Here is some St Patricks day trickery for you.  How to make green beer? Well rather than using food colouring, which doesn't really work with Guinness, here is a simple and effective recipe for turning beer green.  No nasty food colouring or unnatural additives necessary.  If anyone has else has a recipe for turning Guinness green please let us all know.

Its not a cocktail it is just turning Beer Green with natural colours. and then perhaps add some spices to flavour.
(Make 2 Glasses)
100 Gram of spinach.
2 mint leves.
small green chilli

Grind above and filter it,
take any light coloured beer mix it. and it look superb green with fantastic flavor.
chilli can be excluded if you do not like it.

In many parts of the world, far and wide, you can count on the Irish pub for some of your most fundamental comforts: a quick pint, a party until the wee hours of the morning, or just simply the company of a fellow English-speaker. Berliners are also not immune to the charms of a pint of Guinness, witty Irish humor, that lyrical drawl -- the fundamentals of the Emerald Isle's beer-drinking institution. Indeed, the Irish pub is akin to a tradition near and dear to the hearts of Germans, the inimitable stammtisch . Maybe that's laying it on a bit thick. But I'm just trying to account for the everlasting popularity of the international Irish pub, even among those who aren't Irish, as an evening in any of these Berlin joints will attest.

There are not many European cities or even cities in the World where you will not find an Irish bar. Some are facimiles of the Irish brand and live up to all of the stereotypes but there are some that are the genuine article.  I would love to hear more about the geniune articles.

If you haven't been on the Guinness Storehouse tour then why not take the tour through a tourists eyes. This post was from Kupdegra's travel blog.  

Guinness Storehouse. Now I will admit this brewery tour was not high on my list of what to do in Dublin, but Gary wanted to, so we are going. The walk from the pub has us confused. We've asked for directions a few times, and finally someone points us to it. Unlike the US with all the tourist billboards, Ireland likes to keep its towns clean. Since the Storehouse hasn't been open long, that might have been our problem also. We get to a brick building and go inside to pay. Inside this is not what I imagined. We're talking a little modern here. The "ground Floor has a large selection of Guinness souvineers. Shirts to posters to everything in between.Then check in to get your little "drop of Guiness" which we're told also entitles us to a big glass of Guiness at the "top". On to learn about whats in a Guiness. Which from the exhibit we find is water, hops, yeast and barley. And the last exhibit is on the brewmaster himself, Arthur Guiness.

The first floor shows the step by step process of brewing with computer imagery. Then a huge exhibit of the cargo ships that Guiness owned/owns. these models are impressive. And a "tickler that tells you up to the second how many pints of Guiness are being served around the world.Pretty interesting. Up on the second floor is every advertising gimic Guiness has put in print or in merchandising, including the famous Toucan. There are TV ads on the video screens. This wouldn't have interested me before, but when we were in Westport, Guiness was filming a commercial. Somehow, Gary had a copy of that days filming directions (which now is a good souvineer for us). The third floor is the drinking quiz. I consider this exhibit is either "you've had a DUI, or how much can you drink before you fall over in a stupor". It's actually a good exhibit, since the idea of drinking is not to drink in access. Fourth floor is the story of the building we are in. How it was designed and built from construction to reconstruction. Really good old photographs here. Floor five is the Source Bar where you can try out different types of Guinness. What more than one kind of Guiness you say...no way - BUT the original is GUINNESS® Draught:
GUINNESS Extra Stout: is a bottle of GUINNESS® stout, which was launched in 1821. Richer complex beer full of character, which is strong tasting with a distinctive roasted bitterness.
GUINNESS Foreign Extra Stout: Available inn Asia Africa and Caribbean countries. This GUINNESS beer is brewed with extra hops, which gives it a distinctive character and a deep rich distinctive taste. So I did learn that there is more than one type of Guiness.
The "Brewery Bar" is a small eating area. What's in the food? Guinness of course. Well, we made it thru, and I can honestly say I enjoyed it!

The Canadian food blog Taste To reviews a new beer every week,  This is a very interesting Porter review with a bit of history also.  Why not check them out on a regular basis  http://www.tasteto.com/

This particular review was posted by Greg Clow

"Of all the classic beer styles to be revived by craft brewers in the recent times, porter is one of the most interesting, at least from an historical standpoint. First brewed in the early 1700s, there are conflicting stories about how the style came to exist.

One version came about in 1802, when a guy named John Feltham wrote a history of porter stating that it was created around 1730 by a brewer called Harwood. His beer was called Entire and was based on “three threads”, a drink made by mixing three different beers that was popular with the railway and river porters of London, leading to Entire being nicknamed “porter” when ordered in bars and pubs.

It was later established, however, that Feltham’s history was based on his misinterpretation of earlier writings on the subject, and that it was unlikely that a direct connection existed between “three threads” and porter. It’s now believed that porter was created when brewers decided to age their brown ales on site rather than sending out young beers to publicans to age on their own, which in turn allowed the brewers to make larger batches and ship the casks farther, increasing their sales considerably.

In the late 1700s, the increasing imports of porter from London to Ireland inspired a number of Irish brewers - including a certain Mr. Arthur Guinness - to start brewing the style. As with many beers brewed at the time, different strengths were offered, including the lower strength “plain porter” and the stronger “stout porter”. Eventually, porter was dropped from the names, and over the years, most porter variations besides stout fell out of favour and were all but extinct. Guinness was one of the last Irish brewers to continue brewing a plain porter into modern times, but they finally discontinued their version in the mid-1970s.

That could’ve marked the death of porter, but thanks to the efforts of CAMRA and craft brewers, the style was rescued from near death, and is now a popular offering from many microbreweries and brewpubs. Many of today’s more adventurous brewers put an experimental spin on their versions, whether it be through the addition of flavours like coffee or chocolate, or bumping up the alcohol level and body to a point that they might as well be called stouts.

Anyone who has followed the work of Perry Mason from Ottawa’s Scotch-Irish Brewing knows that he’s been known to crank out some pretty experimental brews himself, but for his Black Irish Plain Porter, he sticks with a traditional interpretation of the style. It has a deep black colour with a dark tan head, and a rich, complex aroma that begins with roasted malt, and builds to include notes of chocolate, vanilla, raisins and coffee. The body is thinner than one might expect from a beer so dark, but remember: it’s a porter, not a stout. The flavour has roasty and slightly sweet malt notes off the top, followed by bitter cocoa, coffee and licorice, and finishing with a slightly lactic sourness. This latter element seems like a tip of the hat to the fact that the aging process of the original porters and stouts was often sped up via the addition of old, soured beer to new batches, which presumably gave the finished product a sour edge".

In the UK the black stuff and the Dutch nectar fight it out for your hard earned money and your loyalty.  Of course none of us would ever be influenced by advertising so why are they trying so hard?

Extract from Guardian Unlimited.  read more »

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who like Guinness and those who don’t. The latter should just skip this post.

One reason for the love/hate split is called something like “Guinness Flavor Product” by the sages of St. James’ Gate. It’s pretty simple: they let 5 percent of every batch go completely nasty-sour, then add it back in.

In reality it’s a bit more complicated than that, but a very small proportion of soured Guinness is what imparts the beer’s famously dry, tart aspect.  read more »