In San Francisco last night, and was served Anchor Steam Beer in Dave’s. And there’s how it came.

It’s odd (and wrong) to have beer in a different glass, particularly a Guinness glass, since I get confused as to why my Guinness is an amber coloured, medium-bitter drink which is slightly too gassy for my taste. But look closer.

It’s a dual-branded glass. It’s also branded ‘Harp lager’.

For a company that consistently gets its branding so correct, I’m rather amazed that Guinness/Diageo would produce a dual-branded glass like this. True, the Harp branding is in black, and therefore would be invisible when this glass is used for Guinness, and only visible when it’s used for Harp lager. But. Even so.

Have you seen any other dual-branded glasses? Let me know in the comments.

Anchor steam beer, California, Guinness, Harp, San Francisco, USA Hide

Pop into this bar in San Francisco, and you’re in for a treat.

The place started in 1948, and has a peculiarly French feel to it. With awful portraits on the wall (one claims it’s Patrick Swayze, but the only way of telling is to read the sign saying who it is below), it’s certainly a sight to see.

As I walked in, the sight that greeted me from the upstairs balcony were two feet. Whoever it was up there (who, listening to the bar-tenders chatting to themselves, had imbibed a fair amount of Absinthe), had decided to relax a little.

The amusing signs are all over the bar. Some parts are dedicated to people who used to drink there – the John Wilkes Memorial Booth is above the bar to the right; a large portrait of the original owner – Henri Lenior, a stern-looking french man, in a beret. The signs are classy and amusing – even, somehow, the one typeset in MS Comic Sans. No, really.

The gas-lamp chandelier above the bar, and the art-deco mirror, will give you plenty to look at when you choose your beer; however, the range on tap isn’t quite as exciting as the decor, sadly. Here’s what was on tap when I visited the other day…

Anchor Steam (San Francisco, California, USA)
Widmer Hefeweizen (Portland, Oregon, USA)
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (Chico, California, USA)
Pilsner Urquell (Pilsen, Czech Republic)
Budweiser (St Louis, Missouri, USA)
Stella Artois (Leuven, Belgium)
Amstel Light (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Bass (Burton, UK)
Guinness (Dublin, Ireland)

Amstel Light, Amsterdam, Anchor Steam, Bass, Belgium, Budweiser, Burton, California, Chico, Czech Republic, dublin, England, Guinness, Ireland, Leuven, Missouri, Netherlands, Oregon, Pilsen, Pilsner Urquell, Portland, San Francisco, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, St Louis, Stella Artois, USA, Widmer Hefeweizen Hide

If you have already seen the new Guinness World ad, you’re probably wondering how they made it.

This is how, in case you were wondering.

If you’re not, I should point out that the main image behind this blog is Whitstable Bay Organic Stout (other stouts are available!) and that my next blog posting will be all about the Carlsberg Visitor’s Centre.

advertising, Guinness, stout Hide

For reasons best known to Guinness’s PR team, I am the proud recipient of a small USB stick containing a few shots of the new Guinness ad.

I’ve studied them. One has a man attached to a rocket. Another has lots of diggers. A third has a camera pointing at some snow. A fourth, shown above, appears to be a still of the TV ad, shown on a little telly inside a cheap car, where the ad-men are sheltering from the rain.

I have no idea what’s going on.

One of the shots is entitled ‘Coralman’ on the USB stick, if that’s of any help at all.

Lovers of the black stuff, or lovers of beautifully-crafted television advertisements, might like to watch the television tomorrow evening, where apparently we’ll be able to see the whole thing. I suspect it’ll be trying to sell us Guinness of some variety. Which will be a good thing.

(Later: here it is!)

advertising, dublin, Guinness Hide

“Come to my birthday party,” said a friend, “we’re going somewhere in Bristol which does really really nice cocktails.”

My heart sank. Anywhere that does really really nice cocktails, invariably (in my experience) thinks that a choice of beer is a choice between a Becks and a Tiger. Boring, boring, beer.

