Guinness Beer Fans

I am delighted to let you know that today we have made the decision to roll Guinness Red out further and make it more widely available.

For those of you who maybe have yet to come across Guinness Red, it is the latest addition to the family, made with the same ingredients and the same process as Guinness Draught & Extra Cold.  However, where we use fully roasted barley to create the black stuff, we use lightly roasted barley to create the red stuff - creating an exceptional pint with all the hallmarks of the traditional pint of Guinness (such as 2 part pour, swirling in the glass and that delicious creamy head) but with a rich ruby red colour and a smoother, sweeter taste.

The main area of focus for us will be the Central TV region - centered around the East and West Midlands, encompassing towns and cities such as:

• Gloucester
  
• Birmingham
  
• Leicester
  
• Nottingham
  
• Coventry
  
• Oxford…
  
• …but also all the many places in between!

However, we will also be available in more pubs up and down the country as well, as we continue our mission to give you folks more of the beers you love.

We are just starting our programme of installing Guinness Red into new outlets and will be updating exactly where those pubs are, just as soon as we can.  However, in the meantime, to see a list of existing stockists, please click here

Ongoing, we are developing a pub locator which will allow you to search for your nearest Guinness Red stocking pub.  The finishing touches are being put to this at the moment but it should be up and running in the next few weeks.

Keep the nominations coming in for which pub you would like to see it in and we will see what we can do, as well as letting us know what you think about Guinness Red and what you would love to see us do to celebrate the next stage in the life of this great new addition to the Guinness family.

Its a glamorous world in marketing - of that there is no doubt.  We have had to put the long lunches (we wish…) on hold for the last few weeks and instead have become data monkeys - analysing data and crunching some serious numbers to work out what you guys think of Guinness Red and whether we should make it available in more places for you - and we are now just in the process of making some final decisions.

We should have made up our minds in the next few days so keep your eyes peeled for more news of the Red stuff very shortly - you never know, it might be coming to a place near you.

Any recommendations on good local pubs where you would like to see it?  Discussed it with your barman?  We would love to hear your nominations

The Guinness team are eagerly anticipating all the rugby action that is going to be kicking off this autumn. 

The Rugby World Cup, the Guinness Premiership, it sure is going to be a bumper year for rugby.  As you can see a few of us got close to the action (although I am not sure it was Autumn just yet - the sun was shining lots) to see how England and Wales got on at Twickenham in one of the Rugby World Cup warm up games.  With the home nation games last weekend and with England losing to France and Scotland beating Ireland it’s anyone’s guess as to how the Home nation teams are going to get on in France in September. 

It’s safe to say though that we are going to be watching as much of the action as possible. 

What lengths are you going to to catch the rugby over the next few months?

We recently received a message from Michelle who wanted to know more about a Guinness bottle she acquired that had been dropped into the ocean with a message inside as part of a publicity stunt in 1959. I have been in contact with our archive in Scotland to find out more about these bottles and their fascinating story. They are now a collector’s item and their story and some pictures of the bottles and their contents are below.

In the summer of 1959 Guinness was celebrating the fact that 200 years had passed since the first Arthur Guinness had acquired his brewery in Dublin.  To mark this occasion A W Fawcett, the Managing Director of the exports company in Liverpool, decided to carry out an unusual publicity stunt.  Consequently, some 150,000 specially embossed bottles were dropped into the Atlantic Ocean from 38 different ships over a period of six weeks starting on 14 July 1959.  Amazingly, these bottles are still turning up all over the world more than forty years after the event, which must surely make the “Bicentenary Bottle drop” Guinness’s longest running advertising promotion!  No complete list has been kept of the bottles that have turned up over the years, however we have heard about bottles being found in California, in Texas, in South Africa, in France, in Wales, the Bahamas and Canada.

