Guiness owns Ireland. It’s on tap at seemingly every pub and restaurant. Signs that say “Guinness is Good For You” can be seen throughout Dublin. The Guinness storehouse occupies 50 acres in the heart of the city. For some, this dominance comes with a price.
“Guinness killed the brewing industry here in Ireland,” says Kevin Ryan, who runs Dublin Craft Beer Tours, a free weekly walking tour of several pubs in the city. He speaks ruefully about the very recent past, when the only beers widely available were the so-called big five: Guinness, Budweiser, Coors Light, Heineken, and Carlsberg. But today, there are over fifty breweries in Ireland. Craft beer has arrived on the Emerald Isle.
“It’s only the last, sort of, four years that it’s really taken off,” said Ryan, whose tours only began this January. “Before that it was more of a niche market.” While high rent prices in Dublin are a barrier for local breweries, numerous bars have sprung up within the city limits; beoir.org keeps a complete listing. One of Ryan’s favorites is the Beerhouse on Capel Street, where all the Dublin Craft Beer tours start. “It’s one of the newest bars, but it’s also one of the better ones,” he says. Other key spots include Against the Grain and the various Porterhouse Brewing Company bars.
Many of these new breweries have been overtly influenced by American beers, as is evidenced by the flood of IPAs in the market. But there’s also a profusion of more historically Irish styles, like red ale, and an influx of home-brewing competitions only promises to add to the variety.
“At the end of the day, what’s important is that you’ve got a choice,” Ryan says.
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