Guinness beer rumors

[snopes]

Comment: I've heard 3 rumors about Guinness beer lately.

1. Guinness beer was created by a devout Christian who wanted to fight
drunkenness in Dublin. He thought that if he made his beer dark enough,
people would only drink it in moderation.

2. Guinness beer was created by a devout Christian who wanted to fight
sickness in Dublin by making a beer that tasted so good that no one would
drink the unsafe tap water any more.

3. Guinness Extra Stout is only sold in the U.S. When Guinness Draught
turns skunky in Ireland, they repackage it as Extra Stout and send it to
America, where beer drinkers don't have palate sophisticated enough to
catch on. This is my favorite of the 3 rumors, since Guinness Extra Stout
is my favorite beer.

[Skeptic]

Originally Posted by snopes

Comment: I've heard 3 rumors about Guinness beer lately.
2. Guinness beer was created by a devout Christian who wanted to fight
sickness in Dublin by making a beer that tasted so good that no one would
drink the unsafe tap water any more.

I lived half my life and Ireland, (including working for years as a barman) and have never heard any of these rumours. But the one above seems highly unlikely for economic reasons. Two hundred years ago when Guinness was first made, Dublin was one of the poorest places in the western world. Huge slums covered the city, and the penal laws meant that most of the population would never advance socially due to their religion. It is highly unlikely that the majority could afford to drink beer as a replacement for water.

[Not_Done_Living]

and where would the water used to make the beer come from?

[diddy]

None of these rumors pop up in the Wikipedia page on Guinness beer. The third rumor is just plain silly - I doubt anybody would sell skunky beer deliberately given that regular Guiness Draught sells here normally anyway. Two has already been debunked. The first doesn’t make sense either. Arthur Guinness was a protestant. The closest I can get to him being a devout catholic is that his godfather was an archbishop who bequeathed him the startup funds for a brewery. I did gleam this though:

Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested.

But the rest of number one doesn’t make sense. Stouts were not unheard of in Ireland from what I can tell and I can’t imagine why anybody would associate dark beers with drinking less. It just doesn’t make sense at all.

[strawberrydoodah]

Hi diddy,

It doesn't say anything about him being a devout Catholic, though - only about a devout Christian.

[diddy]

Originally Posted by strawberrydoodah

Hi diddy,

It doesn't say anything about him being a devout Catholic, though - only about a devout Christian.

Doh! I hate it when I confuse the two!

[Mycroft]

wrt the third rumour, Guinness (like most international brewers) have 'local' production facilities. Unusually Guinness does not use purely local ingredients but does export a base to which local ingredients are added pre-fermentation. Part of this base is sour beer, but it is intentionally soured and is part of the stout/porter process (rather like adding hops to bitter). Each country's Guinness Extra (classed as International Extra by Guinness) is slighlty differnt (due to the local ingredients) and american Guinness Extra is actually stronger than the standard Irish Guinness.

[Richard W]

Originally Posted by Skeptic

Huge slums covered the city, and the penal laws meant that most of the population would never advance socially due to their religion. It is highly unlikely that the majority could afford to drink beer as a replacement for water.

On the whole, people drank beer rather than water precisely because it was safer than the water. I'm not sure that people in general would have drunk water at all. Beer was the staple drink in those days. If you could afford food then you could afford beer.

Originally Posted by Not_Done_Living

and where would the water used to make the beer come from?

Firstly, they probably had better wells than the street pumps. Secondly, and more to the point, to make beer you have to boil the water. The second of those points is the main reason it was safer to drink. It's also the reason that temperance campaigners promoted tea as a substitute - the water for tea is also boiled.

Neither of those things are specific to Guinness, and I doubt that it's true that a priest specifically decided to brew a beer for that reason, as there would surely already have been beers around fulfilling the same purpose.

[Don Enrico]

Originally Posted by snopes

Comment:
3. Guinness Extra Stout is only sold in the U.S. When Guinness Draught
turns skunky in Ireland, they repackage it as Extra Stout and send it to
America, where beer drinkers don't have palate sophisticated enough to
catch on.

Originally Posted by diddy

The third rumor is just plain silly - I doubt anybody would sell skunky beer deliberately given that regular Guiness Draught sells here normally anyway.

