Damn straight Guinness is good for you

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Damn straight Guinness is good for you

One of the beer world’s most famous advertising slogans is “Guinness is good for you,” which dates to the 1920s and is credited to Dorothy Sayers.

Although certain medical studies credit the positive effects of antioxidants in Stout, it has become taboo in Ireland to make claims of health benefits deriving from alcoholic beverages, and so we’re to surmise that the goodness of Guinness is grandfathered in. After all, “goodness” in the sense of emotional well-being cannot be measured by medical instruments.

“Timelessness” also resists calibration. However, you damn well know it when you feel it.

At some point during the approaching summer of 2023, it will have been 31 years since the first keg of Guinness was tapped at the Public House formerly known as Rich O’s (today known as the New Albanian Pizzeria & Public House).

In point of fact, we were the first draft Guinness account in the history of Floyd County, Indiana. Shortly thereafter, Carlsberg Lager was added (to be followed by Pilsner Urquell) and still later, the rotating “middle tap” debuted with the long defunct Oldenberg’s Outrageous Bock. With this addition, the first keg box was complete, and everything the Public House was meant to be followed in the wake of that historic Guinness.

Three decades later only the old-timers remember what those primitive times were like. There were plenty of taverns, but very few different types of beer. Choice was defined as different brands of the same insipid low-calorie “light” golden lager, with maybe a stray Bass Pale Ale or Watney’s Red Barrel in bottles for the beer snobs.

In the early 1990s, we’d make lists of places where “better” beer was available, comprising the entire Louisville metro area, and the total number of establishments might top out at a dozen. Usually it was fewer than ten.

Back then, better beer tended to be imported, because the revival of American brewing was only just beginning to penetrate the region. There was the Silo, and then Bluegrass Brewing Company. Years later Cumberland Brews arrives. I looked forward to periodic visits to pubs like the Irish Rover, not so much for the Guinness, but because Fuller’s ESB was always on tap.

It’s obviously quite different now. There are a few hundred breweries in Indiana and Kentucky alone, with numerous other American and imported brands available on draft and in a bewildering variety of packages. It has become difficult to find a bar, restaurant,...Read more