Beer review #6: Guinness 250th Anniversary Stout

Beer review #6: A special St. Patrick's Day review of what I would consider to be the best beer to come from the historic House at St. James Gate in Dublin.

Name: Guinness 250^th Anniversary Stout

Style: Stout

Date reviewed: 2009

Rating: A

Analysis: My tastes for Guinness have come and gone over my drinking career.  In my younger days I would not touch the stuff, thinking it too thick and heavy, at a time when I was not as concerned with tastes as I was in quantity of liquids consumed.  It was not until I tried a ‘Black & Tan,’ made with Bass and Guinness where I started my love affair with the creamy goodness that is the dry Irish stout.

At a time when I started thinking that Guinness was flavourless and watered-down (unbelievable!), Guinness distributed their 250^th Anniversary Stout.  I sampled a sixer, and immediately returned to the store to purchase a case.  Knowing that it would be a limited edition and thus a limited supply, every trip to the store was supplemented with a package of Guinness 250.

This was the best Guinness I have ever quaffed.  It was like a Guinness champagne… a carbonated Guinness.  A lighter Guinness.  As their website astutely states: this was a mixture of stout and ale.  The ale aspect comes out as a creamy finish.  Not like the regular Guinness, where people think ‘creamy’ and instantly think of the rich, creamy head produced in a pint.  But the taste was creamy, like that of a cream ale style beer.  The carbonation made the taste of the stout more pronounced.  Sometimes I find that regular Guinness loses a lot of taste in the head, and you are left with a watery taste as the pint nears the end.  Especially if you finish the pint, and some of the foam is at the bottom.  The 250 did not have that problem. I did still drink it at the coldest possible temperatures, as this is the best way to enjoy a Guinness.

Knowing that it will not return (at least there are no plans, or I should say, at least in America, that I know of), it receives the A rating.  And really, it was not like a real Guinness Stout.  What makes Guinness a good beer on its own, was not present in the 250.  Poured into a glass, there was not the huge creamy head.  This was more of a black ale (not to be confused with a Black IPA which is becoming more and more popular since 2011).  The taste of Guinness is there in the 250, but the carbonation compliments the taste perfectly.

This was what I had hoped the Guinness Black Lager would have been based on… and I was horribly wrong.  At some point I will post reviews on at least three more Guinness products: Guinness Dry Irish Stout, Black Lager, and Foreign Extract. 

Beer review # 2 through 5: Weston Brewery Sample Pack

Beer review #2 through 5, sample pack of four styles, one taste.

Name: Weston Brewing Company Sample Pack, O’Malley’s Cream Ale, O’Malley’s Stout, O’Malley’s IPA, and Weston Ruddy Wheat

Style: Irish Ale, Stout, Amber Wheat

Date reviewed: December 2012

Ratings: D (Cream Ale, maybe the Stout), F (IPA, Wheat, maybe the Stout)

Analysis: I love sample packs.  Brilliant for the person who likes beer, likes different types of beer, and can never make up their mind as to what style or type they want to drink.  Except when every bottle in the sample tastes the same… and it tastes bad.  As a whole, the pack receives an ‘F.’  I brought this package of bottles to a holiday party of beer drinkers, and not a single good comment came from the bunch.  Every bottle tasted the same, as if Weston took all four styles, mixed them together, and slapped different labels on them.  Except they were all different colours!  The Cream Ale, which almost tasted like a cream ale, was nearly clear.  And had the same taste as the Stout, which was an see-through black.  Even the IPA, which by IPA standards should have tasted like hops, tasted like metal.  The Wheat was nearly undrinkable, and ended up as the penalty beer in a game of beer pong.

I have tasted this before.  At a small brew pub in the western suburbs of Chicago (which I will review next time I am in the area).  All ten of their different styles tasted the same.  You could not perform a closed-eye test and name the style of beer (we all tried).  All of them had a metallic aftertaste.  I has to be something in the production.

Regardless… back to the Weston review.  The cream ale was not unlike a mass produced light beer.  I pegged it somewhere between Bud and Bud Lite, but that is not what a Cream Ale should taste like.  Yes, it is lighter in colour, and lower in the hops department.  But there should still be a creaminess to be tasted, which was not.  Instead there was the spicy taste of Budweiser.  The Stout was not heavy or flavourful, with no hint of chocolate or coffee.  It was watered down.  The IPA had no hops.  It was reminiscent of Miller Beer, which states on their can it has been ‘Triple Hopped!’  Taking the same number of hops and dividing by three still gives you the same number of hops.  IPA should have a taste of hops.  The Wheat… was just bad.  It was like drinking bad tap water.

