Hot Press Craft Beer Special: Reasons To Be Beer-Ful

Forget the 0.3% increase in Eurozone GDP, Dublin house prices being up 7.5% or the 1,500% profit Spurs stand to make on Gareth Bale: the only percentage that matters is the 42.5% rise in Irish craft beer consumption this past year.

With the jump in sales over the next 12 months likely to be even bigger, expect plenty of smiling faces on September 5 when the Irish Craft Beer and Cider Festival (with a shot or two of whiskey thrown in for good measure!) returns to the Dublin RDS.
“It’s incredible what’s happening at the moment!” enthuses Reuben Gray, the newly appointed chairman of Beoir.Org, whose members will be staffing the four-day homage to the not so humble hop. “There are 12 new breweries that have either launched recently or are in the advanced planning stages. We’re not quite Belgium yet, but we’re definitely moving in the right direction.”
Indeed, since Hot Press’ last beer supplement in June, we’ve welcomed Mountain Man Brewing, Kinsale Craft Brewery, Brú Brewery, Holy Mountain Brewery, Muckish Mountain Brewery and 9 White Deer into the world, and seen the Franciscan Well, Galway Bay Brewery and Kinnegar Brewing majorly step-up production. Also on their way are 7 Windows, Cotton Ball, Limerick Lady Brewing, Red Hand, St. Mel’s, White Hag and the Wicklow Brewing Company. Phew!
“A lot of the new start-ups are guys who’ve been homebrewing to a very high standard and thought, ‘Right, let’s have a go at turning my hobby into a business’,” continues Reuben who’s also the man behind taleofale.com. “If you’re unemployed you’re entitled to do this government-funded Skillnet course. They fly in this well-known UK brewer, Tim O’Rourke, who’s a beer encyclopedia. A number of the brewers who’ve popped up over the past few months would have done that course. It’s a brilliant development.”
Details of upcoming Skillnet Taste 4 Success courses for people wanting to start out in the industry, and Craft Brewers Training for existing practitioners looking to upskill can be found on page 79. Tim O’Rourke will be at the RDS to launch his The Good Craft Brewery Guide: Ireland.
Along with ‘homers’ going into full-scale commercial production, Reuben has detected some other emerging Irish craft brew trends.
“People have seen how successful BrewDog are in the UK and upped their game in terms of logos and how they promote their beers. It’s a crowded marketplace, so things like t-shirts and branded glasses are important to get yourself noticed.
“You also have the likes of The Brown Paper Bag project, who commission their beers individually. They’ve just launched Doxie, a 5.4% ABV Blond Wheat Beer, which was brewed in Belgium using traditional Belgian techniques. 20 or 30 of us got sent bottles to blind taste at the same time on Twitter. Everyone had their own hashtag and it turned into a real online event. I think we’re going to see more and more clever marketing like that.”
With the proliferation of new breweries, Reuben is hoping for a revival of Ireland’s once thriving hop-growing industry.
“You can still find hops growing wild in Co. Kilkenny, which is where things would have been centred 60 or 70-years ago. They’d have been similar to the varieties you get around Kent, which is the UK’s main hop area. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t work again as a cash crop.
“Someone who’s ahead of the posse,” he continues, “is Cuilan Loughnane, who runs the White Gypsy brewery in Templemore. Every now and again he does a small-scale Emerald Pale Ale that’s the only 100% Irish beer because it uses hops from his own garden.”
White Gypsy was also the first Irish brewery to go the crowd-funding route.
“They did it a year ago and it went very well for them. We’ve done a crowd-funding thing ourselves, which raised €1,000 for us to commission a beer from the Kinsale Brewery. ”
Reuben is currently applying the finishing touches to a Beoir.Org membership incentives scheme.
“We’ll be rolling that out over the next few months,” he enthuses. “Membership is €10 for which you already get half-price admission to the upcoming Irish Craft Beer and Cider Festival and the St. Patrick’s Day one at the IFSC. That’s your money back straight away.”
Something I’ve noticed covering the Irish beer beat for Hot Press – it’s a tough job etc. etc. – is the wonderful camaraderie that exists between brewers.
“It’s one of the few industries where if you have a piece of equipment that breaks down you can call the fella nearest to you and if they’ve a spare they’ll send it right up,” Gray concludes. “They regard themselves as comrades in arms rather than rivals.”