{"id":18987,"date":"2017-03-21T08:21:38","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T19:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=18987"},"modified":"2017-03-21T13:01:26","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T00:01:26","slug":"not-guinness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2017\/03\/21\/not-guinness\/","title":{"rendered":"Anything-but-Guinness Day, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Garage<\/a>
Aro Nitro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s been a while since I’ve had the usual<\/em> pint on Saint Patrick’s Day. Aside from a\u00a0general indifference to tradition and a specific aversion to the way that holiday’s been borrowed and bastardised and bent into an excuse for problematic daydrinking \u2014 I’ve also got a particular gripe against Guinness for so completely overshadowing the way so many people think about dark beer or anything on Nitro, let alone\u00a0both<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

You hear it all the damn time, as a bartender: “Not sure what I feel like, really; I like all beer, so long as it’s not dark” or (on seeing you offer a taster of black beer) “So it’s like Guinness, is it?” or (less confidently, on noticing how\u00a0the bubbles settle in a pint of Nitro or handpulled beer) “So, is it like Guinness..?” It’s maddening. And I\u00a0like<\/em> Guinness,<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> occasionally. Now, at least. I hated it when I first tried it, as a teenager, and I suspect that’s a common-enough thread in other peoples’ lives that it accounts for the strangehold Guinness has on the imagination. In reality, it’s a\u00a0weird<\/em> beer, right at one end of the “black beer spectrum”, if we must posit such a thing: it’s dry and roasty, relatively strongly flavoured for its light body, which in turn clashes with those Nitrogen bubbles to give it that paradoxical thick-but-thin texture. In trying to help people navigate the wide world of beer,<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> I spend a frustrating amount of time pushing back against its colossal mindshare.<\/p>\n

So none for me on March 17, thanks. I\u00a0do<\/em> like a Nitro stout, though. And\u00a0nearly<\/em> following a tradition felt somehow like more of a thumb in its eye than avoiding it entirely, so I was fortunate to learn that Garage Project’s ‘Aro Noir’ was on the Nitro tap at Shepherd,\u00a0over the road from work. So I ambled over after I signed off\u00a0and sat down for one in that cute heavy-crystal tumbler \u2014 and then another in a ceramic mug,\u00a0why not<\/em>. It was gorgeous. Restful and restoring, it was interestingly different from its usual self, which is half the fun of serving beers this way: it’s like the dials on all the flavour settings get spun a little, lifting some notes, suppressing others, and settling somewhere else that might<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> work nicely. For me, this did, and\u00a0it was just a charming companion \u2014 along with an excellent book and an amiable bartender<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2014 for the lull between my shift ending and the restaurant getting busy.<\/p>\n

\"Stone<\/a>
Peaceful indeed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just before I’d left Golding’s, though, we’d tapped our first keg in ages<\/em> of Stone & Wood ‘Pacific Ale’,<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> which \u2014 if you really made me choose \u2014 might just be my favourite beer. So I couldn’t not go back for one of those. The bar was pleasantly deserted, in relative terms, for a Friday night: Saint Patrick’s Day had crammed the people into the knock-off-Irish bars, or perhaps already exhausted the stamina of the daydrinkers.<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0One beer again turned into two, as I rambled with a regular about movies, and joined in a few conversations over the bar between new staff and confused customers about just what the hell a “Pacific Ale” might be. Perhaps one day it’ll be as synonymous with the New South Wales coast as Guinness currently is with Dublin \u2014 though hopefully\u00a0without<\/em> the unfortunate assumptions that’d lead it to similarly colour everyone’s mental image of “hazy golden beer” or “beer with some wheat in it”<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2014 but for now it’s mostly\u00a0one of those words that you define by pointing: it’s one of\u00a0them<\/em>, or something like it.<\/p>\n

\"Complimentary<\/a>
Acid, for and against<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eventually emboldened by such a gradually-social evening, I walked down to Malthouse, predictably the busiest non-Irish-themed bar in town since it was playing host to its annual Sour Fest. There, a sizable crowd put another dent in the notion that sour beer is\u00a0only the fringe concern of ‘hipsters’ \u2014 a trope that just won’t die, for some writers\u00a0\u2014 as they worked through a dozen or so examples of various takes on the genre, such as it is<\/a>. I tried a varied few: Garage Project’s ‘Plum Plum Plum’ (from the fruited-up gose-ish-thing subspecies), Emerson’s ‘St. Wickliffe’ (their take on a lambic and another good sign that creativity hasn’t been lost in their assimilation into the Lion Conglomerate), and North End’s ‘Blanco’ (aged in sherry barrels) \u2014 all were fun in their own ways and it was heartening to see the place I’d worked for so many years, so many years ago, still heaving. It was an excellent, open-minded crowd; one of those festival-esque rooms where “so, which one did you get?” makes the perfect icebreaker.<\/p>\n

