Irish Dry Stout

An Irish dry stout looks black and tastes of roast: coffee first, then dark chocolate or cocoa, with a bitterness that can run from balanced to sharp. Hold a glass to the light and you see garnet at the edges. On draught it arrives with a thick tan head and a creamy feel from the nitrogen in the pour; a bottle gives you the same flavours with a thinner head.

Where it comes from

Stout grew out of London porter: brewers called a fuller, stronger porter a “stout porter”. Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on a disused brewery at St. James’s Gate in Dublin on 31 December 1759, for £45 a year. He started brewing porter in the 1770s and in 1799 brewed his last ale, to make porter alone. Around 1810 the brewery added a “stouter kind of porter”.

Irish stout parted from London’s in the late 1800s, with darker malts and roasted barley. Guinness started using flaked barley after the Second World War and launched Guinness Draught in 1959, poured with nitrogen. Cans and bottles with a nitrogen widget followed in the late 1980s and 1990s. Ireland still has two schools: Dublin stouts, drier and more bitter from roasted barley, and Cork stouts, sweeter and less bitter, with chocolate malt.

How to serve it

Pour it into a nonic pint at 10–13 °C. Try it with oysters or ham, a sharp Irish cheddar or a chocolate dessert.

Next to its neighbours

An Irish stout is weaker than an Irish extra stout and blacker than an English porter, which runs brown. Roasted grain gives it the dark colour. At 3.8–5% alcohol, a dry stout often holds less than a Czech pilsner at 4.2–5.8%.

Irish Dry Stout in numbers

Classic example

Guinness

Original gravity

1.036–1.044

Final gravity

1.007–1.011

Food

Oysters, ham; Irish cheddar; chocolate desserts

Classic examples

Guinness Draught; Beamish Irish Stout; Murphy's Irish Stout; O'Hara's Irish Stout; Porterhouse Irish Stout

BJCP style

15B Irish Stout

Sources

Checked October 29, 2026.

1. 15B. Irish Stout, 2021 Beer Style Guidelines — Beer Judge Certification Program
2. Irish-Style Dry Stout — CraftBeer.com, Brewers Association
3. The Story of Guinness — Guinness Storehouse