Isn't the third rumor one told about a lot of beers? There is Cologne, home of the Kölsch beer, where they dislike the people from neighbouring Düsseldorf, home of the Alt beer. Since "alt" means "old" in German, it suggests itself to tell the story that once the Kölsch beer has gone old (and is not fit for drinking in Cologne anymore), it is shipped to Düsseldorf to be sold as Alt beer.

[ThistleS]

Originally Posted by Not_Done_Living

and where would the water used to make the beer come from?

Beer fermentation has been used for millenia to make water potable.

[Floater]

The great grandson of Arthur Guinness donated a stained glass window to St Patrick's cathedral in Dublin with the text "I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink".

[diddy]

Originally Posted by Don Enrico

Isn't the third rumor one told about a lot of beers?

Yea, it’s based on a lot of things, snobbery being one, the second being American beer tastes being so different from other countries. I hear that a lot about most mass produced beer being equivalent to something similar in color to said beer.

[Don Enrico]

I've seen US American beer being called horse piss, myself, and I've seen the reply that points aout all the differnet beers brewed in teh US by bigger and smaller breweries not tasting the same.

What I was wondering is: Are there other examples of "When good beer goes bad, it is shipped to XY"? Like, do the English say that when English ale goes bad and changes it's colour, it's shipped to Ireland to be sold as Guinness? Or is Australian beer allegedly sold to New Zealand after it's "drink by" date? Or is Glasgow beer, after getting stale, piped across the island to be sold as claret to the posh Edinburghians?

[Richard W]

I've not heard any similar rumours about any English beers. Then again, English beers don't export or keep well at all unless they're pasteurised and canned or bottled, and most brewers of decent ales would admit that this means they're not as good as they would be fresh from the cask anyway. (Although that doesn't mean they're bad, just not as good as the draught versions). There's usually no equivalent export that we could pretend was the "gone off" version.

Plus, English beer is hard to keep well at the best of times, and when it goes off it becomes sour and undrinkable fairly quickly. And no proper brewers are going to joke about this because they take too much pride in their beers.

[GenYus234]

When I was in England, a local friend told me that adding shandy to Guinness would cause it to foam up uncontrollably and make a huge mess (maybe not as much as Mentos in Diet Coke, but messy). But Guinness Shandy is a variation with multiple recipies. So is there any basis to this rumour, perhaps a different additive or way of mixing or is shandy perfectly fine to add in?

[overyonder]

Originally Posted by Mycroft

wrt the third rumour, Guinness (like most international brewers) have 'local' production facilities. Unusually Guinness does not use purely local ingredients but does export a base to which local ingredients are added pre-fermentation. Part of this base is sour beer, but it is intentionally soured and is part of the stout/porter process (rather like adding hops to bitter).

Do you have a quote about the soured portion being sent to satellite breweries? Soured beer is not part of the standard stout/porter process, however it is part of the Guinness beer, yes.

It doesn't make much sense to me for the brewery to send a sour part to the US, since the same breweries in the US can use the same source of sourness (either lactobacillus, acetobacter, brettanomyces, etc).

As far as the old joke, ie when it goes bad, it's sent to the US/etc? When Belgian beer goes bad... How does one know?

OY

[Twankydillo]

Originally Posted by GenYus234

When I was in England, a local friend told me that adding shandy to Guinness would cause it to foam up uncontrollably and make a huge mess (maybe not as much as Mentos in Diet Coke, but messy). But Guinness Shandy is a variation with multiple recipies. So is there any basis to this rumour, perhaps a different additive or way of mixing or is shandy perfectly fine to add in?

I was confused wondering what you meant by adding shandy, imagining adding another beer and lemonade mix to the Guinness, but I'm guessing you mean add lemonade (or whatever it might be) to the Guinness to make a shandy, not adding shandy to Guinness?

I've never heard it froths, but I don't really like Guinness so I've never tried. I have heard that the Guinness can settle on top, not mixing well with the lemonade, I don't know if that's true either. I prefer bitter shandies, if I was to have a shandy (I don't usually - I like my beer beer flavoured )

The best horrible drink story I have involves Budweiser, and I do wonder if it doesn't travel well here because I've tried it and it tastes like beer flavoured syrup has been added to a Soda Stream. My dad used to do mummering and one act involved pouring beer through a funnel into a dead man's mouth and making it look like urine (mummers plays are weird), but the man who played this part never paid for his beer so my dad used to go to the bar and ask for their worst beer. He said they always gave him Budweiser. However, a lot of people seem to like it!