Sulfur, some Guinness stats for you:
Guinness Foreign Export Stout (FES) is 7.5% ABV; Guinness Extra Stout and Draught Guinness are 5% ABV in bottles/cans, but the kegged version of DG in pubs is (reportedly) closer to 4% because sneaking the alc level down a bit is good for publicans (sell more beer primarily, and fewer drunks stumbling about secondarily), and the publican lobby here is crushingly powerful. So if they find it convenient to withhold alcohol from you, alcohol will darn-well be withheld
It is normal to draw 90 "pints" from a 50-L keg in Ireland. You will note that our glasses are not marked as they are in the UK. There's a reason for that.
Guinness IG:
1840: 1.082
1940: 1.054
Today: 1.038; FG: 1.007
Budweiser today:
IG: 1.044; FG: 1.010
Ah, the miracles of N2 and aggressive refrigeration
Pre-WW2 Guinness Draught was matured in vats naturally infected with brett and lacto.
FES was bottle-conditioned with brett until the 1930's. Lacto was later substituted until the '70's, when Guinness went all extract.
The Diageo web site claims that the "key" ingredients in Guinness stout are water, hops, yeast, and malted barley, and claims that the colour comes from roasted malt. Everyone and his brother claims that they use flaked barley and unmalted roast barley, but their own marketing propaganda contradicts this. I have found that neither ingredient is necessary to clone Draught Guinness, so I am inclined to believe Diageo on this.
One ingredient that Diageo marketing does not mention (apparently it's not quite "key" enough for some) is Guinness Flavour Extract (GFE), a new-ish blend of the older Roast Malt Extract (RMX) and Mature High Gravity extract (MHG).
Earlier, the sour, vinous hints came from MHG extract (a blond extract with lactic acid), and the colour and "roastiness" came from GFX. The two have lately been combined as GFE.
GFE is used in doses of 2% on a base of blond ale or light lager (depending on the market), which suggests that it is a spray-dried powder. We've got a Diageo factory in Waterford devoted to producing nothing but GFE. (Next time I pop round to my grandfather's house there, I must make a note of the sort of containers leaving the factory, which should indicate its form.)
GFE certainly is "key" to some Diageo people, however. It is always de-emphasised, but the company never actually lies about it. A recent investor presentation by Diageo Supply Director Gerry O’Hagan illustrates the hair-splitting: "Guinness flavour extract [GFE] … is the critical ingredient for Guinness brewed in fifty countries across the globe".
Because he did not add, "including Ireland", one tends to recall it as, "fifty
foreign countries across the globe", but that is not what he said. Elsewhere in the presentation he states, "Guinness is our key brand with 5.6m hL brewed [domestically], and, through GFE, supporting another 5.0m hL brewed internationally".
Again, O’Hagan does not claim that GFE is reserved solely for overseas brewing, but his sentence structure implies it strongly. We are invited to assume that the Guinness manufactured at St. James’s Gate and sold in Ireland is brewed normally, without flavour extracts. But here is the reality, stated plainly by a retired Guinness employee:
"Today at St. James’s Gate, RMX and MHG are used in the brewing of Foreign Export Stout, draught Guinness, and Guinness Export Stout ... What is common to
all Guinness stout brewed in any location is the inclusion of dark RMX … and MHG".
Yes, Guinness has become a kit beer. It’s no accident that brewery tours ceased in 1972.
Sources:
http://www.diageo.com/NR/rdonlyres/5...erryOHagan.pdf
David Hughes:
A Bottle of Guinness Please: Phimboy (U.K., 2006) This is an obscure book, presumably self-published, that offers far too much information if you happen to be a brewer.