Have We Got Brews For You: The Hop Press Craft Beer Round-Up

When Hot Press ran its first craft beer special in 2011, Kevin Thornton, Gavin Glass, Fair City star Ciara O’Callaghan and Mal Tuohy from the Riptide Movement helped us drink to the fact that the 20th Irish microbrewery, the very fine Metalman in Waterford, had just opened.

That’s small beer (sorry!) compared to the 100-plus breweries that are now spread around the 32 counties. With at least a dozen more getting ready to join the party, Ireland is now truly the land of Saints, Scholars and Growlers.
The rude health of Irish beer was evident last week at the Alltech Craft Brews & Food Fair in the Convention Centre where a whopping 46 brewers, distillers, blenders and cider-makers were exhibiting their wares, among them the boys from St. Mel’s Brewing in Longford.
“I looked around the exhibition floor on the Friday and thought, ‘Wow, this really has grown into a proper, thriving industry,’” enthuses their MD Eoin Tynan. “What I loved is that everybody was going round to each other’s stands and comparing notes. Even though it’s so much bigger than it was a few years ago, that ‘we’re all in this together’ camaraderie within the brewing community still exists.”
If you’d told Eoin a few years ago that he’d be a brewery owner, he’d have looked at you very oddly.
“Myself and my business partner, Liam Hanlon, went to college together in Maynooth,” he recalls. “He was studying Biotech and I was doing Roman Civilisation and History. He went on to do his Masters in Brewing & Distillation in Edinburgh, while I was an archaeologist for a while, and then went and did a Business Masters in UCD. I gave Liam, who’d come back from Scotland wanting to set-up a brewery, a hand with his business plan and out of that came St. Mel’s.”
A lot of those brewer conversations at the Convention Centre centred around how the craft industry is going to grow its current 2-3% share of the Irish market.
“The aim over the next four or five years would be to get into double-digits,” Eoin resumes. “There was also a lot of talk about exporting. The places we’re trying to get into at the moment are the UK, Italy and France. There was a Russian character walking around the Alltech Fair looking to pick up a stable of beers and bring them over. Ireland’s reputation abroad for great food products has now extended to our beers. The scope for export’s massive but you have to know what you’re doing.”
Among the brews flowing freely at the St. Mel’s stand was their Belgian-style 5.2% ABV Brown Ale, a former Hot Flavours Tipple of the Fortnight, and their 5% Helles Lager Through Neomexicanus Wild Desert Hops festival special.
“Liam follows all the American beer blogs, and read about these small-batch hops which are grown at a Benedictine monastery in the New Mexico desert. The harvest usually sells-out as soon as it’s gathered, but we managed to get our hands on some and the results have been pretty spectacular. Our next seasonal is a Spring Bock and our autumn 2015 IPA proved so popular that we’re making it available all-year round. Some of our beers have gone into SuperValu and done really well, so there’s lots going on. We want to grow the business but still have fun.”
St. Mel’s shares its name with Longford’s landmark cathedral, which had to be rebuilt following a recent fire.
“A mad rumour got out that our brewery was in the basement of the church,” Eoin laughs. “We could have got the Bishop to bless the beer if that was the case but, sadly no, we’re actually in an industrial estate.”
Eoin and his colleagues were chuffed to return to Longford with a Dublin Craft Beer Cup 2016 Silver Medal for their 5% Beer Garden Wit seasonal.
The Cup itself went to Cellbridge’s Rye River for their 7.1% McGargles Francis’ Big Bangin’ IPA – the perfect riposte to the Cro-Mag elements who’ve criticised them for their past big brewery connections.
There was much celebrating on Lower Clanbrassil Street as 57 The Headline was deemed to be the Kentucky Ale Craft Beer Pub 2016.
“You can tell the bars that are run by beer lovers, and 57 The Headline’s one of them,” Eoin Tynan proffers. “They’ve been really supportive of us and other small breweries who’ve needed to get a foot in the door.”
History was also made when 729 people set a new Guinness record for the world’s largest beer tasting.
“Not only were there 729 fans of craft beer in the room with me but they were from all over the world; Italy, Russia, Wales, the U.S.A and even Mexico and Brazil!” notes Dr. Pearse Lyons, the Alltech founder and president. “What a fantastic win for our festival and for Ireland.”
With the Mexican folk who previously held the record vowing to wrestle it back, there might have to be a repeat performance next year in Dublin.
Elsewhere at the Convention Centre, Team Hop Press got a masterclass in cask-tapping from the White Hag crew whose 10.2% Barrel Aged Black Boar Imperial Oatmeal Stout tastes as good as it sounds; a guided tour of the Kelly’s Mountain Brew range, which includes a particularly moreish 4.5% Justice Pale Ale; our first taster of Notorious, the new 5% Red IPA seasonal from O’Hara’s; a reminder of why we’re such mega fans of MONT Irish Mountain Beer; sore sides talking to White Gypsy’s Cuilan Loughnane whose wisecracks are as top notch as his beers; a last 2016 quaff of Wicklow Wolf’s 5.1% A Beer Called Rwanda coffee-infused brown ale seasonal, which is down to to its last few bottles, and another delicious snorter of Thin Gin from Blackwater Spirits, the Waterford outfit fronted by Timmy Ryan and Nicola Beresford who met whilst co-hosting the WLR FM breakfast show.
Wicklow Wolf, Wicklow Brewery, Metalman, The Porterhouse, Rascal’s, St. Mel’s, Trouble Brewing, The White Hag, O Brother and a 20th birthday celebrating O’Hara’s are among those who’ll be doing it again from March 16-20 as the Irish Beer & Whiskey Fest returns to the RDS Dublin.
Bag yourself tickets for a tenner at irishbeerandwhiskeyfestival.com
With interest in micro brewing at an all-time high, two companies have come up with ingenious devices that allow you to get in on the act yourself.
The first is Pico, “the world’s smallest and easiest to use craft beer brewing appliance”, which uses ingredient pods created by dozens of breweries around the world. Hailed as the “Nespresso of beer”, it looks like a microwave, has a two-hour brew cycle and can be pre-ordered ahead of its May release for $699 from picobrew.com.
From Belfast with much love comes Brewbot, a 4ft square machine aimed at bars, restaurants and hotels who want to go the microbrew route. At £6,900 a go it’s not cheap, but can brew 30 litres at a time and is generally up to pro spec. If you fancy a splurge, brewbot.io has all the details.
Of course, we mustn’t forget our other friends in the North who’ve been fighting the good fight with the same gusto as their southern counterparts.
In an admiral display of beery wanderlust, the seven punk rock and martial arts-loving friends who set up Belfast’s Farmageddon Brewery Co-Op – their 5.2% India Export Porter is nectar – have raised over £100,000 to explore new markets such as China and Mexico.
Readers of our Hot Flavours column will also know of the love we have for Derry’s Walled City Brewery whose Bramley Apple & Rhubarb Love LocAle is one of the most extraordinary (in a good way!) Irish beers we’ve ever tasted.
The Pig House Smoked Beer Pulled Pork dished up in their restaurant underlines why such top Irish chefs as Dylan McGrath, Niall Hill, Eunice Power, Paul Flynn, Rachel Allen and the aforementioned Kevin Thornton are increasingly using beer as an ingredient. The Stout Bread, which dungarvanbrewingcompany.com/with-food has the recipe for, is all kinds of awesome.
The final word goes to Eoin Tynan who notes: “The vast majority of Irish craft breweries are just mates who got together. The industry’s expanding and getting more sophisticated, but it still feels organic rather than corporate.”
We’ll drink to that!