Explaining Nitro Guinness

The transition Guinness made from naturally-conditioned beer in casks (“real ale”, broadly) to filtered, nitrogenated, and ultimately pasteurized beer has been discussed by numerous writers, from different angles.

I have addressed aspects in this blog, including the launch of “nitro” Guinness to North America in the 1960s.

The bottled evolution, which relates in part to that of the draught, is a somewhat parallel story, but I set it aside for now.

To appreciate fully the regime of wood at Guinness before the switch-over, a 1954 documentary is revealing, viz. “The Craft of the Cooper”. Snippets have made the beer historical rounds but not the full nine-minute film to my knowledge.

 

 

To compress a long history, I would summarise it this way:

  • Guinness naturally conditioned in the barrel was available in parts of Ireland, and some places in England and Scotland, from the 1800s into the 1960s
  • a two-barrel system was used in pubs in the 1950s, especially in Dublin, to dispense in one glass lively and flatter beer, to form a finished pint topped with a creamy foam
  • early metal barrels at Guinness contained live beer (residual yeast) with a few pounds CO2 “top” pressure meant to delay deterioration
  • at Park Lane, London where Guinness had a second brewery (later closed), the main production stout was mixed with gyle, or newly-fermenting beer, to impart the necessary condition, or fizz
  • ditto for Ireland but there a small percentage of old or vatted stout was also added
  • from 1959 nitrogenated, filtered stout (no live yeast) in metal barrels was increasingly available in Ireland and the UK. A special tap was used to draw the beer, a system developed mainly by company scientist Michael Ash**
  • this form of draught caused a soft carbonation somewhat akin to “real ale” stout due to the small bubbles of nitrogen gas used in the gas blend. Further, by being filtered of its yeast the beer was made stable for longer, less likely to re-ferment with unwanted consequences
  • it was felt this resulted in a more consistent, predictable pint vs. the vagaries associated with serving naturally-conditioned draught stout
  • nitro Guinness was another form of “keg” beer, therefore, in brewers’ parlance
  • nitro-barreled stout was pasteurized in UK from about 1967, and later, apparently 1990s, in Ireland.
  • therefore in early years Guinness nitro in Ireland was unpasteurised, felt by many to boost quality
  • “extra cold” and other variants of draught Guinness in time emerged, but the die was cast from 1959 with the nitro system, common to all these forms

I add below, not covered elsewhere to my knowledge, how Guinness explained the switch-over to its customers.

First, consider a couple of adverts that preceded the landmark, nitro “ash can” method. The Eastbourne Herald on December 21, 1957 advertised “Creamy Draught Guinness” at the Clifton Hotel, South Street, Eastbourne (England).

The ad shows a typical pint “jar”, straight-sided with a smiling face etched in the cap of foam, a pre-1960s emblem of Guinness advertising.

A flying toucan completes the picture with pint of Guinness a-beak, leading the reader’s way to an appetizing pint at the Clifton. As a seaside resort town, a special effort was probably made to supply draught Guinness, as barreled Guinness was not common in Britain then, Ulster aside.

Similarly, an advert for “creamy Draught Guinness” showing the same straight-sided pint appeared in the Aberdeen Evening Express, January 6, 1960. The ad lists numerous venues in Aberdeen to obtain the beer including the Scotia Bar, East Neuk Bar, and Caledonian Hotel.

A penguin again appears, a wand in fin pointing to the names of bars shown in a list adjoining.

So this was old-school Guinness – whether in wood barrel or metal, top-pressured or not, it was pre-nitro Guinness draught.

Now to the new era, via a sampling of early adverts in Ireland, Republic and Ulster Province. On July 16, 1965 in the Belfast Telegraph a Guinness ad explained due to a “new method” costing one million pounds:

… you’ll be able to get a really well-drawn pint of draught Extra Stout – in half the time!

So quick service was stressed, evidently the old ways to dispense a pint took much longer, due to use of two barrels or other fiddly ways needed to serve naturally-conditioned stout in proper form.

On August 6, 1965 a Belfast Telegraph ad pictured Guinness with a modest creamy head, the one Michael Ash helped work out as ideal. A handled, Guinness-branded glass is shown – no more old-fashioned jar glass. No penguin. These were jettisoned as associated with the old real ale form of Guinness.

The new glass clearly was introduced to signal the new nitro-form of draught. In the ad a bar handle protrudes from a plinth-shaped font (no hand pumps). “Guinness” is printed in white at top of the font, which otherwise appears in black or another dark colour.

The ad states in part:

Guinness Extra Stout on draught. Served the new way… a pint that’s always well-drawn. Perfectly “conditioned”. And in half the time it used to take.*

A Sligo (Northwest Ireland) ad in the Sligo Champion, July 14, 1967, touted Guinness poured from “the new Guinness draught dispenser”, stating:

Now Guinness have installed a new improved method of pint-drawing in most bars. So now you can enjoy a perfect pint… Smooth and consistent… The most natural thing in the world.

In 1963 Courage & Barclay introduced draught Guinness in 1,500 pubs in London and parts of the south (Belfast Telegraph, May 17, 1963), so nitro was spreading in use in Britain, but the same was occurring in Ireland.

What we can conclude is, in some markets following introduction of nitro draught, Guinness sought to explain the change, portraying it in positive terms, as businesses have done immemorially.

But from a connoisseur’s standpoint, did a pint of naturally-conditioned Guinness trump the more consistent, filtered, nitro pint? Probably, yes, when served at its best.

The proponents of the “ash can” argued the average pint was improved – there were too many inferior pours of naturally-conditioned Guinness given the vagaries of this way to condition beer and the varying degrees of attention given in pubs to cellaring beer and drawing a pint with care.

With the onset of nitro, therefore, something was lost, and something gained. The rest, anyway, is history.**

*In the ad the word conditioned is shown in italics, a brave use of a brewing technical term in public. All press references herein are via British News Archive, hence not hyperlinked (paywall).

**Text of post edited for concision and clarity, March 14, 2024.

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