Guinness, Murphys, Indy, the Battle of Stout Porter
Its great to see that Pete Brown now has a beer column in the Sunday Times magazine and this week he focuses on the Guinness shortage and alternatives
He suggests:
Murphys
Guinness Foreign Extra
Titanic Plum Porter
Bristol Beer Co Milk Stout
Anspach & Hobday London Black
O’Hara’s Nitro Irish
With the Six Nations rugby well underway (sponsored by Guinness if you don’t watch) stories about a shortage of Guinness seems to be persisting
I’m not a fan of nitrokeg Guinness. I remain enough of a CAMRA fundamentalist to prefer bottled versions.
There is a big beer alternative to Guinness which is Murphys. Its owned by Heineken and brewed in part in the 33rd Irish County-Yorkshire (Tadcaster)
Heineken reported a 632% jump in Murphys sales in December 2024 with an extra 300 pubs stocking it.
There are of course Indy alternatives(see Pete Brown’s choice) Probably the best known is Anspach and Hobday’s London Black, a nitrokeg porter at 4.4%. I’ve enjoyed occasional pints.
Now leading craft brewer Kernel have also started selling a nitrokeg London Stout at 4.65%. I tried a pint in the Tottenham High Cross recently. It was slightly sweet, creamy with a good roasty hit. In short to my palate much easier to enjoy and drink than nitrokeg Guinness. It was £6.50 a pint btw.
As Pete Brown notes Porter was the main drink in eighteenth into nineteenth century London. In particular it was to be found being drunk in pubs by many of those who fought to make Britain the (sort of ) democratic society it is today, often with bread and cheese
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