Diageo
Jon Turns 40 Celebration at Propagator and Scopa
I have to admit, becoming “The Craft Beer Guy” has certainly opened up many doors for me, including special events; and I get to meet a lot of interesting people, some of which I have developed friendships with. One of these people is Jonathan Urch, and these photos are from his 40th birthday celebration which began at Firestone Walker’s Propagator and ended down the street at Scopa Italian Roots, where Jon, his wife, and about 25 friends from around the world gathered to celebrate Jon’s 40th time of successfully navigating around the sun with a nice dinner.
I met Jon in October of 2015 at the Guinness Nitro IPA Advanced Tasting and dinner at The Larchmont in Hollywood. At the time, Jon was Diageo Customer Marketing Director. That evening was special in a couple ways; I was able to meet Jon and I was given the first Guinness Nitro IPA ever poured from a tap in the United States. As I have always been a Guinness fan, that was kind of a big deal to me. Continue reading
Guinness Beer Dinner Debuts Guinness Irish Wheat
On Tuesday evening, a couple dozen craft beer fans, social influencers and Guinness beer ambassadors met in Los Angeles at the Salt’s Cure restaurant to participate in the debut of the latest creation coming from Open Gate Brewery at St. James’s Gate, Guinness Irish Wheat.
Anyone that really knows me knows that my desert island beer is Guinness Stout, so whenever I am invited to try anything new from Guinness, you can be sure I will do my best to be there.
Guinness Irish Wheat is probably best described as a hefeweizen created with 100% wheat grown in Ireland and the same Guinness yeast found in every pint of Guinness Draught. My initial sip of Irish Wheat was crisp and seemed slightly lemony/citrusy flavor which was followed by subtle clove with a banana finish. My immediate thought was that this was the perfect time of year to release this beer as it comes across as very light compared to your standard creamy pint of Guinness; I was not the only one to suggest that this would be a very good beer to drink after mowing the yard or while grilling burgers and steaks in the back yard. I would go so far as to suggest that this might be one of the few beers I would consider drinking from a bottle at a barbecue. Continue reading
Guinness Nitro IPA Advanced Tasting & Dinner at The Larchmont
These photos were taken at the advanced tasting of Guinness’ new Nitro IPA which was held Thursday evening at The Larchmont restaurant in Los Angeles. The event was put on by Taylor Strategy and featured Guinness Beer Ambassador, Keith Dunne and Diageo Customer Marketing Director, Jonathan Urch. While I am the Craft Beer Guy, we all had to start somewhere; for me, it was Guinness Draught. The fact of the matter is that if I was going to be stuck on a desert island and could only have one beer for the rest of my life, Guinness please.
For every article you read here about a beer dinner or special release I attend, there are probably five or six invitations I turn down; especially if it requires my driving to Los Angeles. When I got the invite to attend the Guinness Nitro IPA advanced tasting and dinner I put aside my disdain for rush hour traffic and accepted the invitation.
As Guinness has been doing these tastings around the country, I started seeing comments and links to articles about the experiences of others that had tried the Nitro IPA over the past week or so. Admittedly, the reviews were not exactly glowing but I am not the type to judge a beer by what someone else thinks (which is why this site is not a beer review site), and I had no idea if a guy from Philly even knew what a good IPA tasted like. Continue reading