Slashdot Mirror
Bearded Drinkers Lose Guinness
Dr. Winston L. O'Boogie writes "According to this BBC report, bearded drinkers in Northern Ireland lose up to £23 of Guinness annually in their facial hair. It is also estimated that 162,719 pints are wasted each year. Where does the beer actually go?"
lose money on shaving equip. or lose beer. you just can't win.
Standing in the Sunlight Howling at the Moon
So does your beard get drunk?
Does the beer climb up the hair and enter the bloodstream through facial pores?
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
163,954 pounds last year alone. thank you.
We bearded people do not ever lose a single drop of the nectar. We just store some for later, for when the misus is menacing us with some hard object if our feet move pubwise.
Cheers,
m.
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
A novice monk approached the Master and said:
"Bearded drinkers in Northern Ireland lose up to £9 of Guinness annually in their facial hair. It is also estimated that 162,719 pints are wasted each year. Where does the beer actually go?"
Without saying a word, the Master beat the novice monk to death with a bamboo stick.
What's next: the conspiracy behind piling dust balls and disappearing socks? Fear and loathin' with number 42? Experimental apocalyctism within confined spaces reserved for mass transport machinery?
Personally, I think Cousin It would have been an astute example. That dude loved to party. He must have lost a few guinness' in his day.
"Either leave an impact on the world, or leave the world on impact." -- Jeffrey Trompeter
I can just picture a group of fleas/mites getting drunk on Guinness ;)
-- "If you don't break it how can you learn how to fix it?" GU/E d->d-- s-:-- a--- C+++ L+ N++ w++>++++$ PS+ Y+(
Where does the beer actually go?
Isn't Guinness technically stout, not beer?
For more information, click here.
Isn't Guinness technically stout, not beer?
Stout is a type (or style) of beer. There are many types of beer. For more on the subject click here.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Use a straw while drinking beer.
That way, not only will you keep the precious nectar away from any facial hair, but you'll also be able to slurp up any leftover foam on the bottom.
Cheers,
Bart
I like this guy:
"I'd like to become a Guinness researcher," said actor Tim McGarry.
Well, they got the results back and did some number crunching on them and found, that surprisingly, the more facial hair the driver had the more likely they were to have an accident. They also found that the smaller the 'view circle', i.e. how thick and close the 'pillars' are to the driver, the more accidents they had, also the more stickers they had in the windows, again increased the chances of an accident.
All in all, they discovered that if you were on a motorbike about to cross at a T junction, and there was a driver you had a full moustache and beard, was driving a certain make of car with a certain religious sticker in the window, you just might as well put the bike down there and then, because, like it or not, the odds were that they were going to pull out on you.
So, to bring me to my point: this stuff about the beard soaking up the pint whilst in the act of supping is laughable. It is quite obvious to me that they are missing their mouths in the first place and spilling it. This is not due to the fact they have a beard, but is in the nature of people who want to wear a beard. None is apparent on their clothing because, yes, the beard does in fact soak it up. So the researcher has, by the nature of the questioning got the answer they want.
threadeds blog
At least by your use of the word 'Asphalt' I'd guess you're not in Ireland. So I understand that you've not experienced proper guinness..... or proper beer for that matter.
Tsc. I tell ya, you kiddies have it easy. Back in the day, we didn't have any of those fancy schmancy shaving creams or aftershave or blades or anything like that. Nosiree bob. Try using a Gillette when you've got a sabertooth coming after ya, I'll tell you that! Hell no. We used our own two-inch fingernails to shave, and we LIKED it! Now THAT's a real man. Ah, those were the days...
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Since I am from Canada, I can understand many American "Beer" drinkers' aversions to drinking Guinness. American beer is very week and almost clear. Clear beer? It just isn't right. You should come up to eastern Canada and try some of our micro-brewed beers. Beers with 6 or 7 % alcohol content, not that wussy 4 %. And while I'm raving, how about that American "coffee". It's also virtually clear - kind of an amber color. You can even see the bottom of your cup! What's with that?
The statistics offer little hint here.
Do they mean, "The average person who describes themselves as a Guinness drinker." Do they mean, "The average person who drinks Guinness at least X times a week." Do they mean, "The person who consumes an average Guinness." (Thanks to the lightbulb paradox, the last is likely the heaviest drinker.)
Then once we know what they mean by an "average Guinness drinker", what is their estimate of how much said drinker drinks? That is the important point. Are we estimating that people lose 10% of their Guinness to the beard? A tenth of a percent? What?
