Breweries of Ireland 🍺☘
Brewery Locations in Ireland 🧭
THE O.G Irish Beers
Beers like Guinness, Smithwick’s, and Murphy’s basically put Irish beer on the map and these all maintain the spotlight as the quintessentially Irish beers. Drinking these O.G beers is sadly almost a seasonal thing in the U.S and even that’s a stretch. Usually, they are drunk on one day of the year, St. Patrick’s Day, although Guinness does actually seem to have a strong following these days in the U.S. Guinness recently opened a U.S based brewery in Baltimore, MD. The history of these beers goes way back but the new players in town deserve a fair shot at impressing your palate.
Craft Beer Counter Culture
Luckily, craft beer drinkers and homebrewers are essentially a counter-culture; they don’t want to be drinking something perceived as “normal” and thrive by going against the grain. Irish style beer, especially in the U.S is perceived as “hipster” or “weird” if its drunk outside of St. Patricks day. Its seen as a holiday gimmick by many. It would be interesting to see Irish red ales become the next IPA but that seems to be unlikely. IPA’s are supposedly one of the most forgiving beers to brew, and that’s arguably the reason everyone has one in their lineup of beers these days.
About the Map
What this map is really illustrating is that Irish beer has evolved into a beer swiss army knife. When you look up these breweries, you will see what I mean. Four Provinces Brew. Co. out of Dublin is whipping up a quality line of hazy hoppy brews that are really interesting and very much not what you’d think of as “Irish”. They’re one example of many Irish breweries thinking outside our old favorites.
A Melting Cask
The best things are born out of a merging of cultures. African descendants brought a tradition of syncopated rhythm in from their native African music and it was mixed with old-world European instruments which spawned the birth of Jazz music in the American south. Tomatoes brought from Peru to Italy spawned the creation of iconically Italian dishes we know and love today. In this same way, I think Americans should start to embrace traditionally Irish beers and the Irish should continue to experiment outside the traditional Irish reds, porters, and stouts. Even better is the merging of the two in both countries.
There are small craft beer scenes that have started to pop up in Ireland serving up quality brews. Use this guide on your next trip to Ireland to help support these smaller breweries and for the sake of novelty, you can try something new and interesting but still authentically Irish.
Originally published at https://bloomingmaps.com.
