by Lauren Jefferson
Union Square’s Tir Na Nog is home to the best pint of Guinness in Somerville, as voted by the readers of The Somerville News.
By taking a glance around the bar you can see that Guinness is a house favorite among Tir Na Nog patrons. “It’s the number one seller,” said Joseph Alcindor, who tends bar and cooks at the pub.
Ronan Geary, another bartender at the Nog, said Guinness is the most popular beer ordered at a ratio of seven to one.
Geary said the process for pouring the perfect Guinness is very technical. Hold the glass at a 45 degree angle and fill it three-quarters of the way. After that let it settle for 95 seconds. Then top it off.”
By following those directions exactly everything should settle properly making the Guinness the best it can be, he said
The glass that Guinness is served out of is also a very important part of the process, he said.
The glass is called a tulip because it is smaller at the bottom and flares out in a rounded way at the top making it mildly resemble a tulip, he said.
Geary said the glasses are the same style used in pubs in Ireland. The tulip offers the drinker 20 ounces of Guinness, as opposed to the 16 ounces glasses other beers are served in.
“Some bars serve it in 16 ounce glass and that should never be done,” he said.
When served in a 20 ounce tulip glass the patron gets more Guinness to enjoy, and the bartender can pour better because it is easier to distinguish where to stop during the two-part pour, he said.
Geary said there is a question whether the Guinness here in the States is comparable to the Guinness in Ireland.
Some of the Irish patrons to the Nog have been a little hesitant to try it once they have a glass they are just as happy with it, he said.
Geary said there is one more factor in creating the best pint of Guinness, without which the technical process is meaningless: “First off, you start with friendly Irish service.”
Hmmm... An article about pouring a good pint of Guinness, with photos featuring a Magners glass? Something wrong there.
Posted by: Daniel | July 04, 2007 at 04:27 PM
Hmmm... An article about pouring a good pint of Guinness... with photos featuring a Magners glass? Something wrong there.
Posted by: Daniel | July 04, 2007 at 04:28 PM
Not to ruin the fun, but...
Alcohol Problems Plague 1 Out of 3 Americans
Whether it's binge drinking or addiction to alcohol, Americans have a real problem with the bottle.
So says new research released Monday, which found that nearly one out of three Americans can expect to have a problem with alcohol at some time during their lives. "We found that 30.3 percent of the U.S. population at some time in their lives -- though maybe not currently -- has had an alcohol use disorder," said study author Bridget Grant of the Division of Biometry and Epidemiology at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
But the nature of this problem can vary widely -- from a sustained streak of binge drinking behavior all the way to serious physiological addiction to alcohol.
The findings, generated from face-to-face interviews with more than 43,000 U.S. adults, appear in the July issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=3338855&page=1
Posted by: Somerville Resident | July 04, 2007 at 05:07 PM