What started as a smooth-bubbled glass of black beer on my own as the vaguest of sarcastic nods to someone else’s tradition thereby morphed, enjoyably if unexpectedly, into several louder glasses of beer in a large group of like-minded people. Which is, I suppose, very much in the\u00a0spirit<\/em> of Saint Patrick’s Day, if not according to the letter. I’ll take that.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Diary<\/a>
Diary III entry #118<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Original\u00a0Diary<\/em> entry:<\/strong> Aro Noir on Nitro 17\/3\/17 @ Shepherd. Never not hunting for Nitro beers other than you-know-what. I still have happy flashbacks to London Porter at Backbencher with Jono. I’ve had one in chunky crystal already, and couldn’t resist another in ceramic. Gives it a lovely snap, somehow. So fun how all the knobs on the flavour profile just get spun a bit this way and that. Citrus + roast down, [coffee, I meant] + smooth chocolate up.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a while since I’ve had the usual pint on Saint Patrick’s Day. Aside from a\u00a0general indifference to tradition and a specific aversion to the way that holiday’s been borrowed and bastardised and bent into an excuse for problematic daydrinking \u2014 I’ve also got a particular gripe against Guinness for so completely overshadowing the … Continue reading Anything-but-Guinness Day, 2017<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":29240,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2026\/03\/17\/guinness-drinks-business\/","url_meta":{"origin":18987,"position":0},"title":"A pint of stout, and a can of worms","author":"Phil","date":"March 17, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Guinness isn't the highest rated stout anymore,\" declared a headline in The Drinks Business. \"New data,\" they said, reveals \"which brand comes out on top.\" I soon spotted that the source of their fresh numbers was Untappd, the beer logging and rating app \u2014 hardly a representative sample \u2014 so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mediawatch"","block_context":{"text":"Mediawatch","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/interesting-finds\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Stock-image-header-centered.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Stock-image-header-centered.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Stock-image-header-centered.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Stock-image-header-centered.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Stock-image-header-centered.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5609,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2013\/06\/02\/made-to-match\/","url_meta":{"origin":18987,"position":1},"title":"‘Made to Match’","author":"Phil","date":"June 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"So, it looks like Lion \u2014 one half of the local brewing duopoly, and ultimately a subsidiary of Kirin* \u2014 is taking out a series of infomercials on TVNZ. Product placement so thick it amounts to entire blocks of 'programming' was probably the invention of home improvement shows and hardware\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mediawatch"","block_context":{"text":"Mediawatch","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/interesting-finds\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"'Made to Match' landing page","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Landing-page-1900-212x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":18004,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2016\/03\/29\/beer-diary-podcast-s05e05\/","url_meta":{"origin":18987,"position":2},"title":"Beer Diary Podcast s05e05: Crowd, Fun, Ding","author":"Phil","date":"March 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Damn these recurrent hiatuses. It happened again, as these things do. But we're back this week \u2014 rather fittingly, after the long weekend \u2014 with a little look at crowdfunding in the beer business, some reminiscences over my marvellous trip to the Mussel Inn, and looking forward to the Great\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Podcast episodes"","block_context":{"text":"Podcast episodes","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/podcast-episodes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Mussel Inn tap bank, plus miscellany","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Mussel-Inn-Taps-and-chaos-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":18356,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2016\/08\/29\/yall\/","url_meta":{"origin":18987,"position":3},"title":"A festival for the rest of y’all","author":"Phil","date":"August 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"So that was the week that was. The week that was a while ago, now. How time flies when you're quietly recuperating. Weirdly, given the work I gravitate towards, I'm a natural introvert and crowds of lovely beer nerds are still, you know, crowds. I think exhaustixhilirated just about covers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Observations"","block_context":{"text":"Observations","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/reports\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Light-up signage at Beervana 2016 (Wellington Stadium, 12 August 2016)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Blow-your-bulbs-at-Beervana.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Blow-your-bulbs-at-Beervana.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Blow-your-bulbs-at-Beervana.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Blow-your-bulbs-at-Beervana.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":123,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2004\/03\/29\/beamish-stout\/","url_meta":{"origin":18987,"position":4},"title":"Beamish Stout","author":"Phil","date":"March 29, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Verbatim: Beamish Stout. 500ml, 4.2% $4ish, 29\/3\/04, at home with massive steak. It's dark, and raining. I thought it all work together (one of those days). God bless Mr Widget. Gorgeous bubbles. Smooth, less punch than Guinness, closer to Craic*. Very good everyday stout. Uses cereals and caramel, but it's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Beamish Stout","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Diary-1011-Beamish-Stout-300x228.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":27724,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2025\/05\/30\/session-147-rowlfs-deadloch\/","url_meta":{"origin":18987,"position":5},"title":"An after-work drink with Rowlf, and a doppelbock in Deadloch","author":"Phil","date":"May 30, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Sometimes, I still wonder about a late career change into puppetry. I grew up with The Muppet Show and the wider Jim Henson universe of creatures (Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, Labyrinth; all that) and it had a lasting impact. I'm always quick to recommend one particular incarnation that has been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mediawatch"","block_context":{"text":"Mediawatch","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/interesting-finds\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Screenshot from The Muppets (2015) episode 2. 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