page_title: Guinness
section_title: Varieties
hierarchical_section_title: Guinness / Varieties
caption_attribution_description: English: Guinness Blonde American Lager
context_page_description: Guinness is a dark Irish dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James's Gate, Dublin, Ireland, in 1759. It is one of the most successful alcohol brands worldwide, brewed in almost 50 countries, and available in over 120. Sales in 2011 amounted to 850 million litres. It is popular with the Irish, both in Ireland and abroad. In spite of declining consumption since 2001, it is still the best-selling alcoholic drink in Ireland where Guinness & Co. Brewery makes almost €2 billion worth of beer annually.
  The Guinness Storehouse is a tourist attraction at St. James's Gate Brewery in Dublin, Ireland. Since opening in 2000, it has received over 20 million visitors.
  Guinness's flavour derives from malted barley and roasted unmalted barley, a relatively modern development, not becoming part of the grist until the mid-20th century. For many years, a portion of aged brew was blended with freshly brewed beer to give a sharp lactic acid flavour. Although Guinness's palate still features a characteristic "tang", the company has refused to confirm whether this type of blending still occurs.
context_section_description: Guinness stout is available in a number of variants and strengths, which include:
  Guinness Draught, sold in kegs, widget cans, and bottles: 4.1 to 4.3% alcohol by volume (ABV); the Extra Cold is served through a super cooler at 3.5 °C (38.3 °F).
  Guinness Original/Extra Stout: 4.2 to 5.6% in the United States. 5% in Canada, and most of Europe; 4.2 or 4.3% ABV in Ireland and some European countries, 4.1% in Germany, 4.8% in Namibia and South Africa, and 6% in Australia and Japan.
  Guinness Foreign Extra Stout: 7.5% ABV version sold in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, and the United States. The basis is an unfermented but hopped Guinness wort extract shipped from Dublin, which is added to local ingredients and fermented locally. The strength can vary, for example, it is sold at 5% ABV in China, 6.5% ABV in Jamaica and East Africa, 6.8% in Malaysia, 7.5% in the United States, and 8% ABV in Singapore. In Nigeria a proportion of sorghum is used. Foreign Extra Stout is blended with a small amount of intentionally soured beer. Formerly, it was blended with beer that soured naturally as a result of fermenting in ancient oak tuns with a Brettanomyces population; it is now made with pasteurised beer that has been soured bacterially. It was previously known as West Indies Porter, then Extra Stout and finally Foreign Extra Stout. It was first made available in the UK in 1990.
  Guinness Special Export Stout, Commissioned by John Martin of Belgium in 1912. The first variety of Guinness to be pasteurised, in 1930. 8% ABV.
  Guinness Bitter, an English-style bitter beer: 4.4% ABV.
  Guinness Extra Smooth, a smoother stout sold in Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria: 5.5% ABV.
  Malta Guinness, a non-alcoholic sweet drink, produced in Nigeria and exported to the UK, East Africa, and Malaysia.
  Guinness Zero ABV, a non-alcoholic beverage sold in Indonesia.
  Guinness Mid-Strength, a low-alcohol stout test-marketed in Limerick, Ireland in March 2006 and Dublin from May 2007: 2.8% ABV.
  Guinness Red, brewed in exactly the same way as Guinness except that the barley is only lightly roasted so that it produces a lighter, slightly fruitier red ale; test-marketed in Britain in February 2007: 4% ABV.
  250 Anniversary Stout, released in the U.S., Australia and Singapore on 24 April 2009; 5% ABV.
  Guinness West Indies, a Porter which imitates the 1801 variety with notes of toffee and chocolate: 6% ABV.
  In October 2005, Guinness announced the Brewhouse Series, a limited-edition collection of draught stouts available for roughly six months each. There were three beers in the series.
  Brew 39 was sold in Dublin from late 2005 until early 2006. It had the same alcohol content (ABV) as Guinness Draught, used the same gas mix and settled in the same way, but had a slightly different taste. Many found it to be lighter in taste, somewhat closer to Beamish stout than standard Irish Guinness. The Beamish & Crawford Brewery was established in 1792 in the City of Cork, and was bought by Guinness in 1833.
  Toucan Brew was introduced in May 2006. It was named after the cartoon toucan used in many Guinness advertisements. This beer had a crisper taste with a slightly sweet aftertaste due to its triple-hopped brewing process.
  North Star was introduced in October 2006 and sold into late 2007. Three million pints of North Star were sold in the latter half of 2007.
  Despite an announcement in June 2007 that the fourth Brewhouse stout would be launched in October that year, no new beer appeared and, at the end of 2007, the Brewhouse series appeared to have been quietly cancelled.
  In March 2006, Guinness introduced the "surger" in Britain. The surger is a plate-like electrical device meant for the home. It sends ultrasonic waves through a Guinness-filled pint glass to recreate the beer's "surge and settle" effect. The device works in conjunction with special cans of surger-ready Guinness. Guinness tried out a primitive version of this system in 1977 in New York. The idea was abandoned until 2003, when it began testing the surger in Japanese bars, most of which are too small to accommodate 
caption: Guinness Blonde American Lager
exif: {"Image Make": "Motorola", "Image Model": "XT1049", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2014:12:09 16:03:39", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "176", "Image GPSInfo": "2602", "Thumbnail ImageWidth": "512", "Thumbnail ImageLength": "288", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "2726", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "35911", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1043/50000", "EXIF FNumber": "12/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "640", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:12:09 16:03:39", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:12:09 16:03:39", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "279/50", "EXIF ApertureValue": "12/5", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "-1", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "12/5", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "197/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Average", "EXIF LightSource": "Tungsten (incandescent light)", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "4499/1000", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4320", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2432", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "2572", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Soft"}