Beer Myths Exposed: Every Hoppy Thing You Know is a Lie

Posted by Mike Richard on June 24, 2007
Filed under: Food + Booze

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Gadling points us to DrinkingBeer.net’s Top 10 Beer Myths. Interesting points, all.

Beer Myth 5: The Guinness they serve in Ireland is better

It seems widely accepted that beer in “the old country” is better than what they export to the rest of the world. The brewing process is cheap, so why would a brewery risk their reputation by brewing a different beer for export? It doesn’t make sense, and it’s not true. With few exceptions, the beer that is exported is the exact same beer that they serve in the bar across the street from the brewery. The difference is purely freshness. It takes two weeks for a keg of Guinness to get from Dublin to your favorite bar in the states. Some beers, like Fosters, is brewed in Canada under a license for sale in the US. But it is clearly stated on the bottle when this is the case.

I can certainly vouch for the Guinness in Ireland tasting quite a bit better than that back home, but I attributed the difference to being “all in my head”.

On a side note: The above “busted” myth only applies to draft/keg beer. In an interview with one of the Guinness head brew masters in Yankee Brew News a while back, he indicated that the canned Guinness sold here in the States is identical to that sold in back in the mother land. While the bottled Guinness is a different animal. So if you’re looking for authenticity, this is perhaps the one time - that rare exception - where canned beer is better than bottled.

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Vagabondish editor Mike Richard lives in Rhode Island - a small patch of land in the northeastern U.S. He is a professional web designer and travel junkie with an unhealthy addiction to backpacking, camping, hiking and seeing the world. He enjoys knit hats and speaking in the third person.



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