Once you go black you never go back.

[A.F.F.]

Is that really true ?

[donKey jote]

not true

[Rollo]

http://www.kaboodle.com/hi/img/2/0/0/156/d/AAAAAqi4FLkAAAAAAVbQxA.jpg

Why would you want to go back? Once you've found perfection, nothing else is good enough.

[Rudy Tamasz]

It's not prefection. It's just an overhyped brand. Any Belgian ale with beat Guinness hands down.

[A.F.F.]

I like my beer like my men. Lager!

[greenchile505]

It's not prefection. It's just an overhyped brand. Any Belgian ale with beat Guinness hands down.

This is a request. What is your favorite Belgian Ale? Please recommend one - I'd like to try it. I have not tasted anything as good as Guinness, but I do like other beers, and to try other beers.

[glauistean]

http://www.kaboodle.com/hi/img/2/0/0/156/d/AAAAAqi4FLkAAAAAAVbQxA.jpg

Why would you want to go back? Once you've found perfection, nothing else is good enough.

Ahh, Guinness from St James Gate, Dublin, Ireland. Hard to believe that it was created as the result of an error.

[Garry Walker]

i would rather drink the urine of 4 dogs than taste guiness ever again. What an awful awful drink.

[harvick#1]

Guiness is great, so many people live off Bud Light Lime and Miller Lite I guess :p :

[Donney]

Here Guinness tastes bitter-ish but I like it!

And Belgian beer too, and most beers in the world to be honest.

[donKey jote]

Black Erdinger is my favourite :)

[schmenke]

It's always difficult to get a good pint of bitter on tap (I never touch the canned or bottled stuff :s ) around here, and it's often served too cold. I do enjoy it when I can get it though :) .
I prefer Smithwicks over Guiness tbh.

[Captain VXR]

I'd take cider over beer any day, especially good quality stuff from Somerset or France :facelick:

[Rollo]

It's not prefection. It's just an overhyped brand. Any Belgian ale with beat Guinness hands down.

No. Just no. For the price you pay it's not worth the effort.
Grant that Leffe, Orval and Chimay do export, most of the beer in Belgium that's any good doesn't travel.

I also don't much enjoy standing around in one shoe because the proprietor makes you surrender it when you buy beer in a stirrup glass. Particularly Kwak is notorious for this.
No. Beer should be a simple thing. There is more to be said about waiting for 4 minutes for a Guinness to settle (or up to 7 minutes for some German dunkels) than having standing in a wet sock.

[Rudy Tamasz]

This is a request. What is your favorite Belgian Ale? Please recommend one - I'd like to try it. I have not tasted anything as good as Guinness, but I do like other beers, and to try other beers.

Sorry, mate. Took me a while to respond. I am not very articulate on beers and therefore suggest that you read this.

http://www.beermad.org.uk/writings/belgianbeer.shtml

I may add that if you are based outside of Belgium then the Belgian beers you are most likely to find in your local store would be Leffe, Chimay and Duvel. They are the most mainstream types of niche beers or the most niche types of mainstream beers. In any case they are very good even if, as Rollo points out correctly, they do not necessarily travel well. I'd take a bottle of Chimay over any of our local types no matter how fresh they would be.

[fandango]

A pint o'plain is yer oney man!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwLB2Vei6tE&feature=related

A poem by Flann O'Brien. Guinness is a wonderful beer, but they've messed around with it too much, making it cold to get people to drink it in the Summer etc.
Those moments when a Guinness is just absolutely the right drink for the mood you're in are harder to get these days. But for me, there is the odd day when nothing else will do.

[MrJan]

I'd take cider over beer any day, especially good quality stuff from Somerset or France :facelick:

Bleh, don't want too much of that Somerset cider, tastes of the North ;) Mind you I usually end up having a few pints of Stowford Press when I go to Moles in Bath, and that's proper Northern stuff (bleddy Herefordshire)

[Roamy]

Alt beer form Düsseldorf - now that is beer. I am very glad belgium bought budweiser. what a sh!t beer and I would rather eat lint than drink a bud/lime

[Brown, Jon Brow]

Guinness is amazing. And the best thing is that I can drink gallons of it without getting a headache the next morning.

[janneppi]

It's not prefection. It's just an overhyped brand. Any Belgian ale with beat Guinness hands down.
I remember reading somewhere that the Guinnes rest of the world gets isn't as good as the stuff they get on the home island. something to do with how they preserve it for longer time.
sort of makes sense to me, last time I drank Guinnes it tasted like crap.

My all time favourite is the Bock type beer that Plevna in Tampere makes and sells.

[edv]

I've made 5 beer pilgrimages to Belgium.
I'd have to say that, overall, nothing compares to Belgian Ales.
As a beer lover, you've never lived until you've done a vertical taste test at a place like the Kulminator in Antwerp, or perused the libation menu at the Delirium Cafe in Brussels (over 2,000 beers available!) or enjoyed washing down some croquettes with a Westvleteren or a Rochefort at the Bier Circus.