So imagine my delight when reaching The Rummer Hotel in Bristol, I flicked to the back of the cocktail menu to discover… the beer menu (that’s a Word doc).

And what a beer menu indeed. I sampled an Anchor Steam Beer; an odd lager called Curious Brew Brut (made with champagne yeast); and a delicious slow-drinking Station Porter made in Gloucester – I could also have chosen proper decent German smoke-beer, Cooper’s Green, or even Nigerian Guinness (which isn’t brewed with barley, but uses sourgum and maize instead).

What a joy to discover a place that understands that a huge choice of whisky might be interesting to a whisky drinker; a huge choice of cocktails might be interesting to a cocktail drinker; and a huge choice of beers might be interesting to a beer drinker. Top marks go to The Rummer Hotel. I shall return. Probably. At some point.

Anchor Steam, Bristol, Cooper's Green, Curious Brew Brut, England, Gloucester, Guinness, Station Porter, The Rummer Hotel Hide

On the 19th May 1759, a bloke called Arthur started brewing beer in a disused brewery in St James’s Gate in Dublin: copying a London beer style and making a stronger version, known as “extra stout porter”. He started exporting it into the UK ten years later. Little did he know that he was starting one of the most recognised beer brands in the world: a brand that’s just as famous in Nigeria and Indonesia as it is in Dublin or London.

I had a book once about the Guinness brand. Guinness Is Guinness was written by a man in advertising, someone who’d done work for Guinness, and someone who came across, frankly, as rather a corporate shill for Diageo, the drinks conglomerate who owns this brand these days. But the book was well-written and, once you’d got past the bare admiration for the people who’d doubtless paid for this man’s bright red glasses and braces, it was very interesting to see the control that Guinness place on their brand: that the glass had to be given to the customer with the logo facing the customer, that the temperature had to be just right (5 celsius for the normal stuff, 3 celsius for the extra-cold), and that there are constant patrols of brand guardians ensuring this is done.

Tonight, as a guest of Diageo, I was able to join the London Blogger’s evening, with the promise of tasting some irish whiskey (er, no) or the Guinness range (er, aha). I turned up to find a nice man with a Guinness-branded ruler measuring the head on his Guinness, and shoving a temperature gauge into his pint, to check that it was the right temperature. (I was first in. Slightly early. Whoops.)

“Have you ever poured a pint of beer yourself?”, he asked. Well, no. Not as it happens. So he showed me how to pour a pint of the black stuff – including the main pour, the wait, then the top-up, all 119.5 seconds and 198 kcal of it. (I’m convinced this is pour/wait/topup nonsense is marketing hokum, incidentally. Absolutely convinced. Great differentiator, but complete rubbish.)

There’s something slightly odd about standing in a fake bar in a drinks company, with a bizarre mix of Guinness television ads (“Tipping Point”, since you ask) and slightly scary ads warning you to drink in moderation. I rather embarrassingly had my Guinness cufflinks on (given as a christmas present one year), and my ID badge hangs from a Guinness lanyard (bought on my last day of working for Virgin Radio, in Dublin). I might have looked a little like a Guinness groupie. I guess I might be – even though I only drink Guinness when the pub I’m in is rubbish enough not to sell proper ale. I guess I’m a groupie of the brand, rather than of the drink itself.

But, it’s very clear that the Guinness man I met was extraordinarily proud about the product he sold. “I’ve worked for the company since 1979″, he said, “and I’ve only ever not wanted to come into work twice.” Working for a great brand, doing something you really enjoy, is clearly highly rewarding. I was rather jealous of him.

This year, I’ll be enjoying St Patrick’s Day on holiday in Malaysia. But just like everywhere on earth, I’ll have no problems finding a Guinness: they even brew it there. I’ll raise a glass to you in the South Asian heat.

Guinness Hide

In a bar, in Malaysia, drinking the local beer – which is Guinness; it’s brewed out there.

It tasted rather lovely. And that condensation? Certainly not sprayed on with a toothbrush in some art studio; that’s the real deal.

foreign export, Guinness, malaysia Hide