Guinness 0.0

The beer

The flavor survived. The length did not, and that is the right way to read a 91. The surge still happens, the pint is silky, and it is shorter than Draught, a little thinner than the color suggests. Look for a sweet edge and you will find one. Do not look, and the roast is what you remember. The aroma inventory can stay in the tasting note. The judgment is that the stout is still the stout.

Nitrogen still does the theater: a pale head on a dark pint. The head lasts. The beer does not. By the middle the cocoa has settled into something drier, and the close is clean and slightly thin. Bitterness stays modest. The confectionery edge is faint. It does not turn the pint into dessert, and dry cocoa at the end keeps the beer on the bitter side of that edge. Nothing here tastes like a lager wearing stout makeup, which is the failure this category usually offers.

Draught is the comparison that matters, and it is a narrow one. Same roast family, less length. Give it a pint glass, cold, and the pour the surge needs. Do not drink it like a lager, and do not treat the missing alcohol as the flaw. The flaw, such as it is, is the thin close. You came for the stout. You get the stout, abbreviated. The abbreviation is the length, not the flavor, and that is why it sits at the top of the cellar.