26 thoughts on “Black Friday

  1. martco

    #4 has to be an ice cream float

    I don’t have the words so I’ll just say eruuugh

    (always preferred Beamish anyway)

    1. Boj

      Just remember when drinking in the blighty,
      To order one…..drink…..at…..a…..time,
      Not to complicated or lengthy,
      Just make it a lager & lime.

  2. The Old Boy

    I write with no small amount of authority on London Guinness. I’ve had some sour, awful pints, many mediocre ones and plenty of perfect ones, the latter usually in places that are known quantities. I’ve never seen pints presented as badly as almost any of those over a period of *ahem* years. The third one down, with too much head (stop sniggering at the back) is the only fault I’ve occasionally seen – and some of those pints were an awful lot better than decent looking ones that turned out to be stale.

    1. :-Joe

      In your hard fought and well earned experience, what’s your most reliable pint shop in London?..

      & Have you seen any credible local(UK or Ireland) alternatives to the diagio / heineken etc monopoly on creamy draughtyness?…

      Cheers.

      :-J

  3. italia'90

    #3 & #6 would give you a dose of the galloping jib jabs – it looks like yeast contamination in the beer line?
    #4 reminds me of bottled Guinness, so without any visible signs of nitrogen bubbles in the head, the mixed gas ratio supply is wrong or some clown has hooked straight up to the CO2?
    #1 is suffering from poor presentation and perhaps a few other basics such as temp and 2 part pour sped up?
    Plenty of CO2 bubbes visible too
    #2 might taste the best but looks flat? Not enough nitrogen bubbles have broken out of the nozzle creamer disc?
    #5 looks like the wrong nozzle or an empty nozzle is on the tap?

    About 50% of pints presented poorly are caused by the wrong assembly of the flow straightener then the creamer disc held in place by the O-ring inside the Guinness tap nozzle

    https://www.google.com/search?q=guinness+nozzle+disc&sa=X&biw=1280&bih=616&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=MYZ18ibojKDvPM%253A%252CHikaJ-da48YBkM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kR-GpksDU4qTgBS2YXTNqZ7pZDhcw&ved=2ahUKEwjHuo-fso_mAhUEQhUIHRB-CjEQ9QEwAHoECAYQBg#imgrc=MYZ18ibojKDvPM:

  4. GiggidyGoo

    Aren’t the Guinness taps in (some places anyway) the UK electronic – hence badly ‘pulled’ pints?
    An english colleague on a visit here grabbed his pint of guinness off the counter before it had been topped up complaining that the glass wasn’t filled.

  5. :-Joe

    Is there an equally good alternative draught pint of stout / porter available anywhere that isn’t owned by Heineken or Diagio etc.?

    I used to love a few(rake of) pints of stout now and again but made the switch to only drinking local stouts and beers or trying the odd foreign classic types many years ago…

    I miss a good creamy pint of stout but the porterhouse in Dublin seems to be the only decent local competitor I’ve seen to Diagio?.. Anyone?..

    :-J

    1. Spaghetti Hoop

      I’m curious, why did you make the switch? I would only drink Guinness and increasingly selective about where I go for it. Despite all of the Guinness, later Diagio QA, a lot of pubs still serve up horribly bitter pints and I’m told it’s ‘the lines’ and their lack of cleaning. Yet some of the best draught Guinness comes from pubs which are far from hygienic and polished appearances. Maybe someone here can draught a response?

      That London stuff is just untrained staff.

      1. italia'90

        Hi Hoop, there’s many issues going on here possibly. Their QA was outsourced over 20 years ago and as we know, profit becomes the priority. Standards start slipping. Training a draught specialist takes years not weeks. In reference to the bitterness taste you mention, there’s many factors which influence this but essentially it is a bitter sweet beer. However, as the average serving temp has dropped over the years, the brew has been modified regularly. Problem here is that our taste buds taste less flavours the colder the product is and stout has many subtle flavours mixed together. Beer line cleaning is one of the biggest factors effecting quality and there’s many different opinions about how often they should be cleaned. I belong to the once a week school. There’s also a need to strip down and clean inner parts of the tap(spindle) which can accumulate sediment(Guink) which the stout flows through. The fob in the cold room which prevents waste happening when changing to a new keg can build up and be caked in yeast deposits and finally the keg tapping mechanism needs attention too. That’s just the basics of a simple beer system, but there are lots of other factors involved the more complicated the route is from keg to tap.

  6. italia'90

    I try drink a different beer every month, this month was Schneider Weisse Tap 7 Original [4 for €10 Tesco]
    last month was Hoegaarden [3 for €10 Supervau]
    Next month it’s probably going to be a Doppelbock – carefull now, they kinda sneak up on ya ;)
    2 of our favourite local restaurants have Franciscan Well on tap,
    so I’m easily talked into going out for a quick bite
    Try O’Hara’s/Carlow Brewing Stout on tap – I see it a lot more lately

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