Without a concept of that someone like myself who likes Guinness (particularly in the form of a black-and-tan) but does not often consume it will have no idea how to judge how much I personally save in beer by shaving.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Studies have shown women find men with beards sexier & more "manly"
Yeah, but those studies were run by single bearded men...
for beer lost when run thru the soup strainer and cookie duster.
Hopefully you know the story about the Guinness Book or World Records - see, bar patrons inevitably get into arguments over who's got the biggest this and what's the fastest that - kinda like discussions of Apache vs IIS or benchmarketing - so Guinness publishes a book that the bartender can whip out to settle such disputes before it comes to fistcuffs.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Um, interesting that this story should pop up this morning on my considering that tonight is the annual Great Guinnes Toast. February 26th, at 11:30PM EST (EST=GMT-5.) You may read about it at http://www.guinness.ie, but you must enter your age to verify that you are 21.
Also I believe that the results of this study are wildly inaccurate. I can't believe even amateurs would account for such a loss of Guinness. If this were accurate I'm sure that someone would damn well be looking for a solution to this problem. Why hasn't there been been a 'Voices from the HairMouth' article or something like that, hmm?
numb
(AP) - Los Angeles - Fox Networks announced today the newest prime-time special to debut for the May sweeps week.
"Who Wants To Marry A Crusty, Guiness-In-His-Beard Drunk European Guy" will bring the chance to one lucky American girl to get hitched to the most prolific European male in today's exciting culture. 50 women will compete in such events as the drunken foosball tournament, back shaving competition, and the semi-final contest, the fish-wrapping race. The mystery Guiness-In-His-Beard Drunk European Guy will receive advice and counsel from special guest judges ZZ Top and former professional wrestler "Hillbilly Jim". The happy couple, at the conclusion of the show will be wed in an exciting 3 minute ceremony, followed by 15 minutes of commericals and an exciting trailer for the upcoming "Robbie Knievel jumps over 50,000 bowls of steaming hot grits on top of a 200 foot-high pile of Windows 2000 Advanced Server CDs".
sorry, I have a touch of the flu and the Dimetapp is getting to me.
Here in the US of A, one can buy Guinness in cans or bottles. Since the topic has come up, I thought it would be important to mention that Guinness is the one brew that is better in the can than in the bottle. The can has a widget in the bottom that, to put it in geek terms, "builds the head dynamically". Pop the can, pour into an appropriate vessel, and you get [almost] the same head and cascade as a glass from the tap.
I'd wager that's a bit stronger than Molson Ice (yes, that's blatantly unfair, but so were your characterizations of American brews).
As someone (Bob Hope?) once said, "That'll put hair on your chest, and part it in the middle."
If you ever get a chance to try this brew, do so. It's quite an experience.
Here's a brief review.
We have many, many fine brews here in Oregon. You might want to try them before slagging on American brewers.
One of my non-Oregon favorites (but not far from Oregon): Downtown Brown, from the Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka, California.
New XFMail home page
...would create such uproar over the method of getting these statistics.
Personally, I'm more bothered by the amount of free time these Irish poll-takers have. What's next?
News Flash: Northern Ireland study shows that the average child will, between birth and the age of five, flind over 2.5 tons of food. "These kids are like Pedro Martinez!" says one researcher, "They were getting creamed carrots in their parents' faces at over 50 yards!"
Then again, I could be wrong.
It goes into /dev/null ;-)
There are many statements, here is one. "With better than even odds the lightbulb currently in your lightbulb socket will last longer than the lightbulb that you use after it."
It seems impossible, hence the name, "The Lightbulb Paradox".
The reason for it is a sampling bias. When you choose the lightbulb in a socket at a specific time, the odds of a given lightbulb being picked are proportional to how long it lasted.
In this case a random drink is more likely to be chosen by a heavy drinker than a random drinker.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Some anonymous coward dun said:
Speak for yerself. As an American, I can truthfully say that I cannot stand most American pisswater that passes itself off as beer. Literally about the only two "big" brands I find remotely drinkable are Red Dog (actually tastes a lot like the American version of Molson) and some of the Michelob stuff (because, among other things, Michelob actually makes heifeweisens and dark beers).
Most of what I drink tends to be either microbrew stuff, Negra Modelo (fortunately, Negra Modelo is very easy to find in Louisville, what with the largish Mexican population here) or stuff like heifeweisens that I have to go somewhere like Liquor Outlet (big warehouse stores for alcohol) to get...I'd drink more Guinness except that the stuff is ruddy expensive here (average price for a six-pack of Guinness in the Southeastern US tends to be around US$9--which is around Can$15 if I remember my exchange rates right), so it must remain an occasional treat *sigh*...
