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Cherishing the children equally
When you spend a lot of time watching the doings of small breweries, the behaviour of big breweries can seem a bit weird. Diageo, for instance, has two new beers out but looks to be treating them in...
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Luck of the draw
There was a raffle at the Beoir Christmas party at 57 The Headline, with a top prize of a box of Irish beers hand picked by the chairman Reuben. I never win anything so was very surprised when my...
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Here we are now
The theme for March's Session is Up-and-Coming Beer Locations and it would be remiss of me not to stay close to home for this one. Ireland really genuinely is an up-and-coming place to drink beer and...
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Hold, fold and punch
Boxing and poker are the themes for today's beers, though we're in Northern Ireland rather than Las Vegas. You can fit your own joke about fear and loathing in here.Ghrian is a 4.5% ABV dark golden ale...
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Lager vs. Ale
There's something very wrong-looking about Anchor beer packaged in a container other than their iconic stubby bottle. Even the veteran brewery's large-format bombers have retained the classic shape. So...
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The next round
I have yet to delve into the notes I brought home from three days of downright promiscuous beer speed-dating at the Alltech Brews & Food festival a few weeks ago. But among the events there have...
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Bakewell start
On the eve of Alltech Brews & Food 2015, Grand Cru beers held a meet-the-brewer session with Thornbridge in Against the Grain, tasting the classic line-up of Chiron, Jaipur and St Petersberg and...
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Events, dear boy
Alltech Brews & Food returned in spectacular fashion for 2015 at the end end of last month. Rumours of a dialled-down beer offer at the three-day event proved totally unfounded, with a host of...
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And not an Irish red to be seen
The arrival of new Irish breweries is always exciting, so I made sure to stop by the Wicklow Brewery stand at Alltech Brews & Food. I say "new": the brewpub on the caravan site in Redcross has been...
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What else you got?
Several established Irish breweries brought beers I'd never had before to the 2015 Alltech festival at the Convention Centre. Galway Hooker, for instance, has just launched a new bottled IPA called 60...
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States of mind
For a festival organised by a US-based company, we weren't exactly drowning in American beer at Alltech Brews & Food 2015. It took a bit of hunting to find what was there. Obviously, Alltech's own...
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Hungary for novelty
What got me most excited in the run-up to Alltech Brews & Food 2015 was the large number of Hungarian brewing companies listed to attend. It's far too long since I was last in Hungary so the...
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Grand tour
I mentioned the Alltech Dublin Craft Beer Cup in one of the earlier posts this week. Danish brewers Coisbo were outright winners for the second time in a row, with a barrel-aged version of the beer...
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Out for a couple
Wet night. Push the heavy front door of Alfie Byrne's. Across the threshold and down the steps. The back-and-forth buzz of conversation. And ping-pong. The bar glows at the centre of the dim room,...
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Crap, three ways
This trilogy of beers from Poland's Łomża brewery presents an interesting case study for students of lager (sure weren't we all, nudge nudge). The three are all the same style and 5.7% ABV strength,...
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Good things in small packages?
I had an interesting conversation with a brewer at a recent beer festival about bottle sizes. He pointed out that in the UK there's a tendency for breweries to use bottle size as an indicator of which...
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Funny place to bring a dog
Drinking in the RDS on St Patrick's Day is a proud Dublin tradition. Or at least it was until the early 1960s when the spoilsports in government made it legal for pubs to open, removing the necessity...
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Geeks bearing gifts
A couple of north American beers today, shared by generous fellow beer nerds.Nigel produced this bottle of Crooked Coast by Driftwood of British Columbia on a cross-country rail trip a few months back....
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Flight of the wolf
The Wicklow Wolf Brewing Company was kind enough to invite a Beoir delegation down to its headquarters in Bray for a look round and a run through the range. Established in 2014 by ex-home brewers...
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Hells angles
So slow is my transference of drinking experiences to this blog that it's possible to follow the evolution of individual beers, whole styles even, in single posts. Camden Town's Indian Summer was an...
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