Once You Hop You Can’t Stop

It’s a dirty job but somebody has etc. etc. Normally at four o’clock on a Monday afternoon I’d be having laughs and japes aplenty in Hot Press Towers, but Mr. Stokes, Sir has gone and handed me the arduous task of presiding over an artisan Irish beer-tasting session in Against The Grain, one of the capital’s new breed of gastropubs which has become a Mecca for barley, hop and malt fans.

My fellow swiggers with attitude are Michelin-starred chef and restaurateur Kevin Thornton, Fair City star Ciara O’Callaghan, Riptide Movement singer Mal Tuohy, HP snapper and Tarantella Fall bassist Graham Keogh and Lisa Hannigan guitarist and solo artist Gavin Glass who, along with Ms. H and the rest of the chaps, played a blinder last week on The Jay Leno Show.
The Hot Press members of the panel will only be awarding marks out of ten, with our guests doing the critiquing and, in Kevin’s case, giving a suggested food pairing.
If you never venture beyond your local you mightn’t have noticed, but over the past few years there’s been a beery revolution in Ireland with over a dozen microbreweries opening up. In many ways it’s like the 1976 punk explosion – young upstarts taking on household name brands who’ve dominated the market here since time immemorial. From the designing of labels to physically bolting together the brewing equipment, there’s a DIY “us against the world!” ethos not a million miles removed from the Smalltown Americas and Richter Collectives of this world.
Asked what’s special about an artisan brew, the head brewer at Dublin’s Messrs. Maguire brewpub, Melissa Camire proffers: “The personal care which goes into it. There’s no pressing buttons and letting the computer dump everything in. Here we carry the grain ourselves and measure everything out by hand. It’s a craft in the truest sense of the word.”
While Messrs. Maguire’s wares are only available from their own Burgh Quay pub – it’s a tough call but our fave is the Bock – the Dungaravan Brewing Company can be found in fine hostelries and offies nationwide. Launched in April 2010 by brothers-in-law Cormac O’Dwyer and Tom Dalton, their Copper Coast Red Ale, Black Rock Stout and Helvick Gold Blonde Ale have fueled many a fine Team Hot Press night out.
“It started where most good ideas start – in the pub,” laughs O’Dwyer who at 37 is four years his business partner’s senior. “We were complaining that all they had was the same stout and three lagers you get in every bar when Tom said, ‘What if…?’ I’d brewed up a few beers at home and been told by people that they were good enough to sell. It was a pipedream until within a few months of each other Tom and myself lost our respective jobs as a quantity surveyor and production manager in an electronics company. We decided, ‘We’ve nothing to lose now, let’s go for it.’
“It’s been a steep learning curve – I was producing 20 litres at a time as a home brewer, now it’s never less than a thousand. You really don’t want to be messing up a batch that size!”
Other recent start-ups include Eight Degrees Brewing (Midleton), the Burren Brewery (Lisdoonvarna), Metalman Brewery (Waterford), White Gypsy (Templemore), and Breweyed (Banagher) whose whisky barrel-conditioned 6.3% ABV Double IPA was one of the stars at the recent All-Ireland Craft Beer Festival in the Dublin RDS. Also on the recommended list are West Kerry Brewery (Ballyferriter), Franciscan Well (Cork), The Porterhouse, which is now bottling the beers it sells in its Dublin and Bray pubs, Bay Brewery (Galway), and Tempted? (Lurgan) who are flying the flag for Irish craft cider.
Anyway, it’s time to pop those bottle tops and go to work…