Guinness Foreign Extra Stout

I've always enjoyed Guinness Foreign Extra. My St. Patrick's Day sipper every year.

 

I think it's a great beer, not only by Guinness standards, but amongst other beers of the style as well.

 

Not traditional? Guinness Foreign Extra Stout is far more like 19th century Guinness than Extra Stout or Draught.

 

GFES was once "hard to come by" in the US (it disappeared from the US market sometime in the late 1960's, and US drinkers had to make do with going to the Caribbean or Ireland/rest of Europe for it) but Diageo rolled it out in the US nationally back in the fall of 2010.

I'd suspect that every US Guinness wholesaler stocks it (or could stock it), but it's up to the retailers to order it. I could certainly see a lot of retailers thinking, "Why do I need yet another "Guinness" on the shelf when I've already got Draught in bottles and cans and ES in bottles?"

 

GFES is what I prefer to the muddy water that is the Draught

 

I gave my brother in law some of this, he came in from mowing the lawn and slammed the four pack like it was coors light. My sister found him passed out when she got home.

 

NICE!

 

The stout is usually available in many markets in Africa, and the Caribbean, and in the mid Atlantic country that I am from, Bermuda. The real beer connoisseurs have informed me that the best Guiness that is only available in Ireland, and at one pub in Scotland, is far superior to the canned draught.

 

It makes no sense to compare beers brewed for different purposes. The Draught is intended to be drunk in volume as a DRINK , probably over a long period whereas FES is to be consumed in smaller amounts.
Mercedes produce the E class saloon and the Sprinter delivery vehicle. Which one is the better? It depends on what you want it for.But comparison is equally pointless.Different horses for different courses.

 

I don't find Lion/Sinha cloying at all - the sweetness is actually quite restrained, imo. Dragon and Royal Extra, on the other hand, are very sweet. Especially Dragon. Both of them could be classified as milk stouts as well though, and the use of lactose as an adjunct contributes to that sweetness.

FWIW, I've made ice cream with Dragon Stout and it was pretty good.

 

That ice cream does sound pretty darn good. I need to get an ice cream machine for stuff like that.

As for the Lion- maybe I'm going with a distant memory on that one. I'll definitely have to revisit it soon.

 

i like it, its better than there Nitro and guiness extra stout

 

your post seems to indicate an overly aggressive pour or a heavily scratched-up piece of glassware. that may be the reason for the combination of excessive head and perceived lack of carbonation.

as for the lack of hop presence, perhaps your bottle was old, in which case the hops will have faded. but in any case it is likely using european hops, which are less aggressive than american varieties, and/or is simply less hopped than american stouts to begin with.

 

I get it. I get that it's lower abv lends itself to sessioning. My likening the TASTE to muddy water has ZERO to do w/abv. Abv for me means little if the taste on the palate is undesirable. And the Draught is undesirable to me if I can have the FES instead.

 

but that's marquis' point - try doing with FES what you can do with draught. have three or four FES within one hour and you'll be blowing on a breathalyzer - and not because you chose to...

 

I believe in beer not breathalyzers. I do the serious drinking @ home, don't need all that legal interference. And AGAIN my comment about the draught was taste based not abv based.

 

fair enough, but you do make your argument more ambiguous when you say:

 

You are correct, sir.

 

I enjoy all the Guinness beers for what they are. The draught is a good session stout, the extra has more flavour but is still session able and the FES is a good sipper that you can savoir on a cold evening or anytime for that matter. This gives the Guinness Geek options. At present in my local we only have access to the draught version although I did drink FES when on holiday in the US last year and thought it was pretty good and would buy it if I could again.

Is it is good as all the hype ? I think it is pretty good and a bench mark for the style so if there are better Foreign Stouts what are they? What about Coopers Stout from Australia , ABC stout from Singapore? There must be others.