What's your favorite Irish Dry Stout?

Yeah, the first time I drove in Ireland I had to pump the pedals to figure out which was where. Then acclimate myself to shifting right to left. You get used to it, but each subsequent visit take a second to mentally gather myself before I start driving.

 

It was first brewed in 1999. I first had it in 2012 and the love continues.

Edit: And then there was their Celebration Stout, which I had a few years earlier. Bought in Colorado. Damn that was good. 750ml swingtop bottle.

 

I love Redbreast! I picked some up for St. Patrick’s Day. One of my favorite whiskeys.

Ha yeah, hardly ever buy it here in the US. But before it was available here I was in the Caribbean and thought, “Hmm, maybe there’s some Guinness Foreign Extra Stout in one of these shops...lo an behold there it was!

Picked up a bottle and drank it while I walked around...in high heat and humidity...didn’t really pair well with the weather.

 

Easily...

Guinness Nitro Cold Brew Coffee - it's like Starbuck's beer - delightful...

 

Hot humid weather is very beer, wine, and booze specific, imo. Whiskey, not so much. Gin and tonics perfect. Red wine not so much, a nice chilled Prosecco is perfect. A big BA Stout not so much, a clean crisp Pils or IPA, AAL is perfect. But that’s me.

 

Bought both over St. Pat's Day. I've had them before, but I think Murphy's is the one for me. Seemed to have more taste this time around.

 

I’ve never been a big fan of “Dry Irish Stout”... although I did have a Stout (Murphy’s?) poured from a beer engine at a pub in Ireland once that was a totally different experience. I’m also not a fan of “Nitro”, and a lot of the bars around here tend to put their Irish Stouts on nitrogen. So I tend to shy away from them. Ron Pattinson’s article on Guinness Extra Stout was interesting, though. I’d hardly consider Guinness a Stout (I guess it used to be 100 years ago). It’s not even as “stout” as most Schwartzbiers or Dark Lagers. So, I don’t understand the draw. I guess it’s the marketing dollars... on par with Dos Equis or Corona.

 

I’d tend to agree, I find them a bit thin and lacking in flavor. I find the Export to be quite good, but it’s a different beer.

 

Yup, this one was indeed very tasty. Tastes just like nitro cold brew coffee. I finally found a second four pack yesterday. This stuff disappeared fast.

 

[/QUOTE]
Oh, I knew you were kidding about the drive. My reply was, yet another, failed attempt at humor.
All the pedals are the same as here so that was easy to adapt to. shifting with my left hand was fairly easy to adapt to but required me to think about it more than usual.

If you don't like roundabouts you won't like driving in Ireland as they use them frequently. They work so much better than four way stop signs (well as long as you remember to turn left )

 

Late to the thread but a view from Dublin:

• Funny to see all the love for Beamish because in Ireland it's the cheap stuff.
  Mostly old fellas on a fixed budget (i.e. "pensioners") drink it because it's ~30 cents less per pint.
  
  
• Apart from O'Hara's + Porterhouse, there's not been much said about Irish-made craft options.
  If you're in Ireland look for:
  • Brehon Ulster Black
  • Dungarvan Black Rock
  • Whiplash Slow Life
    

 

I wonder if this is a Europe thing in general.

This was how it was when I was driving in France too.

 

Oh, I knew you were kidding about the drive. My reply was, yet another, failed attempt at humor.
All the pedals are the same as here so that was easy to adapt to. shifting with my left hand was fairly easy to adapt to but required me to think about it more than usual.

If you don't like roundabouts you won't like driving in Ireland as they use them frequently. They work so much better than four way stop signs (well as long as you remember to turn left )[/QUOTE]
Oh Jesus the circles run backwards too? No way for me.

 

I had me some Guinness extra stout for this 2021 St. Pat's day! I also had a six pack of Smithwicks, a six pack of Harp and a six of Baltmore Blonde. I also had 3 fine bottles of real Irish whiskey, not Jameson's.For dinner I fixed a very nice Irish Sheperds Pie stuffed with 3 lb.'s of ground lamb. What a great day! Finished off with a fine cigar and a good drink.

