Supporting craft breweries

I’ll add Western Herd’s Backbeat here as well. It’s quite nice. They do it in limited runs though. I hadn’t seen it in a while but delighted it’s back in stock.

https://www.westernherd.com/product/back-beat/

Not a fan of orange or hops in my beers, may give them a go though :D

Cheers, I'll check that out myself.

Interesting, I had assumed the range was English for some reason and never got around to checking.

Very true. Something else that has amazed me for the guts of about ten years now: Considering we are probably smack bang in the middle of Ireland's golden age for beer choice and range, there's a complete dearth of certain styles, loads missing from the market altogether. The entire market has been flooded with IPAs and similar to beat the band and everything else is missing out. Most people probably couldn't name 5 or 6 craft stouts, same with ciders, I struggled earlier with the wheat beers and I'm mad for the stuff. Good luck trying to get a proper marzen or kellerbier or Bitter or Pilsener etc. Even craft lagers were missing until very recently. Same with Saison or a lot of the Belgian styles.

Meanwhile, most could tell you 5 of 6 different types of pale ale, never mind the actual beers themselves......Pale Ale, IPA, NEIPA, Amber Ale, Golden Ale, Red Ale, Imperial IPA........Almost half of the taps in your typical GBB type pub have the words "ale" or "IPA" on them. You're lucky if you get 1 cider and 2 stouts.

It's a far cry from the dire situation we used to be in, where it was Guinness/Bulmers/Carlsberg/Bud/Harp and that's it, but jaysus lads, branch out a wee bit more.

I think you need to broaden your horizons slightly, especially on the Stout front. Almost every Irish craft brewery produces a stout, but you hardly ever see them in pubs that aren't actual craft bars, and I have my suspicions as to why that is. A certain market leader in Stout is happy for a pub to stock a craft IPA, but not a craft Stout, under threat of not getting a supply of the most popular stout.

As for branching out, again, broaden your horizons I'd say, the top Irish craft breweries regularly release all manner of different styles, granted they aren't "core range" but that's because they have to keep the lights on really - go into Underdog, Dudley's, Fidelity, Big Romance and have a look at the ranges there.

Over the years :

Furstenburg, Hoffmans, Fosters, Warsteiner, Harp, Miller were all popular in the last century. Probably loads more that I've forgotten about.

There's always been room for new lagers in the market - they might not all last, longterm, but they do better than stouts!

Ah yeah, I know they're out there but the point I'm making is they're still a very low number in comparison to the IPA revolution. And they're even fewer and further between if trying to get them on tap. One saison and a couple of seasonal marzens is pitiful when you look at their other offerings, which are essentially the same bar a few minor differences in bitterness/hoppiness. Plus, like I said earlier, most of these are relatively new. It was a good few years before they got any foothold while the IPAs dominated.

Even today, the lineup in Brew Dock or the Black Sheep is always about 50% IPA and other pale ales. One nitro stout and another solitary cider is poor showing, relatively speaking. IF I liked them more, maybe I wouldn't find it as annoying but e.g. Brewdog has 21 beers on tap and 11 of them fall into this category. Just seems like overkill but they wouldn't be stocking them if they weren't selling I s'pose.

Rockshore has the might of Diageo behind them, but in addition, a lot of their sales in my experience are to captive audiences - you can't get Hophouse 13 in the RDS at a Leinster match, but you can get Guinness and Rockshore. I've seen the same at outdoor gigs during the summer, too - Rockshore the only lager option.

I got the beer cloud advent box this year. Just starting into it. Had Body Riddle by Whiplash so far and liked it. Tonight was Rye River HopDrops IPA which wasn’t my thing. It tasted kind of dry which was unusual. Next up tomorrow is Ostara by GBB. Ostara is fine but I’m not its biggest fan.

I’ve noticed the beer selection has shrunk a good bit in the 2 SuperValus i frequent- even in the fairly diverse offie I go to.

wouldnt be at the IPAs much at all myself now- way more likely to get a German beers of some description- better on the head and stomach the next day I find- can’t go wrong with Paulaner/ Franziskaner

All the supermarkets grade their stores which has a big impact on availability of the more specialised stuff. Maybe things are going well round your way

Maybe you just got lucky then.

Wtf is a QIPA?