Guinness released ‘Guinness Coffee Beer’ in the United Kingdom today, and it’s tipped for release from the Open Gate Brewery next week

‘Guinness Coffee Beer’ is Diageo’s take on a coffee stout. Coffee stout is a beer made with coffee. Stout is a dark beer that can be made in many ways, but Guinness itself is the world’s most well-known stout. Coffee stouts date back to the 1990s when craft brewing began to take flight.

Coffee Stouts are a thing. They have become a very popular Guinness alternative in the craft beer world, so this move makes sense if they are trying to capture the craft beer drinkers’ attention. Irish people can be very protective of the black stuff. A pint of plain is a sacred ritual that shouldn’t be messed with.

If you want to try it, Guinness Cold Brew Coffee Beer is available in Tesco stores in the UK from today and the Open Gate Brewery in Dublin from next week. Soon it will trickle down to other supermarkets and off-licences in the UK. But it is available nationwide in the U.S. already. There are plans to arrive in more markets in Europe and Asia over the next year and a half. 

All coffee beer is made by adding dry coffee grounds into grain during fermentation or mixing cold-brew coffee directly with a stout. Coffee beer, often called coffee stout, is mainly stout with subtle hints of coffee flavour. Stout is a dark beer that naturally has similar flavour compounds to coffee, and as such, they work well when integrated.

To make Guinness Coffee Beer cold brew coffee – coffee steeped in cool water overnight – is added to Guinness Draught. There are approximately two milligrams of caffeine per can, the same as a decaf coffee.

Guinness Coffee Beer is the latest in a series of ‘pioneering innovations’ from Guinness in the last year, including Guinness MicroDraught, alcohol-free beer Guinness 0.0%, which removes alcohol through a cold-filtration process, and their at-home tap system.

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