 

All that and you survived to live and talk about it!

 

They're popping up all over around me in N.East Illinois, and S.Eastern/South Central Wisconsin has put in a lot of them -- and if you haven't updated your GPS they're an unpleasant surprise!

As to them being better than a 4-way stop? They're trying to sell that around here too... and curtailing accident reports.

@AlcahueteJ I seem to remember a lot of them in New England, but I sort of recall you don't drive?

 

Nope, I drive everyday for work, even during the pandemic!

Hmm, I wouldn't say we have a lot. Ironically there is one about one minute into my drive I go through everyday. But that's the only one I encounter during my drive, and I don't go through it on the way home, so there's that!

 

I remember running into a huge one right near Augusta, Maine... going round and round and... amazing I'm not still there.

BTW -- just looked it up, Wisconsin has the most roundabouts in the U.S... 500!

 

Which one? Guinness, the brewing company, brews and licenses other breweries to brew, numerous stouts (they used to say there were around 17 different variations, but there's been a handful added since then) - the pic is a few of the most recently available in the US. Sure, Guinness Draught is low in ABV and in the US is the most common these days but it is also one of the most recent - developed in the late 1950s, which is pretty "new" for a company which claims to date from 1759.

Traffic circles (as noted previously, that's what we always called 'em in NJ - "roundabout" sounds like children's playground equipment) were once very prevalent on New Jersey's major highways like US routes 1, 9, 22 and 130 (most are now gone, but just last night I went through a couple of them down along Routes 33 and 34 on the way "down the shore"...).

Back when I was first driving, often on those infamous highways, I once read a story that the Germans who were planning the Autobahn visited the state in the 1930s to study its major highway system, which given it's location between NYC and Philadelphia, was among the most modern and well-traveled in the world at the time. Among the aspects of NJ's dense system was frequent use of the traffic circle. Now, circles work fine with light traffic but during rush hour, they used to get pretty clogged up, especially if most of traffic is going east-west and north-south rather than kinda "blending", traffic from all 4 directions coming in and out in various directions.

Supposedly, that did not work for the Germans a few years later when they were fighting on an eastern front and western front during WWII, as well as south in Italy, etc. Random cars and trucks hitting circles and going different directions was one thing, but when long lines of vehicles in military convoys all going in the same direction came to a circle at the same time as a different convoy going in a different direction - well, it just didn't speed up the war effort.

So, when people used to bitch about circles in New Jersey, I'd tell 'em - "Yeah, they're a pain in the ass, frustrating and dangerous, but if they didn't exist you might be living under a Fascist dictatorship, like in Man in the High Castle !"

(I think when the internet came along, I did re-researched this fact I once kinda remembered reading in the 1960s... and seem to recall that a good portion of it is correct - but I ain't checkin' it again. It's just too good a tale.)

I once had to borrow my elderly parents' car to take my ol' man to a specialist to an area I was unfamiliar with and they had one of those damn things in their van (I think was a GPS - they "talk" to you, right? "Turn left 150 feet ahead?" Yeah, OK, but I forgot my measuring tape!) and I'd forgotten my map. They also like to take "short-cuts" and this one had me traveling through a residential area to get to the entrance of the Interstate. "Turn Left" it said as I got to what was apparently a newly reconfigured intersection that was now a small "roundabout". Yeah, thanks, machine - you just told me to go clockwise on a traffic circle...

Illinois has the most famous 4-way stop in the world! John Prine (RIP) even wrote a song about it (which is why it's the most famous, of course).

My exurban township has so many 4-way stops that the county now puts up signs like the one below on non-4-way stop intersections as a gentle reminder (I don't know, maybe they're common elsewhere?):

 

Jon Anderson would like a word...

And I'd never refer to them as "merry," you know?