Americans love breweries. There's a baseball team named after them (Milwaukee Brewers), every large distributor has its own brewery to give customers the origin story and to attract more customers. Every time I've been invited to a brewery, the host/ organizer of the trip was positively gushing over it, listing how many different beers are on tap, the ability to take a tour, and the pretzels! It's part of the cultural fabric, and there's something appealing about sitting at a brewery with the huge vats of beer surrounding the dining area, long benches, and the warehouse feeling of the brewery that makes the experience stand out from just a regular bar or other place of alcohol consumption. Some enthusiasts even do a "brewery-crawl," like a beer crawl except hopping from one brewery to the next, ready to consume the next batch of beer (seems like a lot of carbs).
When MJ and I went to Dublin, we went to maybe the mecca of all breweries, the Guinness storehouse, which was created by Arthur Guinness in 1902 as a brewery and now has evolved into a tourist attraction, although they still brew beer there! I don't even like beer that much, but there we were on a Saturday morning with hundreds of other tourists walking through the various levels of the storehouse, taking in the history, the science of beermaking, and of course the smell of beer being made. The ultimate product was exquisite, really the best beer I've ever had, and I wonder if it was because we were in a foreign country, it was 11AM in the morning and I was on vacation, or the authenticity of the beer was enhanced by it just having been brewed right at the location I was drinking it, but the cream of that pint of Guinness seemed to permeate all the way through every sip of the beer, not just the top where most of the cream hung out in froth form. Maybe I was experiencing through novice taste buds as an almost complete teetotaler or at best an infrequent drinker (I do like 2-3 glasses of beer per YEAR, not per week or month). It's like coffee: I'm not into different brands of coffee and can't tell between a cappuccino and a macchiato, but if I get quality coffee or beer I have a pretty good sense. (I don't like watered down beer neither). The richness of the Guinness beer really lingered for MJ and I for the whole trip, and the creaminess still persists today.
Which is why it was so disappointing to come back to the U.S., visit the U.S. Guinness brewery, and have it NOT be the same at all! Not creamy all the way through, didn't have the same great taste, and felt just a tad watered down! The Dublin brewery was all about the beer, from expert coopers barreling the beer in the best wood, to putting the hops and barley in ovens at exactly 132 degrees Celsius, to using the water that trickled down from the nearby Wicklow Mountains; they had it down to a science. The U.S. brewery was all about....pomp and circumstance, getting exhibits ready for St. Patrick's Day weekend coming up, long benches and tables, food items like pretzels and chicken wings that came with the beer (chicken was taste bud-numbingly salty, btw) and a trivia night....I didn't mind the trivia night happening as I learned that the only country in the world whose top 3 most populated cities all start with the letter H is......Vietnam, but it gave further evidence that their emphasis was not on the beer itself, but just the overall experience, hiding the sad truth that the core product was inferior. I believe I learned from undergrad business classes that that's called "brand dilution." Happens to all corporations and chain restaurants (except Costco, Costcos are all the same and I know exactly what I'm getting every time I go and how much the $1.50 hot dogs are going to be), so I get it, but the Guinness people at HQ should know their harp logo is losing a little luster every time someone drinks a beer from the U.S. brewery.
No comments:
Post a Comment