Dublin and West Indies Porters
Guinness, Dublin, Ireland
Style: Porter
Stats: Dublin: 3.8 percent ABV, 30 IBU; West Indies: 6 percent ABV, 50 IBU
Available: Costco and many grocery stores; it’s Guinness, so the reach is fairly strong.
My thoughts: I always enjoy getting an email with the subject line, “Beer just came for you.” That message came across recently so I high-tailed it over to The Herald and picked up my spoils.
What I found was a four-pack of new beer from Guinness. I’m guessing it’s from the bloke I met at the Guinness tasting preview of Nitro IPA last fall. Whatever: Free beer is free beer, so I dove in.
The genesis of all of this is Guinness’ The Brewers Project, a small-batch brewery that churns out pilot batches of experimental beer just steps away from the main brewery at St. James’s Gate. A few of the early dispatches included Guinness’ foray into golden ale and the Nitro IPA. I thought both were OK, but nothing I’d slap down $10 for a four pack.
But these porters are different. Few breweries in the world do dark beers of consistently high quality as well as Guinness and both the Dublin and West Indies Porters are really good beers. Both beers have that roasty quality Guinness is known for having, but with a bit more complexity. If I had to choose, I enjoyed the West Indies, a hoppier and more complex porter, a little more than the Dublin.
For both beers, Guinness dug back in its archives and brewed the beer based off of notes and recipes in brewers’ diaries going back to the beginning of the brewery in 1770. The hoppier West Indies, akin to India Pale Ales, has more hops and a more robust gravity so it could endure the journey through tropical climates.
From the brewery: Guinness Dublin Porter is brewed with rich Irish barley malts and Goldings hops to deliver sweet, rich maltiness and light, earthy hop character. It’s as close as you can get to tasting the beer that might have been enjoyed by the likes of Charles Dickens, Bram Stoker and John Keats.
West Indies Porter is a full-bodied, richly flavoured beer with notes of toffee, chocolate and caramel. Brewed with more hops and higher gravity, it eventually led to our Foreign Extra Stout.
— Aaron Swaney, Special to The Herald
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