Guinness celebrates 250 years of stout brewing today
irishtimes.com
irishtimes.com
Guinness put 20 years of research into the can method.
The 16.9 ounce can (containing 14.9 ounces of beer) is fitted with a small plastic device (Guinness calls it a "smoothifier") which sits in the bottom of the can. This device has a pocket or cavity which is open to the atmosphere via a pin hole in its top. The can is evacuated of oxygen and filled with beer. Prior to sealing the can, a dose of liquid nitrogen is added to the beer. The can is closed and as the liquid nitrogen warms a pressure is created. The pressure forces about 1% of the beer and nitrogen into the plastic cavity.
When the can is opened, the pressure is released and the small amount of beer in the cavity is forced back through the pinhole quite violently. The agitation created by this "geyser" mixes the nitrogen with the beer in such a way as to reproduce the tap handle character.
Prior to serving, the beer must be chilled. Guinness suggests a two hour stint in a refrigerator, with a target serving temperature of 45-50 degrees (if opened while warm, the beer gushes with excess force). This is the one area where flavor will be variable since most American refrigerators hold their temperatures closer to 35-40 degrees.
The colder the beer, the less the flavors are perceptible. The entire contents should be emptied into a 16 ounce glass. The head which forms is exactly like that of the draught version. It should last to the bottom of the glass.
Here in Canada they keep advertising Alexander Keith's birthday (the Scottish-Canadian Brewmaster/Politician - IMO the best combination for a politician ever - not Alexander Keith Jr. his nephew who was a secret agent for the Confederates) and I completely forgot that Guinness's founding was coming up!
And they have a new can that you put on a vibrating pedestal before you open, but I think it's more of a gimmick than an improvement in taste.
Please exercise caution!
The bottles with the smoothifier look like this:
http://erinp.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/dscn3580.jpg
These bottles do not have a smoothifier:
http://justbeer.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/guinness-extra-s...
By the way, Guinness available here is produced differently, and is much, much, much better in every way.
It has a very strong burnt caramel taste, which I didn't really like or at least was not really in the mood for (at a noisy house party of 20-somethings).
I didn't know if it was supposed to be served cold or room temperature, I've heard stories that it is supposed to be at room temperature but I couldn't fathom that so I chilled it a bit.
Maybe in a quiter setting I'll give it a second chance, with a last name of Hughes I believe it's my genetic heritage to like Guinness.
In the UK casks are supposed to keep below 13 degrees (~55F), however this isn't always the case. The places I frequented had a refrigerated cellar and IIRC kept it around 9 degrees. The reason why beer is served so comparatively warm in the UK is because of an age old tradition for the workmen coming into the pub; essentially you order two pints, the first one should be finished before they've finished pumping the second, and the second shouldn't last too much longer!
Dark beers like Guinness do, however, stay cooler longer than the light lagers, so perhaps this is another reason to the reluctant change of chilled beer in the UK, but I'm certainly not against it.
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You're the type of person that tells someone eating sushi for the first time -- "That green stuff is guacamole -- you should smear quite a lot of it on the fish..."