Yep, Forged Stout is his core beer (only?).
Some people were asking about Advent calendar boxes. Just got this via email:
Sadly, Porterhouse's beers have been in steep decline for a long time now and with YKW owning the brewery I'll not be wasting my money in the hope of an improvement.
No more Wrasslers is very disappointing. It will be interesting to see if Forged has any sort of success. If it fails to take off I can't see him holding onto the brewery simply to supply kegs to his own pubs.
In a similar note, the stout market is showing signs of opening up slightly. BrewDog are reporting good sales of Black Heart and I noticed in Tesco at the weekend that Camden Stout (Ab InBev) has appeared. No doubt Heineken will have another go at creating a stout brand they can start flogging to their tied pubs too.
I think these things are more flexible up your way than they are down here. If anything, I think Guinness has consolidated its position in recent years: Dublin pubs that don't serve Guinness are rarer than they used to be.
Yeah 100%, I was thinking more in terms of Britain. Can only think of 1 pub up here that sells Beamish instead of Guinness.
Ireland will follow the trend eventually though. The macros won't leave Diageo to it forever.
"Easy drinking" stouts like Camden and Island Edge are doing awful damage by reinforcing the idea that other stouts are just cheap knock offs of Guinness.
It's still very rare outside of a craft pub to find a stout that is not more of a brand than a beer.
Replicating Guinness is exactly what they are aiming for though.
Whatever happened to Fuller's London porter? I used to enjoy the odd bottle of that from Tesco but haven't seen it in ages.
They still make it, but does Fuller's have a current Irish importer? Is Pride still on sale here? I haven't noticed it in ages.
They are going far more bland than Guinness with their attempts. It's all stout for people who don't like stout.
Possibly one of the many UK beers dropped of shelves post Brexit.
I've not tried the Camden stout yet but I didn't really think Island's Edge was much worse. Guinness is the textbook example of stout for people who don't like stout.
Islands Edge perfectly drinkable IMO.
It's drinkable but it's boring. There isn't much flavour to it compared to the established big names.
On a blind tasting I found it to have a very similar level of flavour to Beamish, Guinness and Murphy's. Murphy's always sticks out a bit because of the chocolate malt, but the others are much of a muchness.
Rare I've ever met a macro beer that isn't perfectly drinkable.
It's not really a good advertisement for what a craft (or fake craft) stout can be though.
Ditto. On more than one occasion I've cycled through Beamish-Murphys-Guiness when out and about. An Irish Trinity, you might call it. Has confused the barman at least once, when I ordered a Murphys after putting down an empty Beamish class.
Speaking of nitro stouts, Wicklow Wolf have joined the party.
Just had a pint. It's not bad. Not a million miles from O'Hara's Stout, I'd say.
Recommendations for All Blacks tmro night?
Still a lot to be said for a large bottle (off the shelf) if you're in a macro only pub...
One each of Boundary, O'Hara's, Mescan and Treaty 😁
They invariably offer you a weedy little glass with it though 😕
I have a radical solution to that problem: I ask them for a pint glass instead. Haven't been refused yet 😊
I have the opposite problem of constantly getting Erdinger served with a generic nucleated pint glass which just ends up like one of those black smoke fireworks.
Yeah I know but it's a pain albeit a minor one.
On the subject of silly bartender behaviour, a couple of months ago I ordered a bottle of IPA and was asked did I want ice in the glass!?!
Last year I ordered a brandy in a central Dublin hotel and it came in the correct glass but, without asking, swamped in fking ice. Can't get the staff... 🙄
Often it's the managers you can't get. There is little training and absolutely no product knowledge done in most pubs. In the worst cases the manager has an open disdain for anything outside the core range.
Some young one who has only ever drank fruity ciders and Jagerbombs is just expected to guess if there are no senior staff around.
I ordered a brandy and port once. Got served a brandy in a brandy glass and a half pint glass of port, both full of ice 😂.
Being offered a glass of ice with any bottle of beer is fairly common in Donegal. I worked in a pub growing up and I'd say the majority of people drinking Coors Light or Miller would have taken ice with them.
Erdinger is the only pint I've ever been served with ice already in it, came from a tap as well. I asked him to take it out and top it up, about 1/3rd of the glass was taken up when he'd started pouring it I'd say. In fairness to him, he said they'd had a load of Austrians in recently and they'd told him that was how it was drunk over there. He just gave me a brand new pint. I thought he was mixing up Austria and Germany but, nope, that's how I've remembered which country it was.
I've had looks from bar staff when requesting a wheel of orange in pints of blue moon, even though it is printed on the glass as a suggestion.
There's a Kerry barman in one of my locals who INSISTS on a three part pour for Guinness (lovely pint, in fairness).
There's an apocryphal story about Noctor's in Sherriff Street, where someone ordered a pint and a whiskey chaser. He asked for ice in the whiskey, but was told "sorry pal.......we don't do cocktails".