The bottle used in the Bottle drop was sealed to protect the small number of documents it contained.  The most interesting of these was a colourful certificate “from the office of King Neptune”. In addition there was a little booklet telling the story of Guinness, a special gold-coloured 1759-1959 Guinness label, and some instructions on how to turn the bottle into a table-lamp should you feel so inclined!  Sometimes the bottles contained other items such as an advertisement for Ovaltine (who helped to sponsor the bottle drop) or a notice about the ship concerned.

The image below shows an example of the bottles and their contents.

These bottles are now collector’s items. We already have several examples of the bottle in our archive, but if you have one and are interested in a valuation you could contact Mike Peterson of the Association of British Brewery Collectibles:

Website: www.breweriana.org.uk
Email: Mike.Peterson@ntlworld.com

Morning all

We have just heard that the new fixtures for the forthcoming GUINNESS PREMIERSHIP season have been announced here.

They certainly contain some of the usual favourites with the London Double Header, some big Christmas derbies, the London Irish - St. Patrick’s Day match and many others.

Which are the matches within there you are looking forward to the most?

We’re only two weeks away from finding out which pub has been voted as serving the best-tasting pint. So far over 13,000 votes have come in, and O’Neill’s pubs are doing particularly well - in fact, of the top 10 pubs, 8 of these are O’Neill’s! But there’s still time to vote, and a lot can happen in two weeks… watch this space.

As Lee said, sorry it’s been a bit quiet lately. There will soon be some new faces up on the ‘about us’ section, as we’ve some new bloggers on the team.  In the meantime, we’re always keen to find out more about what you want to see, talk about, so pelase do tell us what you want to see on the blog… and we’ll do our best!

Well its been a bit quiet here for a while, sorry for that and I hope all of your RSS feeds are still working. It has been the end of our financial year and it has been a little bit busy here for a bit.

Over the years there have been a number of books written about GUINNESS® beer and the GUINNESS® Brand. A little look on Amazon (once you have got passed all of the World Record books that is - sorry not us anymore) gives you a good list of these.

However our friends at Irish World were recently writing about a new one which has been written by a former Diageo employee who worked here in London.

We havent read it here yet, although hope to soon, but for more information have a look at: http://www.guinnessbottling.co.uk/ 

Are there any others that our bloggers have seen, read and can recommend?

As you know, we are passionate about ensuring that you can get a great quality pint of Guinness beer in any pub that you go into.

We’ve just started a promotion in over 20,000 pubs to try and find the pub that serves the best-tasting pint of Guinness!

If you’re in a pub that has the posters shown you can vote for that pub. Some pubs don’t have the posters, but have ‘wobblers’ on the bar – wobblers are the things that are sometimes stuck to the pump on the bar. You can win HMV vouchers or a trip to Dublin, and the pub can also win prizes. Terms and conditions apply

But don’t use the vote just anywhere –there’s only one vote each!

All of us on the team love our rugby (Lee will be giving his thoughts on the weekend later), and there’s a few sports superstars among us, but none of us could keep pace with one special man, Antonio Latorre, Fitness Instructor for Diageo, not only ran the London Marathon, but did it in a Guinness pint costume! Amazingly, he finished the race in 5 hours 35 minutes, and says, “It was one of the hardest challenges I have ever completed because of the weather and being so enclosed in the costume but the support was fantastic with over a million people cheering the Guinness Man on all the way round.” Antonio was raising money for the Family Welfare Association. Check out the pics…

Nearly there.

Lots of stuff happening in the build up to tomorrow’s GUINNESS PREMIERSHIP Final and I cant believe it has taken until Friday to speak you - sorry.

The weather forecast is currently looking OK. Not quite the summer weather we have had recently but definitely perfect GUINNESS weather. The West Car Park is taking shape and beginning to look very good and the GUINNESS beer is being delivered fresh today.

As for the two teams in the Final. Steve predicted it correctly but I dont think anyone would have predicted the differences in two contrasting semi-finals. Gloucester completely outclassed Saracens while Leicester held off a spirited display from Bristol.

