Guinness -Black Irish Gold

Guinness is called the Black Irish Gold. People sometimes don’t know where Ireland is but they know that Guinness comes form Ireland and means – enjoy.
Guinness is Irish dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness. Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759. On 31 December he signed up to a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery at the St. James’s Gate Brewery. When I saw the lease in the Guinness Museum, I began to wonder how beer would taste in the year10759.
Arthur Guinness started selling dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beer to use the term was Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s. Guinness produced ‘only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra, and foreign stout for export’.

Guinness is made from water, barley, hops and brewer’s yeast, and is treated with isinglass finings made from fish air bladders, although Guinness claimed that this material was unlikely to remain in the finished product. This means it is generally deemed unsuitable for a vegetarian or vegan diet. A portion of barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark color and characteristic taste. It is pasteurized and filtered. Despite its reputation as a “meal in a glass”, Guinness only contains 198 kcal per pint (1460 kJ/l), fewer than skimmed milk or other non-light beer.

The reputation as a “meal in a glass” has come from the the fact that in the past one part of the salary paid to workers was in pints of beer. Until these days there are many pubs around the Guinness factory .

Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers have found that “antioxidant compounds in Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruit and vegetables, are responsible for health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”

Guinness ran an advertising campaign under the slogan “Guinness is Good for You” since the 1920s. This slogan stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint. Now this type of advertising of alcoholic drinks is prohibited in Ireland. 

I have also heard that at the beginning of the 20^th century in hospitals pregnant women were given one pint of Guinness per day as protection against anaemia.

Now Guinness is treated as a normal alcoholic drink with all its consequences.

The very good Guinness marketers still make a special atmosphere around this beer.

In Ireland and abroad Guinness is treated as the king of beers. A pint of Guinness should be served in a slightly tulip shaped pint glass, as opposed to the taller European tulip glass or ‘Nonic’ glass, which contains a ridge approx ¾ of the way up the glass. Every bartender needs to be able to pour the “perfect pint” of Guinness.

The “perfect pint” of Guinness is the product of a “double pour”. The waiting time between the first and second pour should take 119.53 seconds. Guinness has promoted this wait with advertising campaigns such as “good things come to those who wait”. Guinness should be served at 6°C while Extra Cold Guinness should be served at 3.5°C.

In the Guinness factory there is a museum where you can see how beer is made. There is exhibition devoted to the history of company. You can watch old advertisements of Guinness. Ain addition, in the Guinness bar you can learn how to pour “the perfect pint” and drink a pint of Black Irish Gold.

Irish chefs have invented many meals with Guinness which are a good lure of tourists. I have discovered the following dishes in Dublin restaurants: Irish stew with Guinness, chicken with Guinness sauce, Guinness soup, Guinness cake and ice cream with Guinness. My favorite is Beef In Guinness.
You will see the recipe is on karott.com

Beef In Guinness

for 4 servings:

1/2 kg Beef, cubed
1/2 cup Flour, seasoned
Oil; for frying
2 Onion; sliced
4 Garlic clove; minced
3 Carrot; sliced
1 tsp Parsley; minced
1/2 tsp Thyme
Salt; to taste
Pepper; to taste
Beef broth
 200 mlGuinness

Dip beef in flour and coat on all sides. Brown in oil, in batches and remove to heat proof pot or casserole. Sauté onions and garlic in same oil and add to beef. Add carrots, parsley and thyme. Season with salt and pepper. Pour enough beef broth to cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes. Lift meat, onions and carrots from pot to serving plate with slotted spoon. Over high heat, reduce sauce to half the original volume. Pour sauce over meat and serve.

Enjoy!!

Lithuanian Honey Kvass

I wouldn't like to die too soon. There is so many things to try, to eat! Grass-smelling olive oils, crispy ethnic breads, strange fruits, wild meats and  papaya moonshine. I couldn't tell what I would like to have for my last supper. Two of my most beloved dishes were... chocolate desserts while in a properly disigned meal you are supposed to have only one dessert. Certainly I am not going to die because of hunger. I am going to try as much I can through my whole life. Egg starters, so popular decades ago when it was not so easy to cook in old-fashioned kitchens -  so basic yet so tempting as so many others. Not to mention our Lithuanian red beetroot blinis -haven't you heard that the British version of  the beetroot blinis was served last Friday in Buckingham Palace with salmon rosettes?

Following some request, I come back to bread matters but from a different perspective. Kvass generally is known as a Russian beer made from rye and barley must or from soaked and fermented black bread. It is dark in colour, slightly alcoholic (0,5-1,05 %) and has a bitter-sweet taste considerably depending on the bread used. At home you use freash yeasts and sugar to drive the fermentation process. In Lithuania they got a plethora of recipes for their refreshing drinks. As soon as the warmer period comes, it is late spring, they put a kvass to develop.

Lithuanian Honey Kvass

150 ml fair honey

1,5 l water

3 g fresh yeasts

30 g washed raisins

half of one lemon

1. Dissolve honey in a boiling water (you don't have to boil it). Cool down to 30 Celsius degrees.

2. Pund yeasts with about 5 tablespoons of the tepid honey water and leave for about 20 minutes in moderate temperature (about 20-25 degrees) to start working. When frothy add to the rest of the honey water, cover with a cloth and leave at the same temperature for 24 hours.

3. Remove the froth from the surface, strain through a sieve covered with a cloth (do not pour in the rubbish from the bottom). Pour into clean, dry bottles, with few raisins per bottle. Close tightly, place in a cold place and wait. This kvass is the best after 5-7 days and keep well in the fridge for another week. 

I would suggest a plastic bottle as you will see the pressure inside the bottle would rise. Be careful while opening it as you would open a beer can. I used the plastic drink container with gasket and immediately after sieving I put it to the fridge, it worked very very well. Certainly your friend will be surprised where the hell you got this nice and cheap chateau from a plastic bottle!

This is a noble kind of kvass, it is said that is's best after seven days, I found it best after five, maybe ageing went faster because of the temperature in my flat (around 26 Celsius degrees). It has a distinctive honey taste, is ideally sweet and at the 5th day it has an appropriate amount of little bubbles. You would feel a tickle in your nose and changes in your body's weight later. Generally honey kvass tastes like a nicely balanced white wine. Just please remember, there are other varieties, like caraway seed kvass, cranberry, apple juice, mint&tarragon, whey (!), red beetroot, carrot...You would forget the Coke exists. Unless you would find yourself on a tropical island - then you would discover an absolutely different refreshing drink. But this is totally different story...