The picture above was taken in the Gravity Bar, in the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin. I love stouts, and Guinness Extra Stout is one of my all time favorite beers. That being said, I must also say that Guinness has a stranglehold on the stout market in Ireland, and they're doing a remarkably effective job of flooding the entire country with their least-interesting (in my opinion) beer, Guinness Draught. Every single pub we visited during three weeks of travel in Ireland had Guinness Draught on, well, on draft. It was so ubiquitous, and the beer is so middle-of-the-road and don't-challenge-anybody in its characteristics, that it had me wondering if Guinness has some sort of clause they make pubs sign, preventing them from carrying the competition.
(Guinness also controls a significant portion of the tourist trade in Dublin. Their Guinness Storehouse is practically a theme-park, with multi-media displays (the picture below is an example) and floors and floors of exhibits. I'd guess that the majority of tourists visiting Ireland stop in at the Storehouse, even though a lot of them probably don't drink or like beer.)
Guinness's main competition, in the stout department, is probably Murphy's. And Murphy's probably owes a lot of that success to the city of Cork, which is the second largest city in the Irish Republic, and which suffers a sort of sibling-rivalry relationship with Dublin. The people of Cork (would you call them "Corkers"?) often claim they're the "real capital" of Ireland, and they take every opportunity to differentiate themselves from Dubliners. One of the ways they do that is by drinking Murphy's, which plays a sort of "little brother" role to Guinness. To tell the truth, the Corkers might be getting the better end of the deal with that situation: Murphy's is drier, with a more pronounced roasted-barley flavor, than the milquetoast Guinness Draught.
Also in Cork, though operating on a much smaller scale, is the Franciscan Well Brewery, which hypes itself as a brewery that operates on the site of an ancient Franciscan Monastery, using the monastery's well-water for its beer. The picture you see up above is me getting ready to partake in their beer sampler. They've been around since 1998--operating in the "brew-pub" capacity that was so crucial to the craft-beer movement in the United States in the 1980s--and that longevity in itself is a success. The place was nice enough too--a quiet/dank hole to hide in for a while. Unfortunately, the beer wasn't very memorable.
The other big Irish stout brewer is Beamish. When I first moved to San Francisco, and would frequent the local Irish pubs with the other Parkside brewer Scott, Beamish was my beer of choice. I remember it as being smoother than Murphy's, but with a bit more lactic-tang and a bit more chocolate-aroma than Guinness. I got only one chance to sample a Beamish in Ireland, while out on a night in Galway, but I can't attest to its flavor from that drink. To start with, it was a long night. And to top it off, the pub I found Beamish at was a rather rundown affair, with draft-lines in sore need of repair. My pint of Beamish drank more like a cup of curdled milk--chunky and sour--than a world-class stout. You wouldn't know it though, looking at the picture above.
In the end, the finest stout I had in Ireland was from a little brewery I'd never heard of before: Carlow's. Their O'Hara's Irish Stout was a perfect example of what I love about the style: roasty, dry, full-bodied, black and beautiful. I stumbled across the beer by accident, at a pub in the tourists' drinking center of Dublin--the Temple Bar area.
I'd also like to mention that while writing this post I've been working my way through a six-pack of Deschutes' Obsidian Stout, which is an excellent beer.
And here is a picture of me and the most intimidating sheep I've ever met, which lives in Kenmare, Ireland.
Handsome pair!
ReplyDeleteThanks, mom!
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