That means that the teams finishing first and second in the regular season are through to the Final for the seond year running - although this game is proving very difficult to call.

As part of our media activity we hosted a lunch yesterday with Dean Ryan, Gloucester Director of Rugby with a number of key Sports Media people. He gave us some fantastic insight in to what goes on in the build up to a game such as the Guinness Premiership Final - especially with the young squad of players that he has. I am sure it is very different for Pat Howard in Leicester who is in the middle of going for this amazing treble.

I wish both teams all the best for the match on the weekend and hopefully look forward to seeing many of you there.

What are your predictions?

Those of you with a longer memory may remember my struggles back in February when I was trying to get to grips with pulling together an online map to show you all the pubs that serve Guinness Red in the country.  Well eventually we have got there and I am delighted to let you know that the Guinness Red Pub Locator is now up and running

GUINNESS RED PUB LOCATOR

The link above will take you to a special section of your Guinness.com website where you will see the page below.  This gives you the opportunity to find out more about Guinness Red but most importantly - will tell you where you can buy it

First you need to click on one of the regions of the map (e.g. West Midlands) from which you will then be sent to the page below which will show you all the pubs that currently stock Guinness Red in that region.  From here you can search in 3 ways:

1) By postcode

2) By pub name

3) Zooming in and scrolling around the map

If you chose to enter a postcode or pub name, the list of available pubs on the left hand side will automatically update with every character inputted.  Click on the pint and you will see the address and telephone number.

If you can’t find the pub you want then there are 4 things you can do:

1) Check that you have inputted the correct postcode or pub name

2) If you live on the border between two regions (e.g. East & West Midlands) then try switching to the adjacent region and searching pubs there

3) Come back next week!  We update pubs every week so will constantly be adding to this list

4) Find an excuse to visit a mate who lives near a Guinness Red stocking pub, persuade them to go to the pub (shouldn’t be too hard), then sit back and enjoy

Finally one quick note.  Google have a global policy that means that they will not allow their maps to be used in conjunction with alcohol websites by anyone under 21.  This is their global policy which must be observed by everyone.  So, if you are aged between 18 and 21, then unfortunately you will have to fwd to a mate to advise you on your Guinness Red stocking local!

I hope you all enjoy it - been a bit of a mission but we have got there in the end!  Apologies in advance if you object to my geographical division of the country - let me know if you feel strongly and we can make sure we get everything where we should!

Hi guys- if you fancy being the first to see our new advert, why not visit www.guinness.com to play our new online challenge!

The race is on to crack the code and be the first to see the much anticipated new Guinness® ad.  And, if that isn’t bounty enough, if you win our challenge you could also receive a solid gold domino – but solving it is no mean feat.

Host, Juan Ramon (the fictional Mayor of the Argentinian village where the advert is set) leads the hunt to complete eleven interlinked tasks – each one solved reveals a short clip with another clue embedded in it.  Only when all the clues are solved will the code be fully cracked and the full magic of the ad revealed for the very first time. Click here to race your way to the ultimate reward of unlocking the ad.
 
Once the series of clues has been solved the focus will move from being the first to see the ad to being the one to win a solid gold domino. These will be given away weekly for 6 weeks, and you must have solved all the clues to go into the draw for the chance to win. Additionally random Guinness goodies will be given away to anyone who has registered for the game.

We hope you like it! Please feel free to let us know what you think.

As Juan Ramon would say, “cosas buenas llegan a los que esperan”!

We’ve come to the end of our promotion to find the best-tasting pint in Britain. The results are in, and the winning pub is O’Neill’s, Watford! We wanted to find out more about what makes their Guinness so great, so we caught up with man of the moment, Matt Stewart, Manager of the winning pub. Read all about it in our interview with Matt below, and check out the top 100 list below Matt’s interview.

How important is it to your pub that you serve perfect Guinness every time?  

-Being part of an estate of the best Irish pubs around it is very important. Guinness is one of the cornerstones of our offer and it is crucial that we serve a perfect pint every time: you would not want to be known as an O’Neill’s that couldn’t serve a decent pint of Guinness!

