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.