Chris Morley of Mason’s Brewing looks ahead to Dublin Beer Festival

Precision, hard work and quality ingredients combine to glorious effect at Mason’s, purveyors of fine artisanal American beers who are rather wonderfully located in the Maine town of Brewer.

“Ironic, yeah,” laughs Mason’s founder Chris Morley. “We’re right across from the city of Bangor where Stephen King is from.

"He’s moved to southern Maine now, but we used to see him out all the time walking his corgis. I’ve ran into him a couple of times and he seems like a really nice guy.”

Chris’ career path is almost as fantastical as one of King’s novels.

“I was in law enforcement for thirteen years, which includes seven years on a special response team,” he tells me. “I got tired of getting shot at and blown up, so I left and took a banking job which I’m not sure was any better! I was a home brewer for twenty years and, after a trip out west, I came back to Maine and thought, ‘I think I’ll take a swing at this.’ A pretty stupid decision as I had no background in the commercial brewing and/or restaurant industry, but we’ve had a go at both and they’ve somehow worked out.”

Mason’s is the latest in a long line of celebrated Maine breweries.

“If you look at the genesis of the American craft beer movement, it sort of started in Maine with a handful of breweries like Gritty McDuff’s and D.L. Geary’s which both have fine Irish names. By no means am I saying my beer’s among the finest in the nation – I think it’s pretty good – but theirs is.

“When I started out,” Chris continues, “the established guys were more than happy to tell me what had and hadn’t worked for them. There’s a great camaraderie here between brewers.”

Bringing his beers to Ireland is a dream come true for Chris.

“When we started it was one of my goals because A). It’d save me money shipping beers to my brother who lives in Ireland and B). I wanted to be on the shelves alongside Galway Bay, O’Hara’s, Kinnegar and Lough Gill who are some of my favourite breweries in the world.

“Having previously done an Irish Blonde Stout with Chai and Vanilla with Lough Gill, I’m looking forward to seeing if we can do some more collaborations.”

The Mason’s Brewing Company range of beers manage to look as good as they taste.

 “We’ve been blessed to have such really cool can artists as Ben Bishop who started us off,” Chris reveals. “He also does a lot of the cover art for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and has the number one through six best-selling comic books right now. We’ve another guy, Gary Freeman, who used to do a lot of the covers for Heavy Metal magazine back in the ‘80s.

“The two beers we’re bringing to Dublin are Hipster Apocalypse which was the first can Ben did and Blueberry Ice Cream Ale, which is Gary’s first can.”

Our lips are smacking already!