BALTIMORE — As excitement brews for the 150th Preakness Stakes, Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Baltimore is raising a glass with a limited-edition beer: the Preakness 150 Lager.
Guinness and Preakness are partnering for the third consecutive year. The brewery is rolling out just 300 cases — 7,200 cans — of this exclusive lager.
Maryland First Lady Dawn Moore visited the Guinness Open Gate Brewery where she got a firsthand look at the operation, poured herself a cup and shared in the celebration.
“It is just so exciting to see a Maryland-based company that is creating jobs and opportunity,” said First Lady Moore. “Guinness is coming together with Preakness. It's bringing people together and celebration and so I'm just excited about all of the opportunity that we have to be together in this moment.”
The beer itself is a special take on their fan-favorite rice lager.
“I think rice, for a lot of people, they’re like, ‘Wait a minute, why are you putting rice in beer?’” said Ryan Wagner, Guinness National Ambassador. “Rice is an amazing ingredient. It adds a beautiful kind of floral aroma, but it’s also a very simple sugar, so it ferments completely out, leaving the kind of beer that’s dry and crisp and very thirst-quenching.
Guinness unveils limited-edition Preakness 150 Lager toasting to milestone
But fans will need to act fast. Once it’s tapped out, that's it.
“Hyperlimited,” Wagner explained. “If you see it, grab it because it’s not going to be around very long.”
The Preakness 150 Lager will be available at a few pubs and bars around the city, Guinness Open Gate Brewery and Pimlico Race Course starting the week before Preakness.
“This beer, I think, is really at the heart of what Preakness is, what Maryland is,” Wagner said. “This is the beer for the working person — a blue collar beer, a rice lager. It’s beer at the dawn of time kind of stuff. We wanted this to appeal to as broad an audience as possible because when you think about Maryland, we’ve got people coming from all over to check out what the state — and Baltimore — have to offer during Preakness.
