No beer is more deceiving than Guinness Draught.
Its deep black color and swirling tan foam imply a massive beer. While it does boast deep roasty character, it is in fact easy-drinking, lower calorie (for beer) and a wispy 4.2% alcohol — the same as Bud Light.
Roots of Guinness Draught stretch back more than 250 years, and for much of that time, simply being a hearty, yet approachable stout was enough. But tastes have morphed quickly in recent years, and Guinness needed to get with the times. It is doing so just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. No — not Guinness lemonade (though lemonade is hot). In recent weeks, the legendary Irish brewery, which plans to open a Chicago brewpub in 2023, has introduced nonalcoholic Guinness 0 to the United States.
After developing an appreciation for nonalcoholic beer while navigating my first Dry January — quite contentedly it turned out — I was eager to try Guinness 0. As I wrote last month
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, nonalcoholic beer has blossomed into an interesting piece of the beer industry; a nonalcoholic version of the world’s most legendary dry Irish stout sounded awfully intriguing.
Since launching last summer in Ireland and the U.K. — after an earlier launch that was followed by a swift recall due to the potential of “microbiological contamination” — Guinness 0 has garnered strangely polarizing reviews, ranging from the king of nonalcoholic compliments (“Served blind, I’m not sure I’d know the difference”) to a meager 1.6 bottle-cap rating (on a scale of 5) from the notoriously persnickety users of the Untappd beer-rating website.
This week, ahead of St. Patrick’s Day festivities, I decided to find out for myself. I bought a four-pack of Guinness 0, cracked open a can and quickly caught a surprising whiff before I even poured the beer: milk chocolate.
It was either a promising or concerning sign. Chocolate can be a welcome component of a stout, and if integrated into a nonalcoholic version of Guinness Draught’s legendary roasty backbone, well then, kudos.
I turned the can over and gave the beer its requisite aggressive vertical pour as a burst of nitrogen (rather than the typical carbonation) created a cacophony of silky bubbles that settled into place after a minute as a nearly black beer with a tinge of ruby at the edges.
Leaning into the glass, sure enough, there was an unmistakable milk chocolate note to the aroma. It sadly was a red flag.
Guinness 0 is a thin beer, but that alone isn’t a fair criticism. Nonalcoholic beers will always come across with thinner texture than their alcoholic counterparts. Expectations need to be adjusted.
The problem is that Guinness 0 is thin and lands sweetly. Too sweet. It’s not single-note sweet; there are welcome fruity notes at the edges. But a Guinness stout needs the roasted-toasted punch we expect from Guinness.
That disarming sweetness made me wonder about two words on the Guinness 0 can: “Natural flavors.” Those words imply that Guinness 0 is something more than simply a nonalcoholic version of Guinness Draught; there are other flavors and components at work.
I asked a company spokesman what role the “natural flavors” play in Guinness 0, but wasn’t offered details.
Whatever the answer, the need to add “natural flavors” underscores the pitfalls and difficulty of making convincing NA beer, and makes it tough to drink a full 14.9 ounces, especially when there are better versions of nonalcoholic stouts out there, such as Bravus Oatmeal Dark and Untitled Art’s S’mores Dark Brew, which also leans sweet, but with more nuance and balance.
For the sake of comparison, I tasted Guinness 0 alongside Guinness Draught and, unlike the author of the sentiment above, I found there was no mistaking the two. It also led to an experiment inspired by British beer writer Martyn Cornell. In a review last year, he explored the result of mixing Guinness 0 with Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, a bolder, brasher beer popular in the Caribbean that’s 7.5% alcohol.
Martyn’s experiment inspired one of my own: combining Guinness 0 with Guinness Draught.
I pulled out my 1-liter beer stein that usually emerges only around Oktoberfest, washed it out, popped a can of Guinness Draught and a can of Guinness 0 and swirled them together. The result wasn’t quite alcohol-free, naturally, but it did in theory land at about 30 ounces of 2% alcohol Guinness stout.
The blend solved many of Guinness 0’s problems: It added body and heft, cut sweetness and, most important, added a lingering roast character to the finish. It was quite an impressive 2% stout and I could drink plenty of it during a marathon of St. Patrick’s Day celebration — and probably feel just fine the next morning.
Anyone after sobriety, of course, should stick with Guinness 0. But for those looking to moderate, the suggestion here for this St. Patrick’s Day is the homemade 2% version.