Ireland visit this week

Did you find what you were looking for or have any tips/recos for Ireland? I'm heading there soon.

 

If you can let me know where in the country you're planning to visit I should be able to help you out with some recommendations.

 

I'm heading out there on Saturday! Going Dublin, Cork, Killarney, Dingle, Galway back to Dublin.

Would love info on bottle shops!

 

Ok so this is probably going to be a long post but I’ll do my best to give some good information.



I live in Dublin so will be best placed to give you information on places there, I’ll do my best on the others as well.



Dublin



Right so in terms of bars Dublin is improving in terms of craft beer in general but you will find a lot of places have Guinness, Smethwick’s, Heineken, Bud, Carlsberg plus one or two others on draft so I’ll try and steer you away from these.



The Galway Bay Brewery http://www.galwaybaybrewery.com/bars/ have a large number of bars in both Dublin and Galway and are all good bars with a mix of their own beers and guest taps. In Dublin the most central Galway Bay Brewery Bars are The Brew Dock, The Black Sheep, The Beer Market, Against the Grain and Alfie Byrnes. All these places serve pretty good food too.



The Porterhouse is a long established bar in Temple Bar and also another one near Grafton Street I personally find them both not great these days but the one in Temple Bar can be good for live music if you’ve had a few drinks already J.



If you want a quality craft beer bar that does good food I’d strongly recommend L Mulligan Grocer http://lmulligangrocer1.weebly.com/ it’s not exactly central but a quick taxi ride or 20 minute walk from the city centre.



Some other bars in the city that are not linked directly to a brewery but all very good for craft beer are P Macs, The Bull and Castle, Beerhouse and 57 the Headline.



In terms of bottle shops depending on where you’re staying you might need to jump in a taxi to go to some of the better ones but the ones I’d recommend are Martins http://www.martinsofflicence.ie/ McHughs http://www.mchughs.ie/ Redmonds http://www.redmonds.ie/ Drinkstore http://www.drinkstore.ie/ and any of the Fresh stores. If you’re staying centrally then Stephen Street News across the road from P Macs has a great selection of beers for a small shop.


Let me know if you want any details on any of them specifically.



Galway



So unsurprisingly the Galway Bay Brewery bars are good over here with the Salt House and Oslo (This one is actually in Salthill which is about 2 miles outside the city) are good options. There’s also Bierhaus, Caribou, Universal and McGinn’s though I’m not overly familiar with Galway so this is based mainly on a weekend I spent over there recently. I’m not really sure what the best option for bottle shops is but McCambridges https://mccambridges.com/ has a decent selection of beer and wine.



Cork



I’m not overly familiar with the craft beer scene in Cork but I do know Franciscan Well brewery, Rising Son brewery, The Bierhaus, Abbots Alehouse and Elbow Lane seem to feature highly in any searches that I can see. Bradley’s Off Licence should be good for a bottle shop in Cork.


Dingle – I’m not sure if there’s much of a scene here but Dingle Brewing Company is in the town, it’s a great place to visit though so don’t worry too much about the craft options here.


Killarney - Again I’m not overly familiar but Courtneys, The Shire and Killarney Brewing Company all pop up when I look at it.


Overall if you go to some of the better offlicences you should get a wide selection of beers, with plenty from the local Irish breweries (Galway Bay, 8 Degrees, Kinnegar, White Hag to name just a few) as well as lots of stuff from the UK (Beavertown, Brewdog, Northern Monk, Magic Rock, Cloudwater maybe, etc.) as well a huge amount of German, Belgian, Scandanavian and US beer.


Let me know if you’ve any specific questions on any of the places or on any of the beers etc. that you’d like to try.

 

Not beer, but if you are in the Cork area, a visit to the Middleton Distillery is well worth the stop.
They have a great tour & whiskey samples. Plus you will be able to purchase "Distillery only" whiskey. I purchased a bottle of the finest whiskey I have ever drank during our visit, (I think I even cried a little when it was gone knowing it would be a long trip back to replace it)!
Enjoy your trip, cheers!

 

Heading to Ireland for a golf trip on Friday. What are some of the top IPAs or stouts (that are relatively easy to find) I should be looking for either in the bars listed or the bottle shops listed above? We'll have overnights in Kinsale, Waterville, Dublin, County Down and a couple others if that helps with location. Thanks!

 

So I'll start off with the IPA's and then go to the stouts. Just bear in mind that some of the places you're visiting may have a limited craft beer scene and Ireland in general is saturated with macro's so no harm to google craft beer bars in each of the towns to try and find something half decent.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but hopefully will help you out.

IPA's

Irish Breweries

Galway Bay Brewery – Of Foam and Fury DIPA, Full Sail IPA and Althea APA are all well worth trying with Of Foam and Fury a really quality West Coast DIPA.
Whiplash (Probably easier to find to take out) – Saturate DIPA, Body Riddle APA,
Kinnegar – Crossroads IPA and Scraggy Bay IPA. If you can see bottles of Big Bunny NEIPA from these guys get it, but it’s not on their regular releases.
8 Degrees – these guys specialise in IPA’s and a lot of people love their stuff. They’re not my favourite brewery but they’re easy to find and have fresh releases constantly.
Rascals – Foggy Juice – just released and really good.
Whitehag – Little Fawn

Also if you happen to be near a LIDL at any point a couple of great value beers to try are Big Banging IPA from McGargles and American Style Pale Wheat Ale from The Crafty Brewing Company (Sounds awful but it’s a great cheap beer)

Of Foam and Fury, Big Bunny/Crossroads, Saturate and Foggy Juice probably the best of that list – but there’s a lot of good IPA’s being made in Ireland.