What is your top tip for ensuring the Guinness is always served perfectly?  

-I’m a big fan of the Ronseal approach…it does exactly what it says on the tin! Clean glass, clean lines, two part pour and just a little bit of tasting every now and then…off duty of course!     

What inspired you to encourage your staff to get so behind this activity? 

-First and foremost I wanted to win! So I created a siege mentality, Watford against the rest of the UK! We’ve always believed we sell cracking Guinness so we just had to prove it. I also briefed my staff on the prizes and told them that they could keep the vouchers (prizes for the winning pub), I would take the plaque for the office wall….I am a big fan of those & it’s great to be recognised for the hard work we put into ensuring our customers enjoy their pints of the black stuff!   

What do you think is the reason so many of your customers voted for your pub?

-I’m hoping it’s because we sell great Guinness! We just blitzed as many customers in our business as possible explaining the details of the competition. We figured the more people you were able to speak to the more chance they would vote. As soon as they discovered that Watford was competing with 20,000 outlets we were off!  

The top 100 pubs in the promotion were…

Wow!

Not often am I left speechless (ask any of the poor people who have to work with me…or my wife for that matter) but what an incredible response.  Thanks so much to everyone who has posted comments about the bar locator and Guinness Red - absolutely amazing to hear your thoughts and glad that it seems (some minor Geographical fine tuning issues aside!) easy to use and informative.

With so many of you out and about this weekend to try the Red stuff, please be sure to share your stories with us - where did you try it, what did you think of it?

SO WHO WON?

As you can see, we have been inundated with comments (well north of 700…) but we can only give our Guinness Red stash to the first 50 - we will drop you an email next week to let you know who you are - but thanks to all for entering - we really appreciate the feedback.

ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS

There are lots of questions from your comments and whilst I haven’t had a chance to go through every one yet, I thought I would clarify some of the more frequent questions:

Why isn’t there a pub near me!! As you may know, Guinness Red is just in its infancy - barely out of nappies and just taking its first tentative steps in the grown up world.  As a result, we are only in a relatively small number of pubs but we are growing all the time.  We are focusing at the moment on the Central area (E & W Midlands) but we will also be available in some pubs outside of this area (as you can see from the maps).  As we get more pubs on board, we will update the site, but until then I am afraid you need to be patient with us!

Can we improve the site further? Our intention is to make this the best and easiest site possible to use so are constantly looking for ways to improve it.  We have had loads of great ideas thus far which our techno-geeks are working on now and we will keep you informed of changes and improvements we make but let us know if you have any more ideas to make it even better

I can’t find pubs around my area? Hands up - some slightly aribtrary geogrphical dividing of the country has taken place which may suprise some people (e.g. Oxford being in West Midlands…!).  If this does happen, try searching again on an adjoining area as you may find we have put it in the other region.  Let us know and we can always see if we can re-draw the boundary lines!

Is it available in a can? No - not just yet.  As above, we are still early in Guinness Red’s life and at the moment we are solely focused on pubs.  But who knows what the future might hold!

SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND:

If you are out and about this weekend, you might come across our Guinness Red sampling team.  Armed with free 1/2 pint samples of Guinness Red, these guys will be in the pubs listed below to give you the chance to try it.  At the same time, the imensely talented Simon & Gareth will perform some incredible close magic for you

Friday:

Telford: Station Hotel, The Swann & White House Hotel

Sutton Coldfield: O’Neill’s & Litten Tree

Birmingham: Gosta Green & Sack of Potatoes

Saturday:

Newcastle Under Lyme: Golden Lion, Edwards, Mainwarring Arms

Stafford: Litten Tree

Birmingham: O’Neills (Moseley), Goose (Kings Heath) & Harbone Stores

Thanks again everyone - really appreciate all the feedback - keep it coming from a weekend of trialing Guinness Red!