Just picked up on the comment that the 250 was the first new Guinness in a long time and thought I’d let you know that Guinness have released several new beers over the past couple of decades, but all were either doomed to failure or just vanished. In the late 90’s they release the St. James’s Gate series: Wicked Red Ale, Pilsner Gold, Wildcat Wheat and Dark Angel Lager. They went on limited release, to much fanfare, but quietly disappeared. I actually attended a brewers tasting evening at Guinness where we were invited to try some other new ones, but nothing ever came of them. Pity really. Around the same time they release Breo, which was billed as a White Guinness, but in effect was a very orangey wheat beer. Most people take all of this as being a response to the first wave of craft/micro breweries in Ireland at that time, sadly, most of which have since perished (we’re on the second wave now!).

More recently they release the Guinness Brewhouse series, purporting to be a set of recipes from their old brew logs. There was supposed to be one released every six months, but they really had little to differentiate them from regular Draught Guinness (pronounced Draft – crazy Europeans ) so they quietly disappeared after the third release. These were Brew 39, Toucan and North Star.

If you want to try an interesting Irish Stout, have a look for O’Hara’s or some of the other micro-brewed beers.

Oh, and here’s what I thought of the Guinness 250.