Other

We get some great beers particularly from the UK. Anything by Cloudwater is definitely worth trying but distribution isn’t great at the minute – I see you’re going to Co. Down, if you really wanted to bring some great IPA’s home with you then it may be worth looking at the Cloudwater website and see if your hotel in Down would hold them for you http://cloudwaterbrew.co/store the service here is great and they’ll deliver in a day or two for £5. They won’t ship direct to Ireland but Down should be fine as it’s considered part of the UK.

Beavertown are great and readily available – Gamma Ray, Lupuloid and Neck Oil are in nearly all decent off licenses.
Magic Rock and Northern Monk are also generally great and all their IPA’s are usually of a high quality.

Stouts

Strangely for a country that is so famous for stouts there aren’t as many quality Irish stouts being made as IPA’s at the minute. Some good examples are:

Galway Bay Brewery – Stormy Port and Buried at Sea. If you see 200 Fathoms from these guys grab it – it’s an amazing imperial stout aged in Teelings small batch casks but is only released once a year and hard to find at this point.
O’Haras – Leann Folláin– this is available in pretty much every supermarket/off license and is a great stout well worth trying.
Whiplash – Farami and Scaldy Porter
Blacks – Worlds End
Kinnegar – Yannaroddy.
Whitehag – Black Boar and The White Sow



Also worth noting that some of the Guinness stouts outside of the standard Draft version are worth trying – Guinness Foreign Extra and West Indies Porter are available pretty much everywhere.

Some other great stouts from the UK are readily available as well
Samuel Smiths – Organic Chocolate Stout
Siren – these guys produce a lot of different stouts and are usually top notch. Broken Dream Breakfast Stout and Barrel Aged Caribbean Chocolate Cake. They also have a coffee based series of beers at the minute called Project Barista which are worth trying.
Beavertown – Smog Rocket.

There’s lots more but I don’t want to overload you too much!!!

Any other questions fire ahead and I’ll do my best to help you out.

 

LiamoMill this is fantastic thanks so much for taking the time to type this up I really appreciate it!

 

No problem at all, hope you have a great trip and any questions feel free to ask. One place not on my original mail and just opened in Dublin is Underdog, it's a lovely new craft beer bar right in the city center with a live Taplist so worth keeping an eye on to see if there's something you want to try https://taplist.io/taplist-640118

 

@LiamoMill have you had a chance to try Carlingford Brewing Company? I am going out to that area for a wedding next summer and found out about them on facebook. Looks like a nice taproom to drink at. But I read previous posts on this thread saying breweries in Ireland can not sell their beer directly to customers so that worries me.

 

I've never actually tried anything from them just looking at their site they seem to be going down the route that a lot of Irish breweries do of the Red/Pale/Stout listing - not saying they're bad or anything but might be a little on the safe side. They seem to be pretty new so hopefully in a years time they'll have a wider selection. Having said that any good bar/off license in the area will stock a lot of the beers I mentioned above so you will be able to stock up.

You're right about the breweries not being allowed to sell beers unless they have a specific bar license. New laws are in the process of being put in place that will allow them to make their own beer so by next summer you should be good.

Having said all that - Carlingford is a great place to visit and is a lot of fun, I'm actually originally from pretty close by. It's also very close to Northern Ireland so if you want to get a bunch of beers and collect them from a UK PO Box it will be very straightforward so filling a case with Cloudwater/Verdant etc. would be really easy.

 

Dublin - I'm not a huge fan of Guinness, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the Guinness storehouse twice!

 

That's good to hear about Carlingford. I was afraid it was out in the middle of nowhere. I plan to be in Ireland for at least 8 days, 3 or 4 in Carlingford dealing with the wedding. The rest in Dublin with maybe a day trip up north mixed in there. I went years back, visited Dublin and a trip up north to the Coleraine area (Bushmills distillery, Giants Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede bridge). Debating if I want to go back to Bushmills again or maybe see Belfast. Any suggestions?

 

Well Carlingford is a small town but very picturesque and full of bars/restaurants etc. You'll have a lot of fun for a few days and if it's an Irish wedding it's going to be a big couple of days.

I'd probably go to Belfast for a day or so and give Bushmils a miss if you've done it before. If you want to go to a distillery I'd go to The Teelings Distillery in Dublin. It's pretty new but has been winning awards constantly since the visitor centre opened and the whiskey is top class. I'd probably be biased towards Dublin but if you stayed 3 or 4 days in Dublin you'd have lots to do with a couple of potential day trips out of the city as well if you fancied it. Places like Wicklow etc. are beautiful to visit and can be done from a base in Dublin very easily. Also as this is a beer site the craft beer options in Dublin are very good so you'd be well covered.

 

Trip update.

McGargles IPA and pale ale were both really good and pretty easy to find.

Of Foam and Fury and Foggy Juice were at Brew Dock in Dublin and were excellent. Drank too many of both and loved them!

Found an 8 Degrees strawberry shake IPA in Newcastle, which doesn't sound good, but was actually really enjoyable. Would have liked to try other stuff from them.

Lastly, the advice to ship some Cloudwater to our hotel in County Down was amazing advice. We ordered on Tuesday and it showed up before us at our hotel on Thursday. Wow, they were fantastic beers and up there with some of the best IPAs I've had in the states. I had to have someone from Ireland order because their Paypal system isn't set up to allow credit cards from the USA (can't enter a USA billing address). Well worth the effort and was one of the highlights of our trip (beverage-wise). Thanks again.

 

Great stuff glad you got some use out of the advice. Excellent result on the Cloudwater beers, it's a great service especially when I read some of the crazy line stories about similar breweries in the US.