And maybe that is the piece that ties this all together.  Could it be the water?  I am going to assume that all of these are made in Weston, Missouri, using the same water source.  Even filtered (which I hope they do), this could be the culprit to all of the beers tasting the same, as well as inferior ingredients, and fewer ingredients.

At any rate… I would not suggest this beer.  I don’t even know if I would give it a second chance, or an in-person brewery chance.  If it is in fact a result of the water, there is no helping this one.  

Beer review #1: The Meddler, Odell

06 March 2013
Beer review #1
We start the reviews with a recently found favourite.

Name: Odell Brewing Company, 'The Meddler'
Style: Oud Bruin Ale - Sour beer
Date reviewed: December 2012
Rating: A

Analysis:  This was a fantastic beer.  Dark amber in colour and subtle sourness.  It is tangy and fruity.  Very similar to taste and feel to Boulevard's 'Love Child No. 2.'  If  you liked that type and style, this is a greatly comparable beer.  And since it is impossible to find Love Child at the moment (it is a season/annual brew, not a regularly produced beer), I am picking up as many of these bombers as possible until they are no longer available.

The feel is heavy, but definitely quaffable.  The carbonation is low, however it compliments the tangy taste on your tongue.  First you get the feel on your taste buds from the sour, but the bubbles of carbonation pronounce the tang. I will definitely continue to drink this corked bottle as long as it is available (and last I checked, there were still bottles available around here). Price is around $15... a better value than most $15 bottles of wine.

Supplemental thoughts: Odell has been producing a number of great brews lately, several which will be reviewed here.  I have been very happy and impressed in the challenging styles they are putting out, however they have always made some quality beer.  These special editions are truly a mark of continued success and quality.

Statement on the Reviews: How I rank the beers

As mentioned previously, I will share how I rank the various beers that I have been tasting.  There will be a common format throughout all of the reviews so that you and I will easily be able to compare styles and tastes.  This way I can also categorize between styles, and keep some running tables as to what I liked and what I did not.

The basic format will be:

Name:
Style:
Date Reviewed:
Rating:
Analysis:

Here are the details on the rating, which will be letter based, A through F, and judged on taste, uniqueness and quaffability.  There will be room for a + or -, based on value.

A - Absolutely Fabulous beers.  One of the best beers I have ever had, would jump at the chance to drink again, and will always pick above all others when at the store and in the mood.  A fantastic brew.

B - A very good beer.  Great taste, good cabonation.  Not over-tasted (for example, there is a thing as 'too much hops').  Something that I would return to again and again when at the store.

C - A good beer.  Could be a great beer, if not for one or two things.  Something that I would drink again, but not something that I would spend a great deal of time searching for.  Might be something that I simply grab off the shelf because I can't figure out what else to get, and I know I like this one.

D - Not-so-good beer.  Maybe I got this in a sample pack, maybe a friend had some at a party, maybe I picked some up just to try it and develop my palate.  For whatever reason, I didn't like it.

F - Horrible beer.  There are far more Horrible Beers than Absolutely Fabulous Beers, as it is much easier to mess something up, than it is to create brilliance.  It may be simply unquaffable.  I may lack flavour... whatever the reason, when seeing it on the shelf, I either laugh or cringe.  The beer that is always brought up at parties as a joke or reference.  These may never be sampled again.

This will carry though on all samples, whether it be from packaged bottle or can, at a brewery, or a brew pub from the tap.  And with that... here come the reviews.

  - Tom.

Are you ready for some beer reviews?

Between the last time I posted (and said I was going to post regularly) and now, which was about six-months.  Maybe seven.  I have drank a few beers.  Several beers.  Maybe a lot of beers.  And that is plural, with an 's.'  Yes, yes, I drank a lot of beer in general, however I made it a point to pick out a new and exciting beer (or at least a new beer) every time I went to the local retailer to pick up something for the weekend.  This resulted in many different styles, types and tastings of our favourite carbonated beverage.

At the same time, I kept all of these empty bottles and bombers, and placed them lovingly on top of the cabinets in my kitchen.  And then it happened: Col wanted to clean and paint the kitchen.  So all of these bottles needed to head for the recycling bin, my monument and historical data being lost to time and a furnace to meet me once again as some other type of beverage (most likely Boulevard, as most glass recycling in the KC area is re-purposed as bottles for Boulevard).  That's not bad, as long as it is for Love Child #2, and not for something like Zon, or Nutcracker.  Or the Bourbon Barrel Quad, which was horrendous.  Anyway, you should be able to read my reviews of those upcoming.

So over a few days, I took each of the bottles, or groupings of bottles, and photographed them as they were taken down and tossed.  And as I have time, I have begun to review each of them, writing up a small briefing of whether I liked or disliked this particular brew.

Anyway, for what I am about to post, there is a simple ranking system and information that I will post from here on out.  That will come in a second part to this review.

  - Tom.