If I remember right, the main reason most beers in the US are a) pisswater and b) usually just 4 percent or so have to do with a) the fact that the largest brewery here (Budweiser) actually uses rice as a base (now you know why the Japanese love Bud--it tastes like a better version of Asahi or Kirin :) and because of funky rules regarding alcoholic strength and labeling here in the States (up to around six percent, if memory serves, can be labeled as beer, and two-percent beer is actually sold in some states; anything between six and twelve percent legally has to be sold as "malt liquor", and I'm not sure if it's legal to sell beer-like beverages that are over twelve percent).
But no, you're not the only one who can't drink American beer. :) My sister, on the other hand, can't see how I like dark beer (then again, her favourite beers are Miller Blight and Tequiza, so go figure)...
Coffee, on the other hand, is another thing altogether. ;) I seriously take it that you have never had good, old, authentic "trucker coffee" in a truck-stop in the States. Trucker coffee is by no means clear--it is black as the Ace of Spades, is probably closer to a syrup than a liquid if done properly, and can be used as paint-stripper if one isn't brave enough to drink the stuff. ;)
Needless to say, especially in the Southeast US, you will usually have a choice of either tea or trucker coffee (and if you're REALLY far south, like Louisiana, you start hitting that zone where you will get chicory in your coffee whether you want it or not--chicory actually makes coffee MORE bitter and gives it a unique flavour; Kentucky, I think, is around the northernmost limit of where chicory coffee is regularly sold). I can only assume wussy, see-through coffee is sold mostly up North...
(As an aside, I was raised on trucker-coffee, and most "normal" brews don't have that much taste to me. To me, "normal strength" means that even after a liberal amount of sugar and cream are added one can STILL taste coffee. Alas, my husband won't allow me to make non-espresso-based coffee anymore because he claims that the coffee I make could kick-start a corpse ;) (Then again, that's the entire PURPOSE of trucker coffee--to make it so strong as to wake the very dead from their slumber and let them drive cross-country. Believe you me when I say that the modern geek has STILL not quite gotten to the level of caffeine dependence and experimentation as the modern American trucker ;)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
Rendler dun said:
Well, duh. I can name many a reason for that:
1) Like the old saying goes: "Liquor then beer, never fear; beer then liquor, never sicker."
2) Guinness should not be drank with some plebian bourbon like Jim Beam. ;) (Yes, I can afford to be a whisky bigot and in particular a bourbon bigot. I live in Kentucky, not terrifically far from the "Brewery Belt" at that; needless to say, we have a LOT of bourbon to sample from here. ;) Jim Beam is pretty much the Budweiser of Kentucky bourbons anyways--about the only stuff lower on the scale is stuff like Heavin' Hell, erm, Heaven Hill (the Milwaukee's Beast of bourbon, and no, I am not making this up--Heavin' Hell truly sucks and can be used as a substitute for syrup of ipecac should you find the need to induce vomiting quickly in someone). More proper bourbons to drink with something like Guinness would be something far smoother--like, oh, Knob Creek (which is, surprisingly, made by the same folks who make Jim Beam but is really good, where Jim Beam is mostly good for getting drunk ;) or Maker's Mark (yum) or, if you can afford it, Blanton's (supposedly the best bourbon in the world, and most definitely the most expensive--it's something like US$50 a fifth (750 ml bottle), and even the AIRPLANE bottles of the stuff are right around US$6 or US$7; this largely explains why I've never had the stuff).
I can testify this, though; if you get good bourbon instead of rotgut, you can drink beer then whisky or the reverse. (I should state, though, as an aside--if you are American and were not raised by raving alcoholics, do not try to even keep up with a native of Belfast at drinking. You Will Not Succeed. Especially if you are anything like me (a smallish woman with around half the mass of the guy from Belfast who has a fair amount of Irish and Native American ancestry--and who tends to get giggly after about, oh, two or three pints of hard cider :). I tried this. Once. I ended up piss drunk at 7 am laughing at bad Jackie Chan movies and waking up later that day with a rare hangover [I usually drink water after drinking to specifically prevent hangovers, and it usually works...not that day, though :P]...trust me. You Will Not Win. Not unless your name happens to be Snorri and you speak Khazad and people refer to you as their dwarven drinking buddy. :)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
Since I am from Canada, I can understand many American "Beer" drinkers' aversions to drinking Guinness. American beer is very week and almost clear. Clear beer? It just isn't right. You should come up to eastern Canada and try some of our micro-brewed beers. Beers with 6 or 7 % alcohol content, not that wussy 4%.
