Guinness Antwerpen Stout

Review Date 10/13/2016  By John Staradumsky

  Style: Foreign Stout   Brewery: Guinness   Country: Ireland   State: N/A   $ Per OZ: $.22 (B)   ABV: 8%

Boy, am I glad I went to Total Wine! It’s not like I needed more beer; I have a full sized fridge in the garage full of it, plus two full dorm fridges, and more besides. Still, I went anyway; it’s what you do when you’re a Bruguru. And there it was when I went, like a shining beacon on a hill: a display of Guinness Antwerpen Stout.

I’m here to tell you about Guinness Antwerpen Stout of course, but also about the new Fizzics Draft Beer System. Here at guruofbrew.com, we’re all about value, and so you get two reviews for the price of one. First, though, the Guinness Antwerpen Stout. The bottle says this is part of The Brewers Project, and you may recall that last year Guinness released an 18-pack under that name. It included Guinness Original, Guinness West Indies Porter, and Guinness Dublin Porter.

Now, Guinness Antwerpen Stout joins those magnificent brews. Truth be told, this isn’t a new beer at all, but a rebranding and packaging of Guinness Special Export Stout, a beer I first tried in 2011. That beer is only sold in Belgium and is one of the most sought-after beers in the world amongst knowledgeable beer geeks, thanks to its amazing quality and scarcity.

Today, though, it’s available here in America as Guinness Antwerpen Stout. From the label:

The Brewers Project A group of enterprising brewers on a quest to explore new recipes, reinterpret old ones, and collaborate freely to bring new ideas to life. This 8% ABV stout has long been a secret pleasure among beer connoisseurs and indeed our own brewers, who value the mouth-watering intensity of the roasted malt, smoked wood and dark chocolate notes, not to mention its excellent and seemingly endless finish. Since 1944 we have been exclusively exporting this same special stout from Ireland into Belgium through the vibrant port of Antwerp. This is the first time we’re making it available for general release in America.  

Guinness Antwerpen Stout has 52 IBUs and I bought a 4-pack of 11.2 ounce bottles for $9.99, which I consider a steal. In fact I’m going back for more…..

Guinness Antwerpen Stout pours to a jet black color with a thick creamy tan head of foam and a luscious all sorts licorice and raisin nose. Taking a sip, the beer explodes with licorice in the palate, subtle chocolate, raisins, a hint of butter, and a long clean roasty bitter finish with a kiss of grassy hops and a glowing alcohol warmth. The licorice really pops here, more so than in the bottle of SES I tried years ago.

Begin Fizzics Review Here

Now, for the Fizzics. I drank several beers poured through the Fizzics in the course of the night that I first tried it, but it was the Guinness Antwerpen Stout that really convinced me on its merits. That’s because I drank two bottles side by side, one from the bottle into a glass and the other through the system. The Fizzics pour was smoother, creamier, fuller in body and had a bigger aroma in the nose.

What is Fizzics? Fizzics is a new way to serve beer at home with the smooth and creamy head and flavor of draft beer, or so they say. It uses ultrasonic Micro-Foam™ Technology to enhance the pour and improve the beer experience. I first learned of the Fizzics while, of all things, enjoying a beer out in my beer garden. My wife was in the house watching TV, The Shark Tank more specifically. She called me in and rewound the DVR to show me the segment featuring Fizzics.

The Sharks seemed pretty impressed with the Fizzics pour, but what do they know about beer? I wasn’t impressed with Mr. Wonderful’s knowledge of the beer industry when the folks from Mobcraft asked him for money; you can read about that here. So, I was skeptical. My wife asked if I’d like one, but the price they quoted on the show ($199) seemed high. Then too, it seemed all the more an obstacle since I couldn’t be sure I’d like the Fizzics pour.

Apparently, though, I wasn’t the only one that saw the program, as one of the members of our beer group, that greatest of all Facebook beer groups, Honest Craft Beer Reviews, expressed similar sentiments about wondering if this was worth the money. I got the idea to ask Fizzics to send me one for review in the beer group and here on guruofbrew.com, and the rest is history. You now know that I received my system at no charge from the manufacturer, and can take that into account when reading this review.

