Breweriana - the collecting of historic items relating to beers and public houses - is quite the rabbit hole to get lost in.
I’m guilty of a little bit of it, with an advertisement for O’Connell’s Dublin Ale and some classic Guinness pub labels taking pride of place at home. For some people, it’s all about the beautiful advertising mirrors that once dotted Publand, fine hand-painted efforts that now stand testimony not only to lost distilleries and breweries, but to skilled craftsmanship.
Willie Aherne, third-generation proprietor of The Palace Bar on Fleet Street, enjoys these things too. Indeed, The Palace itself is something of a museum to Publand Past, from the ephemeral to the magnificent. Around the corner on the quays, his new pub Bill Aherne’s has provided a home to more of the Aherne collection, but I was intrigued to see an original 1960s Guinness tap box there recently.
The story of the arrival of draught beer in our pubs has been told well, especially by Boak & Bailey and Beervana. Nitrogen transformed the pint forever. Not everyone was pleased, with a Weights and Measures Inspector who visited his local in Bristol feeling that the new head and creamy froth was short-selling him on his pint, even taking the issue to the courts. At home, the press asked barmen and drinkers how they felt, with a Dublin docker in Mulligan’s insisting ‘it looks better and tastes better with the head.’
The Bristol case made it as far as the New York Times, who told readers:
In England, draft beer is served by pulling big black levers like those that operate railway signals. The glasses are filled with a splash in what looks like abandon. Some of the liquid runs over and back into the tank. A bit more is sloshed onto the counter.
When the customer gets the drink he derives almost as much pleasure from studying it, all frothy at the brim, as he does from drinking it.
Today, there’s a very lucrative market in copycat Guinness Breweriana, in particular where John Gilroy’s zoo animals are concerned. The original tap box though is simplicity itself in design, quieter than the loud red, black and cream we’re accustomed to seeing, and to see one in operation is rare.
So, the Guinness we enjoy today is the child of the late 1950s, rolled out nationwide in the 1960s. Yet some things have changed, and not for the better. I’ve long had a feeling that pints are often too cold now, and while Guinness Extra Cold is thankfully largely a thing of the past (relegated to the purgatory of Wetherspoon’s in Britain), the rich flavours of a pint are often missing in the age of the super-coolers.
As a bit of a novelty, Bill Aherne’s is now running a room temperature keg through the old tap box. Keeping the Guinness away from the cold room, it’s certainly noticeable that:
The pint takes considerably longer to settle, as the surge of bubbles behaves surprisingly differently to what we’re used to watching.
There is a depth of taste to it which is lost when the pint is too cold.
It’s worth saying the vast majority of stout served in the pub is in the cold room, and this is just an experiment of sorts through one tap, should people wish to try it.
This is like a Messiah coming out of the desert. I've been saying this for years. Every since cold flow was blended with the standard product
The olhallen 7:a bar in Gothenburg offers room temperature bottles of Guinness West Indies porter - I accidentally ordered one thinking I’d be getting the same beer but from the fridge. Wasn’t bad, probably wouldn’t do it on purpose.