Guinness Nitro IPA?

Ever wonder how much better it might have been without having it's flavor profile muted by nitro-dispense?

 

I had the Guinness offering a few days ago. It's a very boring, but great traditional ale that drinks very nicely. I noted that if they used cascade as a late addition it'd have more of a floral side which would be a huge perk. Certainly a beer worth buying. BJCP is going to love this. The average beer hipster will not.

 

What a joke! Trying to make nitro-dispense seem like the greatest thing to happen to beer since hops were added. Absolute marketing bullshit. It's like the maker of Velveta cheese doing a slick promotion bragging about how their totally artificial, industrial processing creates a wonderfully smooth textured cheese that is legendary for the way it easily blends into sauces, mac and cheese, etc. The only thing sillier would be the consumers who buy into that line.

 

How can a "very boring" beer also be a "great traditional ale"??? Interesting how you denigrate in advance those who may dislike it as "beer hipsters", and imply that their opinions should be dismissed.

 

Our distributor in CT was supposedly the first in the country to receive a shipment of Guinness Nitro IPA. Naturally, we were given a sample can to try it out. (11.2oz btw)

It's not very good IMO. Definitely not 44IBUs, definitely not an IPA. It's more along the lines of Boddingtons with the slight suggestion of American hops. Super watery beer, foamy messy cans. My review is currently the only one up on BA so far.

We're hoping to sell through the rest of our stock and wash our hands of it, until they have commercials on TV and people start coming in droves to try it a la Guinness Blonde.

 

Maybe. But I do think the nitro added an enjoyable creamy texture to the beer which helped make it interesting and unique.

I checked my review of the beer and I did note that it resembled a cream ale more than an IPA, so it's possible the nitro muted some of the flavors, or maybe that's what the brewery was going for.

Here is the description of Mea Culpa from Dieu du Ciel's website:

"This is a cross between an Indian Pale Ale and an Irish Cream Ale. It is therefore an amber ale with malt-caramel and fruity flavours, the latter being a by-product of the English style yeast used during the brewing process. The beer has a mild hoppy flavour as well as a discrete alcohol taste. Overall, the beer is complex and full-bodied and wonderfully balanced. The beer, as in the Irish Cream Ale tradition, is pressurized with a mixture of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, resulting in a less effervescent beer, but with a rich, creamy head."

http://www.dieuduciel.com/en/beers.php

 

Just wait until the beer geeks see those slick videos. They'll be lining up for hours, like they do for Heady Topper.

 

I tried an IPA on nitro once. Weird.

 

Except Velveeta is delicious.

 

Meh. If I want flat and creamy, I'll have a root beer float. Nitro or cask IPAs just run counter to what I'm looking for in an IPA (fresh, carbonated, bitter). Stouts on nitro, and only one ale (Sawtooth), are the only ones that impress me to some extent.

 

My shop got it in last week, my manager bought a sixer and gave me a can. I felt the same way about it, its not very much of an IPA. It was super creamy and really sweet. I think it might get popular among people who regularly drink Guinness though, since it's kind of like a pale ale version of Guinness draught.

 

I agree. I don't think it's ever really necessary, but can be very enjoyable when used with the right beer. And since the vast majority of what I drink is regular forced carb, it's nice to mix it up every once in a while with a nitro or cask.

 

As is Guinness. I love pairing it with Velveta mac n cheese. They are made for each other.

 

BJCP loves cask style beers with traditional recipes. The hip, modern craft drinker thinks IPAs should smash your face in and they ignore what beauty a traditional bitter can have. It'll get low ratings online and high ratings in competitions, because it's right for the brewers and judges, but wrong for the hop head.

 

Nitro Beers always have an insanely smooth body but I personally think that it blocks out a lot of great flavour that would otherwise be showcased if it had been kegged/bottled/canned with CO2.

 

its worth a shot. its it an "ipa" as we know them today? prob not. could it be a smooth easy drinking pint? absolutely and sometimes thats what you want. not sure the abv but sounds like it could be a good football sessionable ale to me.

 

Nitro is an abomination.

 

I seem to be in the minority, but I love nitro IPA's so I am looking forward to trying this....

 

It's impossible to tie down what is meant by a "true IPA" because it has been pretty well anything over the last 200 years or more. It was being brewed and shipped for decades before the name IPA was even thought of and it changed markedly by 1900 .Since then it's been a synonym for bitter and many such IPAs have been around since WW1 , such as Greene King IPA.
Names stay the same but what they describe moves on.Change though doesn't negate what's gone before though , a Model T Ford remains an automobile although it isn't anything like what's produced nowadays.
The Guinness IPA is very likely cast in the mould of a 20th century IPA such as Greene King rather than being a simple repository of vast numbers of hops.