Along with that disclaimer, I will let you now that in the spirit of Honest Craft Beer Reviews (and Honest Craft Beer Dispenser Reviews) I always make a donation to charity when I receive freebies from manufacturers for the purpose of review. That way, everybody wins, and the reviews stay honest, because there really are no freebies. Hence, I donated $20 each to two very worthy charities, Summit Quest here in Georgia and their noble efforts to help kids and their families affected by cancer, and the American Red Cross.  

When I unboxed my Fizzics, it arrived complete with batteries installed and two Fizzics logo glasses. It was a breeze to set up, out of the box and 5 minutes later I was using it. The main canister snaps onto the base, attach the tap handle, insert the anti-microbial drip mat into the base and Bob’s your uncle.

The very first beer I poured from the system was a bottle of Great Lakes Oktoberfest. To use the Fizzics, you merely place your container into the unit, and then run the hose into the container. The Fizzics will hold bottles up to 25.6 ounces, cans, and even 32-ounce and 64-ounce growlers. I was able to fit all of these into the chamber. The chamber is insulated, too, so it will keep your bottles, cans or growlers cold up to 12 hours according to the manual.

Now, the instructions say to decant to the first two thirds of your glass while pulling the tap forward and then the last third pulling it backward. It's the latter that stimulates the carbonation and forms the head. As you see I got more head than I wanted from my first pour, so I might need to adjust that ratio. The head is insanely creamy and indeed is hard to tell from draft beer. I noticed that in addition to generating a superior head the Micro Foaming action also beats up the aroma. The nose here was bursting with juicy malt, more so than after the head faded.

I tried two more beers in the Fizzics before doing the side by side with the Guinness Antwerpen Stout, the next two in cans. The device was able to decant all the contents of the cans and bottles. With the second beer, Doctor Cougar Saison with Brett, I got the same intensification of the aroma; indeed, the nose was exploding with funky Brett character. I just wanted to smell it forever.

In addition to the smoother body, thicker, fuller and longer lasting head and creamier texture, all the beers that I poured from the Fizzics left a thick layer of Brussels lacing on the sides of my glass. You can see the difference in the lacing between the Fizzics pour and traditional pour of my Guinness.

I like that the Fizzics is battery-operated rather than corded. That makes it very portable and easy to take out to my beer garden, out to my garage, to a party to impress my friends, or when tailgating.  The Fizzics is easy to clean, too, just place a glass of water in the unit and run it through to clean the line. I do this between each pour. The unit comes apart easily to clean as well.

Though touted as bringing draft beer taste to bottled and canned brew, the the results remind me of nitro widget beers in the smooth creaminess it imparts. The head is not quite as long lasting as nitro but the beers are smooth and easy drinking, perhaps less of a carbonation bite because the Fizzics whips it up.

One downside I found is it’s hard to gauge when to flip the tap at times, and getting just the right amount of head rather than too much or too little may take you several pours to figure out. Don’t run out of beer before you tap back to form the creamy head!

This isn’t the first home-draft system I have used. While I don’t have a keg fridge (I have a Taco Mac within walking distance from my home), I do have a Drink Tank Growler with CO2 keg cap and tap (see here) and a Krupps Beertender as well. To be fair, they are all different animals, really designed for different things. But they are all designed to deliver or emulate draft beer.

In it’s favor, the Fizzics uses no CO2 cartridges like my drink tank. That’s because the Fizzics technology stimulates the existing carbon dioxide in your beer, saving money. The downside? Unlike my drink tank, you can’t charge a half growler of beer to keep it fresh. But again, that’s not what this system was designed for.

Now for the bad news: the price. Amazon sells this for $149.99; Target and Best Buy for about the same. Comparing to my drink tank (which was about $100 complete) and my Krupps ($99) that isn’t too outlandish. I’ll confess that I think $99 is a better price point for this product, in line with the other products I own. I think $149 isn’t outrageous, but if I had tried it and had to buy one, I would wait for the price to come down to the $100 range.

Will the Fizzics system stop me from going to Taco Mac for fresh draft beer? No, it won’t. But I will be using it to decant my bottled beer at home, or a lot of it anyway. It won’t replace my Drink Tank, either, for growlers I’m not going to drink in one night, but I would definitely use it for 32-ounce growlers. Some styles (like hefeweizens where I normally rouse the yeast) I would not use it for. Still and all, my skepticism has been disproven, and the bottom line is I find the Fizzics system a tasty new way to drink my beer at home.

Glad I tried it?  T

Would I rebuy it??