Category: Year in Beer

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Off the Tourist Path

YiB-6Last week, I finished a book on the history of the Guinness Brewery. In talking about the death of Arthur Guinness, it mentioned where he was buried… in County Kildare just outside of Dublin. Of course, a light bulb went off in my head. I had the bright idea that we should visit his grave.

The odd thing is that the grave of one of the most well known Irishman in history is not sign-posted, nor is it very easy to find information on it. But armed with the name of the graveyard and a town, I was able to locate its proximity on a map.

YiB-6So after landing at Dublin Airport yesterday, we picked up a rental car and embarked on our quest to find the grave of Arthur Guinness.

Although we did get off the wrong exit, it was quite easy to backtrack on a country lane that paralleled the Grand Canal. We found the graveyard within a few minutes of leaving the highway.

Located on a quiet stretch of road, the graveyard sits on top of a hill surrounded by fields. After wandering around for a few minutes looking at gravestones, Merideth found what we were looking for… Arthur himself.

There was a great sense of satisfaction in successfully completing our first task of the day.

The second task of the day was to get to Roscommon, a town not on most tourist agendas, despite having one of the finest examples of an Anglo-Norman castle in all of Ireland.

So why were we in Roscommon?

If anyone remembers my December post “Dublin Discovery“, I mentioned how much I loved this beer called Galway Hooker Irish Pale Ale. When I tried it in December, I knew I wanted to visit the brewery. And Roscommon is the home of the Galway Hooker Brewery.

I arranged for us to meet up with the brewer, Aidan Murphy. It was very generous of Aidan to accommodate us on a Friday afternoon when he was finishing up a brew.

We were able to sample the beer straight out of the fermenters and I have to say… Wow! It was even more hoppy and wonderful than I remembered… an amazing brew. Definitely seek out this beer when you are in Ireland. Check out the Irish Craft Brewers website; they keep a list of pubs that serve craft beer.

Thanks again to Arthur and Aidan for making Day 1 of our trip pretty special.

To view all the trip images click here.

 

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Year in Beer – Ireland Preview

YiB-6The time around summer solstice might be the best time to visit the Emerald Isle. “Why?”, you ask?

Well, in June, it doesn’t get dark in Ireland until well past 10pm, meaning there are more daylight hours to drink beer. And believe me, daylight makes a huge difference in your beer drinking stamina. Check out the picture. Taken without a flash, the time was approximately 10pm.

This Year in Beer trip is the follow up to our Dublin episode. In that episode of One Pint at a Time, we showed you some of our favorite places in the Irish capitol. For the YiB, we will show some of our favorites in the rest of Ireland… well, as much of ‘the rest’ that we can accomplish 8 days.

YiB-6And we have a special theme for the trip… “Nitro-Free Ireland”. Chris got the idea for this from a discussion on the Irish Craft Brewer website. There is a practice in parts of Ireland of drinking room temperature pint bottles of Guinness. Yes… room temperature – not cellar temperature – the bottles of Guinness sit on the shelf behind the bar. People believe this is the true original way to drink Guinness. To make the trip more interesting, we will attempt to forgo all nitro-poured beers, which will be easier for Chris than me because I love anything on nitro. We will donate $5 for every nitro pint we drink to the Angel Project in Carmel Valley. They put together a “store” with everything from food items to clothes to toys to help needy Carmel Valley families out at Christmas.

On the trip, we will hopefully visit the following breweries:

  • Galway Hooker in Roscommon (new for us)
  • Biddy Early in Inagh
  • Franciscan Well in Cork
  • Beamish in Cork (new for us)
  • Carlow Brewing in Carlow
  • Macreddin Brewery in Macreddin Village
  • Porterhouse in Dublin
  • Messrs Maguire in Dublin (Chris is going to wear shorts, so we hope that they let him in. More on that story another time.)

While only two of the breweries are new, we haven’t been to Franciscan Well and Carlow Brewing in almost 10 years. It will be interesting to see how these ‘old time’ Irish craft brewers have changed over the years.

YiB-6On top of the breweries, we will also show you some of our favorite pubs across the country.

Gus O’Connor’s in Doolin is famous for Irish music and is probably our favorite pub in all of Ireland.

The pub to the right – which not even Chris can remember the name – is in West Cork and might have the best view of any pub in the country. Plus, you get to carry your pints across a busy road to the outside seating area.

Other highlights will include:

  • Visiting the town of Dripsey, which boasts the world’s shortest St. Patrick’s Day parade. The parade goes between the only two pubs in the village and measures a lengthy 26 yards. If we can manage the whole distance, we will have a pint in both pubs.
  • Visiting a dolmen with the largest capstone in Ireland, weighing in at 100 tons.
  • Us doing goofy tourist stuff… well, Chris doing goofy touristy stuff.

We will be spending one day in Dublin before we come home. And like the creatures of habit we are, we will be going to the same places we showed you in December. OK… maybe Chris will find one new pub to try and maybe we’ll show you our favorite music pub… maybe. Also, Boyzone is playing. We never miss an opportunity to see Boyzone.