Gawd I'm starting to salivate again....time to book yet another trip??

[fandango]

I remember reading somewhere that the Guinnes rest of the world gets isn't as good as the stuff they get on the home island.

Even in Dublin itself, there are pubs that have better Guinness than others.

[Eki]

Even in Dublin itself, there are pubs that have better Guinness than others.
Even at Guinness itself, there are batches that have better Guinness than others.

[Captain VXR]

Even at Guinness itself, there are batches that have better Guinness than others.

So basically they should fire their quality control team?

[MrJan]

Beer is very complex stuff, most proper beer won't taste the same from pub to pub or even across time. I've been in a pub and had a pint from the tale end of a barrell and then a pint from a new barrell, the difference is absoultely amazing. It also depends a lot on temperature, probably the reason that it supposedly tastes better in Dublin is because it doesn't travel well and the locals know how to keep it properly.

[donKey jote]

Guinness is amazing. And the best thing is that I can drink gallons of it without getting a headache the next morning.
the farts though :erm: :eek: :uhoh:

[glauistean]

A pint o'plain is yer oney man!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwLB2Vei6tE&feature=related

A poem by Flann O'Brien. Guinness is a wonderful beer, but they've messed around with it too much, making it cold to get people to drink it in the Summer etc.
Those moments when a Guinness is just absolutely the right drink for the mood you're in are harder to get these days. But for me, there is the odd day when nothing else will do.

Ah, the Dubliners. That's a great link Fandango. Thanks. You mention that Guinness is now cold. It has been sold cold since the sixties. Guinness is a very savvy organization. They build coldrooms for taverns and get to take as many lines (beer,Guinness, lager) as they want. The publicans are not put out too much as they don't incur the cost of building a coldroom or having to maintain it. They also are allowed to run owner beer lines. The main competitor of Guinness is Murphy's and Beamish. They also can be piped through the same coldroom.

Guinness aka as porter and stout. A pint of porter. Easily understood by the Dubliner or any Irishman since they were the one's(porters) that got the bad batch of the ale that was supposed to be brewed. Alas, but hurray for us, they screwed it up when they over cooked the hops and got Guinness. The porters at the docks got it for next to nothing. Then as a result you got Smithwicks, a dark ale. The lighter ale produced by Guinness is lager as I'm sure many of the British gents know already.

Guinness is also the main European distributor for Budweiser. It has a cider called Bulmers and also owns Bailey's.

It is as most of you have said a bad traveller. The way one of the osters put it that it may vary from pub to pub. That is so true. Dublin has it's favorite watering holes as most places in Ireland do. They do not get any special treatment other than cleaning their lines at a particular time that they feel is optimum.

[Bob Riebe]

A gent recently gave me a one hundred dollar gift card for some work I did for him so I went down to the not average beer seller it was for and bought apprx. a dozen different stout beers.

Now I drink it for pleasure, or because I like stout, and while they differed I found none that were really "better" than another, just different.
Tonight I drank a La Granja Stout from Denmark and liked it very much. It went well with saurkraut, sausages and potatoes.

Of the U.S. lager beers, I find Budweiser to be the best of the national brands, but with the merging of so many of the large regional and national breweries, there are no longer true, limited run, super premiums available any more.
Most breweries used to have their "select" or "extra special" type beers which would make the best from the large brewers today rather pathetic.
That is something I miss greatly from my youth.

[gloomyDAY]

Beer? No, not really.

Women? Yes, going for seconds.

[markabilly]

Santa Anna would agree, he went black for an afternoon and never went back....but he knew well as to what those johnny rebs could only dream about.... :(

[fandango]

Ah, the Dubliners. That's a great link Fandango. Thanks. You mention that Guinness is now cold. It has been sold cold since the sixties....

Not like now. They recently introduced, I think they call it Guinness Extra Cold or something like that. It's so cold your hand starts to hurt after a few minutes standing holding it. It's put-you-in-a-bad-mood-cold.

[janneppi]

Perhaps you read it in post #10? :p :)

I generally don't read post longer than one line. :p :

[glauistean]

Not like now. They recently introduced, I think they call it Guinness Extra Cold or something like that. It's so cold your hand starts to hurt after a few minutes standing holding it. It's put-you-in-a-bad-mood-cold.

Really? I can't imagine it's popular at some of the "Temple Bar" area crowds.

[mike.flynn]

So basically they should fire their quality control team?

Great comment!

[fandango]

Really? I can't imagine it's popular at some of the "Temple Bar" area crowds.

I suppose the solution is to drink it faster.... ;)

[A.F.F.]

My thread has been officially hijacked :p :