why does kegged commercial beer always taste better than bottled ?

[Bassman2003]

1) I took a trip to Ireland and had Guinness all over southern Ireland. While there was variation, I felt the beer had more chocolate flavor and an overall richer presentation than what we get in states. But, every beer shipped from overseas is a pale comparison to its real, fresh self. Although beers do not usually get thinner as they age...

2) I think kegged commercial beer is the closest to the intended product IF it is fresh. Canning and bottling trap oxygen and see light along with being for longer term delivery. It seems easier to keep oxygen out of a keg.

 

[fluketamer]

clint - that was harsh .....but awesome.
guiness foreign extra stout is good.
one of my patients was the head brewmaster at guiness nigeria. and he didnt like to drink beer!!!!!!! every year at christmas time he was gifted dozens of surplus cases of FES. he said he would have free beer parties for all his freinds to get rid of it.

pasteurizing def changes the flavor of beverages. thats why my attempts at pasteurized cider (to stop fermentation and leave residual sugar )sucks.

 

[tracer bullet]

I've had a Guinness at the Gravity bar above the brewery, with a few other coworkers. As well as in various places in Ireland where we had the goal of having at least one per day. We talked about if it tasted different and the conclusion we all came to was - nope.

The chocolate candy like kit-kats and so did, brought some back for side by side. Sugar instead of corn syrup, and you could tell. That was at least 5 years ago though, things may have changed since then.

I've always thought kegged beer tasted better than canned or bottled as well, but agree it's the same beer and so it's just how it's handled in the time between being brewed and served. I'm sure you can find examples either direction.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

There were a lot of great things about Ireland. The people were wonderful, except for the gypsy crime mobs that make a living attacking and robbing people in pedestrian areas.

I actually liked the weather. Northern Florida is a furnace for about 5 months every year, so I enjoyed being closer to the North Pole. Western Europe is really lucky to have air conditioning from God.

The landscape was very pleasant, although I think people who say Ireland is beautiful need to travel more. No Swiss person has ever visited Ireland and gone home and told everyone how beautiful it was.

I was really disappointed in the sweaters. I noticed the Irish didn't wear them. They have great-looking sweaters for $60, but when you hold them up to the light, you can see right through them. The real ones cost several times as much.

I have relatives who love claiming the family is Irish. So weird. Why do Americans love pretending they're Irish or part American Indian? I'm probably somewhere around 5% Irish. We have an ancestor named Murphy, but he was English. My aunt visited Ireland with her daughter, and she was full of stories about visiting the old country. Hogwash. Her ancestors were the ones who basically owned the Irish. She should have said, "Hi! My ancestors hated yours and caused the Potato Famine!"

My cousin ran into Conan O'Brien outside a bar. Weird.

My sister loves telling people we're Indians because she has high cheekbones. Yeah, okay. Her and Elizabeth Warren.

 

[mac_1103]

Gotta say I never really noticed Elizabeth Warren's cheekbones.

 

[Broken Crow]

all beer varieties are better in a glass.

Maybe today, but not where and when I lived... It took unitl the late 90's before 'microbrews' and later 'craft-beers' got any real traction in this BMC city. The few places that carried the unpopular 'better' beers did not have have a very high turnover on lesser-known brands and they were regularly staled by the time the keg finally kicked. Since that time things have changed dramatically for the better and now; most varieties are better from a keg but there still are a few exceptions to the rule; Sleeman's makes 2 of them, but then Sleeman's is problematic in that they use clear glass bottles which was my reason for ignoring them for the first 8-9 years they were rebuilding a customer base after having been barred from brewing for 50 years owing to undeclared bootlegging income. Sleeman's Cream Ale (reputed to have been Al Capones favourite) and their Honey Brown do actually taste better from the bottle (provided it has never seen UV-rich light..at one of my favourite cafe's, the boss had UV-protective film over the doors and interior lights of his cooler and stored the cases in a lightless room).
This is the other exception:
https://www.wellingtonbrewery.ca/beers/year-round/wellington-imperial-stout
.... I dunno why, but from a keg it just tastes 'too fresh' for a stout. My apologies, but I can't think of any other way to describe it and it's been over 10 years since I've been able to sit in a bar and repeat the comparison.
For the most part though; I agree...but keep an open mind and palate.

