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A salutary lesson
It's one of my hobby-horse topics on The Session this month: beer travel. But Brian isn't letting us just drone on about where we went on our holidays, and there's certainly been enough of that on this...
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Dark days
Winter is nearly upon us, so time to look at a few of the recent additions to the Irish beer scene, released to tide us over until the brightness returns.Brú are newcomers to the seasonal circuit and I...
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New pubs for old
Dublin city centre is hardly saturated with good drinking opportunities though you don't need to look as hard as you once did for something decent on draught. We're not quite at the stage where you can...
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Gearing up
Alltech's beery foody extravaganza is coming back to Convention Centre Dublin for the third time at the end of February. To mark the beginning of the end of the planning phase, the company held a...
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Gone wild
Fuller's Wild River was introduced as the brewery's summer seasonal in 2012, pitched at the whitewater rafters of Chiswick. A batch of just-past-date bottles showed up at DrinkStore a while back and as...
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Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
I can't help but feel that Diageo have fashioned a rod for their own backs with The Brewers Project. It's easy to read it as promising things that it was never really intended to deliver, and that's...
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Getting a rise
Yesterday's post was about Diageo's attempt to take advantage of Ireland's growing appetite for new beers. It's far from the only major player in the country to do so. In fact, they're all at it....
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Barrel of laughs
Quite a convoluted back story comes with the new one from Franciscan Well. The four-pack their PR people sent me was accompanied by a leaflet explaining the concept of the chaser. The beer, Jameson...
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Brown out
I don't know if it's entirely fair to be including the fourth-biggest brewing multinational in this week's series. C&C recently set up their own brewery at headquarters in Clonmel where they're...
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'Spoons, man
One of the more momentous events of the past year was the arrival of British pub chain JD Wetherspoon to Ireland. The original surprise announcement was made in August 2013 and news came through by the...
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A session session
The current American fashion for session IPA has started making itself felt in earnest in Ireland now. Following on the heels of Founders's exemplary All Day IPA, a slew of new ones from familiar US...
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Angry bird
There's a furious looking parrot on my bottle of Papegaei tripel, its rage sufficient to permeate the glass and cause the beer to foam violently as soon as the cap came off. It's a dark gold colour and...
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The customer is always
Ding has helpfully set out some options for this month's Session, on the topic of where we see ourselves within the beer 'scene' (his scarequotes). One of them leapt out at me straight away and it...
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Littlest Italy
A rapid sequel to my post a few months back about how the Wallace group of authentic Italian eateries have finally warmed to quality Italian beers. While I was still getting my head around them being...
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A very British oooh!
A handful of beers from the cutting edge of English brewing today, arriving courtesy of Richard.I'd never heard of Ellenberg's Brewery before, a short lived London-based operation that suspended...
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The curtain descends
Old Father Time is oiling down his scythe, ready to take a swing at 2014 and bring the year to close. I'm left with a scattering of beer tasting notes gathered over the year that I've yet to commit to...
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Hitting the ground running
Two late-2014 additions to the Irish brewing scene in today's post, both coming out of the traps with a prodigious range of first-run bottled beers.Co. Monaghan's first brewery (for a while, anyway)...
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Pack hunting
This bottle of Electric India arrived from BrewDog after I visited the brewery last August. Thanks guys! It's a 6.5% ABV saison, hopped with Nelson Sauvin and Amarillo. First appearances are innocent...
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Christmas with the Belgians
Merry Christmas! I hope Santa brought you everything you wanted. Or at least what you deserved. Some seasonal beers from Belgium today.First up is Hibernatus, from the makers of Lupulus. No style is...
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Gulpin'
A chance encounter with an American visitor to Dublin (cheers Jason!) left me with this bottle of Sculpin IPA from San Diego's Ballast Point. It's a beer I knew only by reputation and it's always fun...
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