My goodness. My Guinness. Now there’s a classic tag line that never grows old, and it’s been helping Guinness sell their wonderful stout for ages. But which Guinness Stout will you be having today? Now that’s the important question, because Guinness actually does a number of wonderful stouts my friends. Let’s see if we can’t go over a few of them, shall we?

Tonight I’m drinking a beautiful mug of Guinness Draft, and we’ll get into that shortly. Guinness has been brewed in one form or another since 1759. It’s hard to argue with that sort of longevity, and Guinness really is the mother of all stouts. How apropos, then that I’m enjoying it on International Stout Day here at Taco Mac.

Over the years, I’ve drunk my fair share of draft Guinness in bars up and down the coast. I can remember a number of memorable pints on St. Patrick’s Day one year at Summit’s Wayside Tavern in Sandy Springs, Georgia. The $1.88 corned beef and cabbage helped draw us in, but the pints of Guinness and other assorted beers sent our tab up to $100 that night. We felt a little better after the 4 folks next to us got their tab for $400. All those Irish Car Bombs I guess.

But back to the Guinness. Draft Guinness today is still brewed same as it ever was in Ireland, but here in America we get draft Guinness brewed in Canada by Labatt. It till tastes wonderful, or at least mine did on tap this evening. By now you’re thinking, though, hey Bruguru, you said something about other Guinness stouts? And indeed I did.

If you go back 15 years or longer, chances are that when you drank Guinness at home it was Guinness Extra Stout. This is a stronger (6% alcohol by volume), roastier version of Guinness that is only sold in bottles. It’s the first Guinness that I ever tasted in fact, and when I first did back in the mid-eighties I wasn’t fond of it at first. Young and foolish, I know. Today I love the stuff.

Speaking of today, if you drink Guinness at home these days it’s more likely to be Pub Draft Guinness, which is really a lot like draft Guinness but sold in cans. When it was launched in the 90s it was one of the first beers to use a widget in the can to release nitrogen into the liquid just before drinking.

Next up on the ladder is Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, a style all its own (Foreign Stout) and even stronger and roastier than Extra Stout. Guinness FES as it is sometimes called has an alcohol content of 7.5% by volume and is brewed in Ireland, Jamaica and Nigeria. If you’re really lucky, you might score a bottle of Guinness Special Export, mightiest of them all at 8% alcohol by volume and only sold in Belgium.

For tonight, though, I’m in heaven with my mug of Guinness draft. It arrived jet black in color with a thick, beautiful creamy head from the nitrogen pour and a delightful, one of a kind nose of roasted barley malt. Draft Guinness is smoother and less bitter than the bottled version, slightly sour, and served with a remarkably rich body and texture from the nitrogen tap pour. There really is nothing like it, and in this day of thousands upon thousands of craft beers, Guinness stands tall as craft beer when craft beer wasn’t cool. And at 4.1% alcohol by volume, you can drink a few if you like. $6 a mug makes that affordable, too.

It’s a beer I enjoy often, and you should too.

Update 10/09/2016: Looking for something different and refreshing? Taco Mac offers up the Black and Blue, a variation of the famous Black and Tan but here featuring Guinness layered atop Sweetwater Blue. Very delicious, the bright blueberry fruit really pops against the chocolaty roasty stout.



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