 

[Bobby_M]

Any liquor store I've ever been to keeps 100% of the kegs in the walk in cold box. All the bottles and cans are essentially stored on their shelves warm and cycle them into the cold box for the people that want to walk out with cold beer for practical purposes. If both kegs and cans where packaged around the same time and kept cold, they would be about the same when they hit the glass. As they both age, smaller packages are going to degrade a little faster as well. The canning operations are extremely sophisticated, but the PPB of oxygen is going to be higher in the cans because however small that amount of oxygen is, it's just 12/16 ounces of beer there.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

So I bought some canned Guinness last Friday, as my trip to Ireland kinda rekindled some love for the beer. And on top of that, it's a good lowish-ABV lowish-calorie beer to drink but with a pretty full flavor.

It was from Costco, which only sells it seasonally (in advance of St Patrick's Day obv), and it was the first time I've seen it, going weekly. So it should be fresh, although all I can see on the cans are things indicating lot numbers, not dates. The cans say they were brewed in Dublin, and imported by Diageo, so I don't think they're American-brewed Guinness.

They are ABSOLUTELY different in flavor than what I was getting on tap over there. A little more biting, acrid, bitterness. Over there it was smoother and creamier.

My guess is that this is more likely to be due to the canning process than location, but it's definitely different.

 

[Broothru]

Is Guinness brewed anywhere under contract in the U.S.? I know they used to operate a brewery in Baltimore where they brewed that ‘blonde’ Guinness (actually not a bad beer), but they shuttered it about a year ago. Sad. Why they didn’t brew the regular Guinness there for the domestic market, I dunno?

 

[micraftbeer]

I'm surprised no one from this group of educated beer nerds like me didn't share this before. Guinness Stout sold in the US is brewed in Dublin and exported. Guinness has lots of breweries around the globe that do make Stout, but US is still made in Dublin and shipped here.

I'm sure someone will be asking for my citations to back this up, so I'll go fire up the Google...

 

[Skeeter686]

I'd heard that US Guinness was brewed in Canada, but I never bothered to verify. I guess I didn't care much, since I rarely drank it.

And I suppose if that were true, then it would be going up in price soon.

 

[Knightshade]

I have a friend..yeah, I guess I'll continue to call him that despite his atrocious taste in beer.

At any rate, he LOOOOOOVES Miller Lite. As in, he has multiple pieces of clothing of all sorts that are ML branded, pop-up, made bar tables for his wine barrels say ML, has a ML mini fridge...hell, even his wife has a freekin ML 2 piece bikini.

Anyways, so you get my point that he has absolutely atrocious taste in beer. He thinks ML tastes best...in this order.

Bottle
Can
Keg

I'm genuinely not a fan of this beer, I'd rather drink Michelob Ultra than that stuff so I can't really confirm his preference but does anybody else think similarly with this beer or others? Seems at best..odd.

 

[mac_1103]

does anybody else think similarly with this beer or others?

Most of the people I know who drink light beer regularly seem to think that Miller Lite is by far the best of the bunch. Small sample size of course.

 

[day_trippr]

Is Guinness brewed anywhere under contract in the U.S.?

Apparently, no. In an interview with NPR, Peter Simson (head brewer at Guinness’s Dublin brewery) stated “I think Guinness stout is such an iconic stout, it has such strong links back to Dublin and back to Ireland, that it would feel wrong to take it away from Ireland and to brew it over here”.

Cheers!

 

[madscientist451]

I’ve had some very funky tasting draft beers at pubs, which I believe comes from lack of cleaning the lines. That, together with getting 12oz. Of beer when ordering a “pint” and the current $7-8 a glass prices, has contributed to my current practice of ordering bottle or canned beers when out and drinking kegged beer at home.