Inside the Factory - Guinness

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Interesting how they mash the roast barley completely separately. I was watching it wondering if it was forgotten about at one point.
 
Ahh! That's what they do. I was watching the bit with the main mash, then had to leave the room to check something on the wife's car, and when I came back they were talking about hops, so I wondered how the blonde wort got black. I'll have to watch that bit on catchup.
 
I'd spotted it was coming on. I'll watch it on iplayer.
Watched it. Interesting.

As mentioned above the pale is mashed separately with the roast barley being steeped and added to the main wort. Brewed strong and diluted back. Brewed fast - roughly 2.5 day ferment and 2.5 day condition. Out the door on day 7.
 
It looks like it starts off as foreign extra stout then diluted down. Well based on the alcohol content quoted.
 
Interesting. The Get Er Brewed brewery visit to St. James Gate on YouTube is worth watching too for some interesting nuggets of information.

Yes, I'd spotted that. Its on my watch list.

I've seen some recipes online that use other malts in the grist. I'm assuming (maybe generously) that they are doing that so it tastes closer to the original as opposed to using the same grist that because of the myriad of variables tastes less like the original.

I suppose that to do a proper clone you need Nitrogen.
 
Enjoyed it. Was interesting to see what they did with the roasted barley, they steeped it separately to the mash and added the wort back in during the boil, I think the guy said they steeped the roast in 80C liquor?

Very short fermentation time too, they collect the CO2 from the ferment and the vessles are huge so there must be a fair amount of pressure in them
 
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They have to make it interesting for viewers who don't brew but who are interested in how beer is made I think they did a good job.
 
V interesting about separate steep of roasted barley when I make stout I never get the ash like dry roast flavour of G. Was it at 80c ? Enzymes denatured so just to extract flavour then, why not a cold steep.
 
V interesting about separate steep of roasted barley when I make stout I never get the ash like dry roast flavour of G. Was it at 80c ? Enzymes denatured so just to extract flavour then, why not a cold steep.
Screenshot_20240125-100240.png

I just double checked and they did say 80-90
at the point where they pulled a sample... although thinking about it that might just be because they were heating it ready to add into the boil and so perhaps not necessarily the steeping temperature. I think I'm going to experiment with it myself and see how it turns out
 
An eye-opening documentary! I'd heard that Guinness were less secretive about what they do, with YouTube videos popping up, etc., but that was the first I'd seen.

... I suppose that to do a proper clone you need Nitrogen.
Absolutely!

...

And: To do a proper Stout you need something else!

I was appalled. I knew Guinness were bad and had destroyed a "National Drink". But I wasn't aware how bad! It's reduced "Guinness Stout" to a "paint-by-numbers" exercise, a shadow of its Stout's image in the 1950s and 60s. (Although I was way too young to sample it then). Worse still; They don't need to hide what they are doing any longer, confident that their marketing has been so successful they've got their drinkers to follow behind them and believe this is what Stout should be, and Guinness has always been.

Should the rest of us be worried?

 
We love 'Inside the Factory' ,but my poor suffering husband always tends to get a running commentary from me about different engineering aspects of things. He's usually just like 'shut up, they produced the show, not you!!'.

But the Guinness one definitely had me thinking 'Oh that's an interesting way to do it!'.... What a massive site it is! I've been to the Guinness Storehouse twice, but you never really get the ins and outs. And mostly you're all about getting your pint at the end anyways. HAHA. :onechug:
 
I've watched the Get Er Brewed video now. Interesting too. A few things :-

On inside the factory they said (I'm fairly sure) that the Target hops they were harvesting were going to Guinness. On the GEB video they said noble hops. Maybe the Target were going to be used for something other than stout.

The head of technical on the GEB video said use a clean yeast but the research paper posted on here says that the Guinness yeast is not clean :-

Phenolicoff-flavour (POF) phenotype of the Guinness yeast.
The formation of 4-vinyl guaiacol, also known as Phenolic off flavour (POF), imbues beers with a medicinal, clove-like aroma and flavour. It is produced from a precursor, ferulic acid, derived from cereal grains, via expression of yeast gene s37. All the Guinness yeast strains used in this study were POF+.

This makes me think maybe a Saison or something that likes it hot would work ?

(Not actually planning on brewing one by the way, not yet anyway)
 

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