I cannot stand metol either. I'm not allergic to it (which is a rare thing to say), but the shit will not dissolve if the concentration of sodium sulfite is "too high" - which basically means if there's any at all in the water when you add the metol, you're screwed.
Phenidone, OTOH, is the stuff you want to use: it's more potent of a reducing agent than Metol is and it doesn't cause contact dermatitis. Its only problem is it won't give you any contrast unless you put hydroquinone in the developer. (In the 1970s and 1980s there was a fad of shooting on microfilm...H&W Control film was panchromatic Agfa Copex Rapid, and Technical Pan was panchromatic Eastman microfilm. The only way they could get the contrast of those films down to something reasonable was to use a phenidone developer with just a tiny amount of hydroquinone in it.)
Now...how this "Guinness developer" and also the "coffee developer" some people use works: Serious darkroom geeks know there are three major b&w developing agents: metol, phenidone and hydroquinone. Hydroquinone is a "phenolic" compound - a hydroxyl group bonded to an aromatic hydrocarbon. There are also phenols in Guinness, coffee and wine - so if someone wanted to brew up a batch of Boxwineinol developer, it'd probably work. Now for the big problem with this shit: Phenolic agents give you a ton of contrast and they build heavy grain. Without a low-contrast agent (yup, phenidone) in your Guinness to mitigate the phenol, your pictures are going to come out looking like you shot on lith film, like you see here. It might be interesting to add 0.3 gram of phenidone and 15 grams sodium sulfite to a pint of well-shaken Guinness and do a little stand development.
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