You’d drink it, too, if she handed it to you.“Guinness is the best beer in the world. Hands down.” – Me, 2003.
Like anything else, the more you’re exposed to different things the more likely your attitudes will change over time. I was first exposed to Guinness in college, when a friend of mine picked up an 8-pack of Guinness Draught cans. His dad was an F-16 pilot stationed at Aviano AB, Italy so he was a product of DODS and traveled all over Europe during his formative years. It made him an interesting person to converse with but somehow or another he wound up in China in his late 20s. I hear from him once every two years now, possibly when the Chicom government lets him check Facebook. At any rate, he was fresh off a trip to Ireland with his dad and at the time we all thought it was the coolest thing in the world. The can contained a “widget,” that charged the beer with nitrogen and when opened, will release its charge, mimicking what the beer would taste like if it came off tap. Who else but the Irish would be at the forefront of beer drinking technology?
The problem is, at the time I didn’t know much better. My exposure to beer was limited to Bud Light, Corona and the like. I will credit my friend with forcing me to try something different from time to time, after all the beer is black and sometimes requires a spoon, when it’s supposed to be yellow, watery and sometimes requires a funnel and some surgical tubing. This lead to me drinking a Fat Tire, which lead to me drinking damn near everything else.
If we rag on the InBev brands for the ubiquity, their marketing campaigns and their trivial associations with pop culture, it shouldn’t be too much of a leap to come to the same conclusion about Guinness as we do with them. Need an example?
Is Obama cool because Obama gets jacked on Guinness or is Guinness cool because Obama gets jacked on Guinness?
But it’s different, because Guinness is tasty! Okay, maybe it is. It has a nice texture, the head is certainly something to be desired and it is definitely better than 90% of the mass produced beers on Earth, but that is a bar low enough to trip over. Its ingredients are to a large extent, trade secret—except for fish bladder, until recently. Because of its popularity, there is probably no beer on Earth that has as many “secrets” and “insights” that are intended mainly to make people look cool drinking it. Such as:
Secret: Tapping a spoon against the glass. This is to determine whether the beer finished dissipating and the head has settled. The glass should make a dull clacking sound when tapped with a spoon—now it’s ready! This is silly, as the glass makes a similar sound when filled with almost any liquid.
Secret: It’s better in Ireland. This is mostly designed as a segue to the, “Oh you’ve been to Ireland, are the comely lasses really that comely?” conversation. The former is somewhat true and there are a few explanations as to why. The first being that for most Irish, drinking is a social event therefore they drink it in pubs, so it isn’t bottled. Bottling and canning beer often requires pasteurization which can alter the taste of beer by denaturing the proteins and enzymes that you might find tasty and otherwise not get out of the can. Also, the Irish drink so much of the stuff that once it’s brewed it’ll get consumed in a few weeks, so they might not be too concerned about it spoiling and thus won’t sully it with preservatives. I’m not certain of the veracity of this one, since I doubt Guinness wants a lawsuit from their beer getting people sick. Another practice in Ireland is Guinness will send a worker out to pubs with a distribution contract to purge the lines at 21 day intervals. This ensures the lines are clean and thus do not contain foreign contaminants. That’s what this guy is doing.
It sounds like a good business practice on Guinness’ part to control quality but if I’m the pub owner I might question how much beer that wastes because depending on the length of the lines, there might be a gallon or more of beer in there that I can no longer sell which means its 17 gallons/tap/year—you do the math. The beer is fresher in Ireland, pubs are required to let Guinness maintain their taps, it may or may not be safe for drinking, and it is almost always served off the tap. Couple this with the fact that for most Americans, it’s a special occasion they find themselves in Ireland and therefore a novelty, it’s no surprise everyone says it’s better in Ireland.
Secret: Drinking Guinness is good for you. Apparently, Guinness contains antioxidants and polyphenols like red wine, and in moderation the benefits outweigh the alcohol content. This is also ridiculous, as anybody drinking Guinness, like the stereotypical red wine drinker, is not going to be drinking it in moderation.
Secret: The Perfect Pint. This is a six-step process.
- Use a Guinness Branded Glass. Preferably a clean glass.
- Pour at a 45-degree angle, aim for the harp in the Guinness logo. Pull aft on the tap.
- Stop pouring when it reaches about halfway across the harp in the Guinness logo.
- Leave the glass to settle for 119.5 seconds.
- Once ready fill the remainder, pushing fore on the tap rather than aft, holding the glass plumb.
- Serve. The foam should be domed like the crystal on a well-made watch.
Not only that, there is a specific way to drink a perfect pint of Guinness and that is by drinking it in quarters. In other words, gulping it rather than sipping it, thus leaving three foam lines in the glass. Order a whisky between gulps 2 and 3. DO NOT drink the whisky before finishing the beer. This whole thing sounds ridiculous to a rational observer, but I’m not about to argue with it beyond not telling me how to drink my beer.
In the end, Guinness benefits from a legend they realistically cannot live up to and a cultural status that seems to feed upon itself—like Harley-Davidson. There are better, more flavorful stouts out there that also have the nitrogen charged widget. Want me to name one? Okay.
I suppose the pedants among us will point out this isn’t an Irish Stout.
Guinness Draught: 3.0/5 (If I’m being generous)
#metoo? I wonder. Had I chosen to pursue it, I think I would have had a very good case for sexual discrimination against this non-profit—hostile atmosphere, passed over for promotions, false accusations of wrong-doing likely based on my gender.
I love how nobody at Whole Foods ever looks like their file photos…normally they look homeless yet somehow drive a 
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One of the most difficult problems in current political philosophy is related to the concept of vagueness. This is a distinct phenomenon, but related to, vague communication. In common vernacular, when we say someone is “being vague”, typically we mean that individual is, purposefully or not, leaving out certain details of a concept or description that prevent it from being fully defined. The problem of formal logic I’m discussing here involves the issue of definition, but not from a communicational standpoint or a necessary lack of defining information.
There’s a reason why it’s a common joke/stereotype that autists are drawn to libertarianism. One of the archetypes of the autistic mind is an extreme black and white understanding of the world. If everything in the world is either black or white and everything that’s black is evil (RAAAACIST!!!) and everything that’s white is good, it’s very easy to be principled. However, once vagueness is introduced, the water is muddied.
