Nitro’s Next: The Rise of Nitro Beers

By Cool Material

Nitro beers are far from new, but the category is getting a lot of hype in the U.S. thanks to big brewers like Samuel Adams and Founders releasing their respective Nitro Beer Project and Nitro Draft Series. And while it might not be a noble gas, nitrogen definitely results in noble beers.

The vast majority of the beer you’ve consumed in your lifetime is force-carbonated. It’s a method in which additional CO2 is dissolved into the beer before it’s bottled, kegged, or poured directly into my cupped hands. The result is beer that’s fresh for much longer than the cask ales of ye olden days. That doesn’t mean there aren’t options beyond additional carbonation though, like say… nitrogenation. But what is nitro beer?

Guinness is the most well known nitro beer on the market, even if you never realized that’s what made it different. There’s a good reason for their status, too. They invented nitro beer. In the 1950s, Michael Ash had the brilliant idea that beer could be made using nitrogen, and he was hired by Guinness to make it happen. The process took 4 years to perfect, but in 1959, pints of Guinness began using nitrogen to achieve the creamy taste and signature cascading effect for which it’s known.

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