Guinness Draught: Nothing but hype

Everyone's heard of Guinness. even if you don't drink beer, you've heard of Guinness.  As the gentleman in the TV ads would say, their marketing is, "brilliant!" Unfortunately, their beer is awful!

The Pour
Upon pouring this into a pint glass, the first reaction is, “This is one beautiful beer!”  When you first pour it, it looks brown in the glass as it comes alive in the glass and releases bubbles into a gorgeous very light beige (almost white, really) thick pillowy head.  When the beer settles down, the beer itself is almost completely black in the glass with the most beautiful head you can find in a beer. The contrast in the beer and the head is striking!

The Nose
This smells lightly of roasted malts, but without any hint of sweetness.  It is an Irish stout, after all, which is a drier stout than some other sweet stouts.  It smells somewhat clean, and there are definite hints of coffee beans.

The Taste
This has a very clean, smooth and refreshing mouthfeel and is lighter bodied than you would guess from the pour alone.  There is a very slight roasted flavor profile and it is somewhat dry on the finish.  Sounds good so far, but despite the previous descriptions, the flavor leaves me literally with a sour look on my face (something akin to the old bitter beer face).  It tasted metallic and just unpleasant to me.  I had to  follow it with a bowl of Lucky Charms to get the taste out of my mouth.

Overall
I hate Guinness. It can’t be more clear than that. It tasted metallic and just bad, and was not a pleasant beer.  If you like the flavor, for some weird reason, it is very drinkable. To me, it tastes like some sort of chemical, and Guinness’ success can be directly attributable to a job well done by their marketing folks. All hype and not much else.

Recommended: Not to my worst enemy.