Calorie Counting with Sir Arthur Guinness

A couple of months ago, Colleen and I were having a discussion and the topic steered toward calories. Neither of us are calorie counters, but it was stated that Guiness had less calories ounce for ounce than Corona.

I looked into the matter using Google and thought this would make an excellent blog post. In order to give proper credit for this, I would like to acknowledge that these numbers came from RealBeer.com. You may notice that we have a link to them on the side bar. They are really an excellent resource. We also link to RateBeer.com as that is also a fantastic place for beer reviews. The list below is a sampling of beers on the RealBeer website with their associated calories and percent alcohol. A complete listing can be found here. I did not include light beers, since that is an unfair comparison. The main reason that some mainstream beers were included is so you can compare against well known (and possibly lesser) alternatives.

Beer Name	Calories (per 12 oz bottle)	Percent Alcohol (ABV)
Guiness Draught	125	4.1%
Yuengling Lager	135-140	4.9%
Beck's	143	4.8%
Budweiser	143	5%
Killian's	143	4.9%
Coors Original	148	5%
Corona Extra	148	4.6%
Fuller's London Pride	156	4.7%
Miller High Life	156	4.7%
Sam Adam's Boston Lager	160	4.9%
Heineken	166	5%
Blue Moon White	171	5.6%
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale	171	5.6%
Anchor Porter	205	5.6%

I think a lot of people would find this list surprising, since the closest beer in color to Guinness is the Anchor Porter. Guinness beats quite a few beers that are both lighter in taste and color. Some of the reason is due to the fact that Guinness is lower in alcohol, hence why it doesn't get you drunk very easily - heavy on the stomach and low in alcohol. Alcohol provides empty calories, and you may notice that there is, generally, a trend with the beers above in terms of percent alcohol and calories. There are other factors at play in the calorie total (i.e. adjuncts, malts, length of the brewing process), but that would be a post better provided by someone with a background in nutrition.

During my Google searching on the subject, I came across a similar article here that you may find interesting as well.

Cheers,
Paul