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Holed up and shipping out
L: Cum Grano Salis, R: Jasmine IPAMy final post from former Yugoslavia wraps up Ljubljana with the hotel and more train beers.But before that, an Irish bar. It's not that we were desperate for a pint...
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Not Joyce's choices
Spot the Theresianer lighthouseBeer was not top of the agenda for my visit to Trieste, and it's not really a beery city, though like any city of any size these days, there are pockets of a scene. It's...
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Fancy meeting you here
Finishing up my blogging about Trieste today with the very non-local beers I found. There's something of a Germanic theme running through the set.Up at the castle, for instance, the handy little...
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Drouth in Venice
The trip rounded off with a couple of days in Venice, one of my favourite cities despite the bad rap it gets from people who did it wrong. The beer scene here has expanded somewhat since my last visit...
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Lightweights!
What happened to those palate-pounding Thornbridge beers like St Petersburg, and to making yourself Jaipoorly? The Derbyshire stalwart seems to be represented over here by much lighter fare of late,...
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Hardy boys
Marks & Spencer has always been a useful seam for this blog to mine. It now carries a galaxy of own-brand beers, most of which I've never tried but I feel secure that there's always a post on the...
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The rule of three
Local brewery Third Barrel has had a good run of new release beers across its constituent brands in recent months. Time for a catch-up, albeit an incomplete one.We begin with the core label, and their...
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A long spoon
JD Wetherspoon's arrival in Dublin city centre meant I was able to get a head start on the 2019 Autumn Real Ale Festival. The Silver Penny, on its first Festival, had one of the collaborations on right...
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Haze on, haze off
It's been a while since the last in the O'Hara's Hop Adventure series, the sequence of single-hopped IPAs that Carlow Brewing have been turning out since 2015. But here's a new one, the sixth: Hop...
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Gearing up
It's been a while since the last one of these, so here's a rapid go-around of Irish breweries and their recent releases.Yet another Helles from Galway Bay appeared in September: Slow Lives. It may be...
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Home brewing and its consequences
For 2019 the National Homebrew Club moved its annual BrewCon conference from the salubrious surrounds of Smock Alley Theatre to the more bohemian event space of Rascals Brewing. It all worked rather...
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Prepare the way!
The second British multinational to set up a brewery on the Liffey is due to open its doors very soon. BrewDog Outpost Dublin will be a neat little (1166 sq.m) bar, restaurant and brewery, situated at...
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New Format
The newest brand in Irish brewing, for now, is The Format, the creation of Mark Nixon, former head brewer at Trouble Brewing and latterly Hope. Everyone who has paid attention to the local beer scene...
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'Dam quickly
A late-September long weekend in the Netherlands began with a short visit to Amsterdam. Delayed flights and cancelled trains meant I was more than ready for a beer on stepping out of Centraal. First...
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One day, three mouths
I came away from the 2018 Borefts Beer Festival at De Molen feeling it had been a bit of a chore. Not enough to sack off 2019 completely, however, but we decided that one of the two days would be...
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On trend
You get a decent selection of beer types at the Borefts Beer Festival. I tend to skew towards sour and funky while the missus prefers strong, dark and sweet, but there's generally a good line in pale...
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Time to get silly
With one eye on the clock and one on the ABVs it was time to bring the 2019 Borefts Beer Festival to a close.The first strong 'un comes from Poland's Browar Artezan and is called One of Each. Imperial...
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Rotters!
What do you mean there's no after party? My plan for the 2019 Borefts Beer Festival was to skip the Friday and use the spare day instead to go to the Borefts After Party held on Sunday at Kompaan in...
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On the reintroduction of wolves
There were no half measures in the relaunch that Wicklow Wolf just undertook. It centred around the big and shiny new brewery in Newtownmountkennedy, but also included a brand refresh, a format switch...
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What fresh Hells is this?
I regularly take a shortcut through the drinks section of M&S in the Jervis Centre, occasionally stopping to see what's on offer. As well as the own-brand beers, there are often mainstream ones not...
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