Brewpubs

beardybrewer

I came across an article in the NY Times on brewpubs in Ireland.

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/travel/18journeys.html?pagewanted=all

I've been to the Porterhouse numerous times and its always a treat. Anyone been to the others or are there any missing from the list?

guildofevil

My favourite is the Porterhouse, but I have also been to Messrs. Maguire in Dublin, the Franciscan well, in Cork and the Kinsale brewing company.

Messrs. Maguire have nice beers, but I can't stand the pub. It is an illustration of everything that is wrong with the trendy Dublin pub. It's OK during the day, but at night, they seem to jack up the volume of the ThumpThumpThump “music”, every half hour, so it is a couple of decibels past the threshold of pain, by about 10.

The Franciscan well, in Cork is a nice spot. Good beer, nice staff, great beer garden, nice crowd. The down sides are that they don't serve late and they don't do food.

Kinsale brewing company have a tiny little pub attached to the brewery and I was only there during the day, while down that neck of the woods this summer. I did a fairly comprehensive post of my experience there on another forum, so I'll paste it here out of pure laziness:

From http://www.realbeer.com/discussions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12515

guildofevil wrote:

I actually went on that tour and I can't say I was too impressed.

I found that their beers were nothing to write home about.

I got a taste tray of ~25cl glasses and here is what happened.

They have a lager, which is OK, a Bohemian strong lager, which is quite nice, an ale, which tastes like a lager, wheat beer, which tastes like a lager (and which I'll rant about further separately) and an OK stout.

They have a little piece of card telling you all about their beers and frankly, as I was reading it and tasting the beers I thought to myself that there is something a bit odd going on. The alarm bells really started ringing when I got to the wheat beer.

The blurb I was reading talked about it being a hefeweizen and that the flavours of banana and clove came from the action of the yeast. It then started talking about the coriander and orange peel they add. Hefeweizen? Wit maybe?

Then I looked at the clear, lager like, substance in the glass. There were no notes of clove or coriander. There was no flavour of spice or citrus. This tasted like a lager and not a particularly good one at that.

Don't get me wrong. I like many lagers and frankly I would recommend their strong bohemian style lager, but if I order a Weiss bier I expect it to be cloudy, fruity and full bodied, with lots of flavour up front.

The next day I went and took the tour.

To be fair, I probably wasn't in a completely objective frame of mind at the outset, but this wasn't helped by the fact that the first thing I saw, upon entering the brew house, was large quantities of glucose, stacked up at the side.

The tour guide obviously didn't actually know what she was talking about and had been given a schpeel about brewing and some iffy information by whoever sent her out to do the job.

Her basic explanation of the process was OK and she showed us some pellet hops and malts. We also got to see all of the main parts of the brewery, but she kept saying things that just weren't quite right.

She told us that their yeast was secret, but that she can tell us that it is a bottom fermenting yeast; that they put cream into their stout, which rises to the top when you pour it, thus forming the distinctive creamy head; that when you ferment wheat it results in a lot more foam than barley, which is why they ferment it under pressure, unlike the rest of their beers; that they store all of their beers at near freezing for eight weeks, because that's what the reinheitsgebot says; that they put coriander in the wheat beer to ballance out the sweetness of the orange and on it went. I had to bite my lip quite a few times.

I also noticed that all of the fermentation vessels were showing temperatures between 12C and 14.5C. I just hope that there wasn't ale in any of those tanks. Mind you, it might explain the results if there was.

Séan

noby

Here is a fairly comprehensive list of breweries, microbreweries and brewpubs. It seems to be kept pretty much up to date. A few mentioned that I wasn't aware of.

bigears

The Porterhouse and Franciscan Well both have some nice brews. Franciscan Well have an APA called 'Purgatory' which is nice and hoppy with loads of Cascade aroma. They stock a couple of pubs in Dublin with their red ale, lager and weiss. The Gingerman on Fenian St. is one - 3.05 for a pint or 11 euro for a 4 pint pitcher which is great value. I think the other is in Ballsbridge but can't remember which... I stopped off at Biddy Earley's once last year and tried their 'Black Biddy' and 'Red Biddy'. I remember thinking at the time that the red was better than the stout but I'd had a few earlier so I can't be too sure. I never had a tour in any of the Irish microbrews/brewpubs so can't comment on how good they are. Judging by the comments on the Kinsale tour I would hope they are generally better than that; it helps if the tour is coducted by someone involved in the process.

noby

Each time I pass through Carlow on my way to Dublin I say to myself that the next time I'll have to stop for the tour.

Franciscan beers are available in a few Cork pubs too.