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Ireland topped Group C with a perfect record, thanks mostly to their range of stouts. Today they come up against a French side always fancied to get out of a group including Sweden and Ukraine. The Irish will send up Guinness Foreign Extra Stout to try and see them through to the semi-finals, while the French will rely on a beer from Alsace called Meteor. I haven’t had the Meteor, but it would want to be good as the Irish haven’t missed a beat all tournament.
 Guinness Foreign IRELAND Export Stout 7.5% |
Right away you can see this difference in this beer compared to normal Guinness. The head is much darker, for one but the real difference is in the flavour. It’s much more intense, this is like a nice proper craft stout. It’s fantastic on a cold winters afternoon!
Meteor was quite a disappointing lager. It’s got some beer characteristics to it but not many. The flavour is incredibly thin and quite metallic, the one saving grace is that the beer drinks well. Still I don’t think I’d buy it again, it’s pretty average. |
 Meteor FRANCE Euro Pale Lager 4.6% |
To say there are better beers than Meteor would be an understatement, it’s really not that good at all. The Irish beer ran all over the top of them, Guinness as usual proved it really is a class above. If you haven’t had the Foreign Extra Stout before, go out and get one! You will be amazed by the change of intensity of flavour from the normal one. A comfortable win for Ireland was the only fair result.
At the beginning of the tournament I tipped France as a team to make the final, that was sort of dependent on them winning their group as they now come up against Spain… I don’t think it’s going to happen now, Spain are looking in imperious form and I can’t see the French beating them. Rami and Mexes are by far the weakest link in the French team and the quick Spanish players are going to cut them to shreds. 3-1 win to Spain.
