Guinness Red has finally arrived!! Despite claims on the website it wasn’t available in Great Queen Street O’Neills*, but we managed to trek the 400 yards round the corner to the Shaftesbury Avenue one where we saw the exciting new pump nestled between the Normal and Cold pumps. Here is my verdict:
Get your hands on as much Guinness Red ephemera (beer mats, glasses, bar towels, whatever) as you can over the next month or so, because this brand will NOT make it to mass market. It is inspid, flavourless, pointless and it’s not even red. I intend to hoover up as many beer mats as I can and make a killing on e-bay…
Imagine a pint a guinness, mmm guinness, everyone likes a restorative pint every now and again, it is the ale drinker’s friend when in a wasteland of lager and john smiths smoothflow. Steady, reliable, guinness.
Now take that pint of guinness, remove the taste and body and make it slightly more see-through and you have guinness red, except it’s not even that good. It’s just a creamy head (my least favourite part of said pint anyway) on top of some darkish, very vaguely beery liquid. I can’t see why a guinness drinker would want it, or why anyone who wasn’t a guinness drinker would want it, it seems to be without a market.
Sorry Simon (why doesn’t Simon have a biog on the about us page anyway? Poor Simon)
*conversation in GQS O’N
Me: have you got Guinness Red on?
Barstaff: Sorry no, you know, you’re the third person to ask about that today
Me: oh, that’s a shame, but it does say on the website you see
Barstaff: oh we’re not really a proper O’Neills you see
Me: ah
Barstaff (to boss): are we getting the Guinness Red?
Boss: Nah, the rep was trying to get us to, but [pulls face] it’s just like a caffreys apparently
Me: oh well, pint of London Pride please