Saturday, February 18, 2023

Guinness Zero

Yesterday marked five months sober for me. I've gone that long without drinking alcohol before, but always with the intention of starting up again, which is not now the case. In honor of this milestone, I'll be opening up the Ill-Gotten Booty Beer Reviews shop, dusty off the shelves and cleaning the cobwebs and reviewing NAs.

My first will be Guinness Zero. 

Guinness has never been my favorite stout. I thought that American craft brewers had done a great job with various sub-styles of stouts: milk stouts, porters, Imperials, Baltics, sweet stouts. But when I went NA shopping the other day, Guinness was the only NA stout available. It's a little thinner than I'd want a stout to be, but Guinness from a can was never as heaty as draft Guinness anyway. It pours a deep, dark, almost black. The tan head starts off about three fingers. It's sweeter than I expected, with subdued notes of caramel and toffee, with more evident suggestions of coffee and dark chocolate. If it weren't for the fact that I'm not getting any kind of buzz I wouldn't know it was non-alcoholic.