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New beergeek.TV Episode – Franconia

“Franconia” is the latest Year in Beer episode of One Pint at a Time.

Boasting the largest concentration of breweries in the world, almost 300, Franconia is a beer traveler’s dream. From the famous breweries of Bamberg to the small family-run village brewhouses, the Franconian beer experience never disappoints. Add in a great beer festival and Franconia might be the ultimate beer destination.

For the Year in Beer, we check out a few of the breweries and attend the Bergkirchweih Beer Festival.

For all the episodes of One Pint at a Time go to beergeekTV.

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A Holy-Day in Germany

YiB-5The first order of business on Monday was to head back to Bamberg. The problem was that Monday was a holiday – and a religious holiday at that. Unlike the States where everything is open, a holiday in Germany means everything is closed (except for restaurants we later discovered). By the way, I think the holiday is Pfingstmontag.

So, it was with a bit of worry that we approached Maisel Brau and much to our relief we saw a sandwich board out front – they were open.

But where were all the people? It was another beautiful, sunny day – a holiday and the biergarten was practically empty. Perplexed, we had a beer, Merideth a Pils and myself a Kellerbier, and decided to head into the Aldtstadt and to Bamberger Biertage.

We really weren’t sure what “Bamberg Beer Days” was about, but we figured that there would be beer and maybe that was where all the people were. What we remember about Bamberg from last June was that it was wall to wall people. But when we started walking from the parking garage to Maximillian Platz, where the beer days was being held, it was like walking through a ghost town. Still no people.

We found the plaza and it was completely empty. There were scores of empty tables and each Bamberg brewery had an empty booth. We finally saw a sign and the fun didn’t start until 4pm – four hours away.

But all was not lost. There was a booth selling bottles of beer and we were able to procure four bottles for our beer tasting after assuring the woman we were not going to be drinking them there. And on an interesting note, the beer we purchased was the one we lost last year in the broken bottle disaster at LAX.

Undaunted, we decided to do the only thing one should do on a religious holiday – visit a monastery. Of course, this one had a brewery, Altes Klosterbrauerei. Why else would we be there? Funny thing is that I’m not even sure of the name of the monastery.

After an unexpected long-ish walk up a hill, we found all the people we had been expecting in Bamberg. Granted not everyone was there to drink beer, rather they were there to view the ornate monastery buildings and maybe even buy something at one of the cheesy shops selling every manner of religious object.

But a number of people, like us, found the pleasant beer garden above the cathedral. The brewery only had two beers, a Pils and a Dunkel, but you really didn’t need much more choice than that.

We ordered a couple beers and grabbed a seat overlooking the cathedral. It is hard to describe the peaceful feeling of relaxing in a beer garden; basking in the sun, enjoying the tranquility and a beer. To me, this sums up beer travel in Germany.

 

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Mother’s Day Beer Festival

YiB-5In my recent Top 10 blog, I mentioned that I liked the Bergkirchweih Beer Festival better than Oktoberfest. And, after going to the Berg for the second time, I still hold to that.

In fact, Chris says that I can officially state that thebeergeek.com prefers the Berg to Oktoberfest. There are many reasons that I like it better. First of all, it is a German’s beer fest. While the time changes slightly each year, for the most part, the Berg happens before the start of tourist season, so there are not many foreigners present. I think the only English we heard was from our own mouths and the mouths of those brave enough to try to talk with us.

Next, is that the Berg is smaller and much less overwhelming. That’s not to say that there are not a lot of people. Saturday night was packed with very young, very rambunctious people (read: drunk). I think I waited in line for the toilet for 45 minutes! You learn fast to better plan for bathroom stops. Sunday, Mother’s Day, was much more manageable and I think I only waited about 15 minutes for the toilet.

YiB-5Mother’s Day brings me to another reason I like the Berg; it’s family oriented. This can be good or bad. It’s good in the sense that you can bring in your own picnic, water, etc. People even bring table cloths to put down as they pull out their picnic spread. The bad part is that the kid factor can be a bit much for non-breeders like us.

Yesterday we were playing scrabble when our table became overrun with a mutli-kid, multi-adult group. At one point, one of the men said “Your peace is over, with kids and Latins at the table”. (They were all speaking Spanish). He was right, but I wasn’t too worried until one especially active youngster, Christian, was practically sitting on my lap. I lost the scrabble game, by the way.

YiB-5Overall, we had a great time at the Berg. The beer was plentiful, the people were friendly, and the weather was exceptional. All and all a recipe for a great beer festival.

Today we are trying again to get in a Bamberg brewery and a few others on the way to Rödental, our final stop for tonight. We learned yesterday that today is a religious holiday, Whit Monday, so we’re hoping that places will be open. I was assured last night that even religious holidays can’t keep the Germans away from their beer. Apparently Mother’s Day doesn’t either.