Marking time

Landmark Dublin pub The Palace, one of the few reasons to ever venture into Temple Bar, is celebrating 200 years in business. Like most such drinks-related anniversaries it requires an asterisk or two, but it's hard to begrudge one of the city's few genuinely charming old bars.

Presumably as a nod from its main supplier, it has marked the occasion with the arrival of a new Guinness beer: Palace Porter. It's not branded as coming from the Open Gate pilot kit, but one assumes it does. The ABV of 4.9% indicates it's not a straightforward rebadge of something else, as would normally be the case in such circumstances.

Diageo launched, and quickly withdrew, a new porter in 2014. Though over a percentage point stronger, this has a lot in common with it. Someone up at James's Gate seems to have decided that "porter" means carbonated rather than nitrogenated like Guinness Draught stout. So the first surprise was a pleasant one: proper bubbles, proper flavour, no deadening creamy gak.

It smells of Guinness stout, mind: that signature mix of dark toast and a tangy brisk acidity, familiar to aficionados of the Large Bottle. The body is beefed up a little, but it still finishes quite thinly, the busy carbonation scrubbing away everything beery before it. Complexity is not part of the deal, and a lack of any chocolate flavour feels like what's most conspicuously absent. I welcome a new non-nitro dark beer, but this is missing some key features.

Once again, then, a new dark Guinness beer doesn't move the needle very far from the flagship's specs. As such I would be surprised if this went any further than the walls of The Palace. Go there if you want to try a pint and have €6.60 in your pocket.

Edit: there's a short video about the beer's creation here.