You haven't had good American beer. Ignore most Macrobrews; about the only thing decent there is Pete's Wicked, Sam Adams, or Henry Weinhards. American microbrews are usually pretty good, though, Rogue Ale up in Oregon makes some good stuff, as do the people down in San Diego who make Arrogant Bastard Ale.
Of course, Americans aren't the only ones who make crappy Macrobrewed beer. In Mexico, Corona and Corona Light (!) come to mind. Corona Light actually looks like white grape juice it's so light. Peroni from Italy pretty well sucks, and everyone knows Fosters is Australian for Millah Lite.
And while I'm raving, how about that American "coffee". It's also virtually clear - kind of an amber color. You can even see the bottom of your cup! What's with that?
A coffee shop near our home makes a "Piledriver", which has 6 shots of espresso. Not only can't you see the bottom of your cup, you need a spoon (and afterwards, a complete neurological physical) when you drink it.
-- "God, Root, what is difference?" - Pitr, "User Friendly"
Arg, no. I know there are three places that have Guinness on tap within two blocks of where I am sitting right now. Some of the other restaurants and bars might also serve it. I live in West Palm Beach, Florida (and my office is right on Clematis, downtown, FWIW).
There's also a renfaire (Renissance Festival) just south of here that has literally dozens of beer tents, and I believe that they only have Guinness.
As Guinness on tap is the only beer I will drink, I can say that I don't really have a hard time finding it. About a third of the time, it arrives in a mug, but that's not too terrible.
I can come in, get hyper on coffee and penguin mints, walk across the street for lunch, down a few pints, walk back, and start in on serious coding. Around five or so, I start back in on coffee.[1]
The average American beer is very light and sweet, and I would imagine that is why he dosen't like it. There are plenty of alternatives available, however. Sort of like American TV. NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX are your most visible networks, and most show crap with few exceptions, but there are hundreds of lesser, better or niche sources, like PBS, The Learning Channel, Animal Planet, The History Channel, etc. Don't forget that your average FOX fan would consider Yo-yo Ma to 'taste like Asphalt'. That dosen't mean that good cello is not available or not appreciated in America. We're just... big and varied in our tastes.
Oh, and on the radio, after every Guinness ad, they always say something along the lines of: "Imported by the Guinness Brewing Company". Dunno what they import - the mash or beer, but something is imported.
[1] Not that this is an everyday event, by any means - except for the coffee. I've long since stopped figuring out how much I drink by cup... I am literally up to a half gallon or more a day, washing down penguin mints. I know this because I french press a half gallon each morning to take into the office, and I have taken to making a Dunkin Donuts run at around 8pm. I wonder how much I loose to my full beard?
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
On one of the morning radio programs here in Ireland yesterday a
:-)
"recognized" beard expert was quite critical of this article.
He supposedly made a similar experiment for his thesis and had alot
of other factors which were not mentioned by the original researcher
(e.g. angle of head, time of day, etc. ).
He also made 2 other points,
1) he had never heard of the scientist mentioned in the article
even though he was a "leading expert in the UK"
2) the type beard he mentioned ( a handlebar beard I think ) was
not the worst offender.
Out now to drink some Smithwicks for me
Con
Of course if you want a really shiny beard, put a raw egg in your Guinness. It works when I put one in my dog's food...
There are a great many different Guinness's brewed at the main brewery. Iirc, the irish version is actually lighter and lower in alcohal than most of the rest due to the way taxes work there. There are at least two distinct varieties in the US--the bottled and canned just plain aren't the same beer, even before bottling/canning. I don't know if the tap & canned are the same; they seem reasonably close.
.)
ANd then [no, I'm not making this up] there's the Miranda Guinness, the supertanker that delivers the stuff around the world. There's details in the promotional literature from the brewery tours that my sister brought back for me.
Yes, I'll repeat that: Guinness has a supertanker to deliver their beer, and a fleet of smaller ships to shuttle it in.
So far, I've been unable to book a cruise on it.
Hmm, while I'm at it, they watered down the bottled version in '93 or so; it went from very good to so-so (the Miller Reserve stout was actually better than what they sold here in bottles after the change, believe it or not . .
hawk
My oatmeal stout has (more than) a full bowl of oatmeal in every glass. It's not just for breakfast any more.
Thick enough that you might use a fork, but you use a spoon to get every drop . . .
and 15 gallons to be brewed next weekend . . .
Several posters have commented on the watery stuff that passes for beer among much of the American populace.
The following link explains how American beer got so wimpy - it was the feminists, who deviously eliminated real man's beer:
http://www.credenda.org/issues/vol1 1/reci11-2.htm
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last