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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
There’s been a bit of a shortage of Guinness in the UK lately. In the run-up to Christmas many pubs were left high and dry; and several months on, supplies are still on tight allocation. Guinness said it was blindsided by “unprecedented demand”. Perhaps it should have seen it coming – stout sales in the UK, the drink’s biggest market, grew 24 per cent between 2019 and 2023 (in contrast to the wider beer category, which was down six per cent in the same period). Since 2023, Guinness has been the UK’s bestselling beer, accounting for one in every 10 pints sold in pubs.
Its popularity has been part driven by social media – Guinness is fiendishly photogenic, with a ritualised serve that can be, and has been, debated ad nauseam. Pictures of Kim Kardashian enjoying a pint in a London pub went viral; and TikTok has been awash with people “Splitting the G”. The launch of the phenomenally successful non-alc variant Guinness 0.0 has also helped the Irish brand reach a whole new audience.
FIVE TO TRY
Big Drop Galactic Milk Stout
This full-flavoured alcohol-free stout from teetotal specialists Big Drop is so good it has been known to beat the real deal in competitions. ocado.com
Anspach & Hobday London Black
Very well-balanced, with a satiny texture and subtle notes of milk chocolate and roasted black coffee. The finish is fresh and not too sweet. 4.4 per cent abv, from £3.75 for 440ml can, anspachandhobday.com
St Austell Mena Dhu Stout
A bottle-conditioned stout from Cornwall that’s big on flavour – dark chocolate, espresso, raisins and a hint of oaky smoke – but still very drinkable. 4.5 per cent abv, £2.05 for 500ml bottle, ocado.com
Siren Broken Dream
Brewed with real espresso, this indulgent stout is as sweet and silky as a coffee liqueur. A former Camra supreme champion. 6.5 per cent abv, £3 for 330ml can, claptoncraft.co.uk
Kernel Export Stout London 1890
Rich, dark and dense with a lovely frothy head and complex notes of espresso, marmite, cigar, smoky leather and stem ginger. 7.5 per cent abv, £3.50 for 330ml bottle, thekernelbrewery.com
But there is life beyond Guinness, as more drinkers are starting to realise. “If you want a stout that’s more flavourful and complex than Guinness there are hundreds of them out there,” says beer writer Pete Brown. “There are now many brewers doing nitro stout [which is dispensed with a mix of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, to make it extra-creamy] and it’s become quite a fashionable style.”
One dark beer favoured by many is London Black by Anspach & Hobday in Croydon. The indie brew launched in 2021, and proved so popular at the height of the Guinness shortage last year that it, too, ran dry. London Black looks and pours like Guinness, but A&H co-founder Jack Hobday says it’s actually closer to an old-style London porter – the lighter-style dark beer that gave birth to stout. “It’s definitely not designed to be a Guinness copycat. You still get that creamy, nitro mouthfeel but where Guinness is more toasted, London Black is more coffee, milk chocolate and dark fruit. It has depth of flavour but at 4.4 per cent abv, it’s still very sessionable.” Another brand that’s benefitted from the shortage is Murphy’s – the Cork-born stout saw on-trade sales leap 632 per cent in December.
Ireland is viewed by many as the spiritual home of stout – but it was actually born in London, created in the 18th century for dock workers who sought a richer, more robust version of the porter they all drank. South-east London’s Kernel Brewery is keeping that tradition alive with a range inspired by historic recipes. These include the treacly-sweet Kernel London Porter and 1890 Export Stout, a Victorian-style recipe made with black and chocolate malts that give wonderfully roasty, smoky, quite savoury characters (all of these are in bottle – if you want to taste Kernel’s nitro stout you will need to find it in a pub on draught).
The Wenlock Arms alehouse in Hoxton switched to Kernel nitro stout when it could no longer get hold of Guinness. For owner Heath Ball, who also runs the popular Red Lion & Sun pub in Highgate, north London, there’s now no going back. “I’m so bored of the whole rhetoric around Guinness,” he says. “I think the best thing that ever happened was them running out of stock, as it made people look at alternatives. And Kernel is just fabulous – so full-bodied.”
Price hikes for Guinness – and other beers across the Diageo portfolio – have been another reason for pubs jumping ship. Kavanagh’s Pub New Street in Dublin hit the trade headlines recently when it announced it was changing its popular €5-a-pint offer from Guinness to Beamish (another Cork classic) as a way of “telling Diageo to f@%k off”.
The future looks bright for stout and other dark beers – now you’ve got it in black and white.
