Plutchak Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"Resorting to personal harassment is a tactic of desperation."

That's not surprising. I have my doubts about any sort of lactic fermentation as well, at least in the present day variety. I *do* notice a faint sourness in draught Guinness, but it wouldn't bet half a pint that it's from lactic acid rather than roasted grain. But Brett funkiness? I'm extremely skeptical.

I was just in Dublin, and spend a few hours drinking pint after pint in the Guinness "Storehouse" museum brewery bar (or whatever it's called).

And I can tell you, there is nothing sour about it.

The BJCP guideline for dry (Irish) stout style says

"Flavor: moderate acidity/sourness and sharpness from roasted grains, ..."

However, I think the "acidity/sourness and sharpness" is more what I'd call "acrid".

However, really I don't get a very big acridness from Guinness draught.

I've had stouts that are very acrid (like Satchmo Stout from Speakeasy), But Guinness isn't one of them (at least the draught version).

JW