First Full Day in Dublin

The "Festival" at the Porterhouse caused a change in plans. I have a beer friend in Dublin and he was interested in the festival as well so we agreed to meet at the Porterhouse around noon.

On the way there,  I passed by J.W. Sweetman, a brewpub that was formerly Messers Maguire. 

Towards the end of its life the beers were fairly bad, so I was hopeful that the new ownership would have improved things. Only way way to find out.

It turns out they have 7 beers on tap, 5 regular and 2 seasonals. I went for the full sampler...

The standard beers are a Golden Ale (they call it a Kölsch but it isn't), Weissbier, Red Ale, Porter and Pale Ale. The seasonals were an Old Ale and an Amber Ale brewed with Austrialian Galaxy hops.

All were well made and tasty. The "Kölsch" was much much better than I expected -- usually these type of brewpub beers are fairly plans. My overall favorite was the Porter but the Amber came a close second.

They have beer quotes on the wall, this one being one of my favorites.

There were a bunch attributed to Benjamin Franklin that are not from him, but I wasn't going to argue.

After my 7 tasters it was off to the Porterhouse. Dave wasn't there yet, so I had a pint of cask TSB. This is a beer they brewed initially for their London pub. At about 4% it is a great starter beer -- if you just hadn't rushed down 7 brewpub tasters.

They had quite a few beers for the festival. Glad I was going to have help.

By the time I finished the TSB, Dave arrived and we started in. First up was Mountain Man Green Bullet Ale (using a NZ hop of that name) and Trouble Brewing Deception.

I would expect a beer named Green Bullet to be a bit more aggressively hopped, but it was tasty. The Deception was also very good.

Next up was Trouble Brewing Sabotage, Metalman Chameleon Solstice and 8 Degrees Amber Ella

The Chameleon Solstice is a wheat beer brewed with ginger and was very interesting. Sabotage is Trouble Brewings IPA and was fairly hoppy (not by California standards, though). The Amber Ella is described as an American Amber Ale and that fits the bill pretty well. It was my favorite of the day, to this point.

The two Porterhouse entries were both stouts (go figure) a Chocolate Stout ant the Celebration Stout.

I am not usually a fan of chocolate in beers but this one worked. It had a huge bitter chocolate nose but the flavor was restrained (or hidden by the dark malts).  The Celebration Stout was first brewed for their 10th anniversary in 2006 and was originally 10%. This version was 7% but still good. It was the first time I'd had in on draft and one I would drink regularly if they had it regularly.

We decided to finish up with a bottle of Black's Black IPA. This is a new brewery for me and if this is any indication they will do well.

Dave wanted me to meet some of his friends who are going off to Bamberg next month, so we headed over to the Brew Dock, another Galway Bay Brewery pub.

Since I belong to Beoir, the Irish beer consumer's group, I have some tokens good for 50 cents off of Galway Bay beers. So I started off with their Stormy Port Porter. I like porters and this one is tasty.

I noticed they had Schlenkerla Weizen on tap -- that is one that I hadn't seen on tap before -- certainly not in Bamberg (though my Swedish friends promptly told me they had it at Akkurat last month) . I was tempted to try it but I am here for Irish beer so I passed. They also had Sierra Nevada Bigfoot on draft.

They had quite a good tap selection, and two hand pumps in addition.

One of the cask beers was White Gypsy Brunette, a beer I hadn't had before so I went with that.

It was good but I not sure it is the best candidate for a had pump. I would like to try a draft version of it to compare.

At this point jet lag started to kick in so I called it an early night.

Arrived in Dublin

The flight was uneventful,  just long. Of course I couldn't check into my hotel so I wandered around, drinking way too much coffee. After checking in, it was off to the Porterhouse in Temple Bar

This was the home of the original brewery, but they long since moved the brewing to the suburbs where they have much more room.

I started with the Oyster Stout, one of my favorite beers in the world..

As always it was delicious. Like Uerige in Düsseldorf and Schlenkerla in Bamberg, it has amazing restorative powers over jet lag.

They have nine of their own beers on tap (plus two on cask) and as many guest beers (one on cask). Below is half of the draft handles.

I could spend the whole afternoon drinking the Oyster Stout, but that wouldn't make for an interesting blog post, so in the interest of journalism for my next beer I had a 8 Degrees Knockmealdown Porter.

This is my favorite of their regular beers. It must be a cultural thing or something but most Irish breweries brew very nice dark beers.

It turns out the Porterhouse is about to start a Craft Beer Festival

They were just starting to put the beers on and it was tempting to stay and work my way thru them, but I decided to move on. Across the river and up Capel street is the Black Sheep, a pub of the Galway Bay Brewery.

They have four regular beers, the occasional seasonal or two plus a wide range of guest beers.

I went with what they called "Pilot 007" aka "Incognito" a Saison hopped with NZ hops. Quite a bit different from the previous porter and stout but a good and refreshing change.

Thie Black Sheep is a nice corner pub, lot of windows and very cozy.

This is most of the taps but in the second room they have three beer engines and a couple of more casks.

You can even buy shots of BrewDog Sink the Bismark or Tactical Nuclear Penguin. I think I'd rather try the Poitin  (basically Irish Moonshine).

Most of the beers I wanted to try next were too strong for the first day (7%+) so I decided to move on again.  I had heard good reports of a new place just down the street, called The Beerhouse.

It turns out I had been here once before, back in 2011 when it was called O'Byrne's Beverage House.

The Beerhouse has a much better selection. I started off with a beer from a new (for me) brewery, Bo Bristle. I had their IPA

At 5% is a little less strong than American (especially West Coast) IPAs though it was pointed out to me that IPA can also stand for "Irish Pale Ale." It was nice and hoppy though and very tasty.

They also sell a "Beer Pouch" that will hold three (Imperial) pints. It looks to be Mylar and is resizable up to 60 times. The charge €4.95 for the pouch and then you pay for the beer. Much lighter (and less fragile) than a glass growler.

Next up was 8 Degrees new beer, Amber Ella. I had read lots of good reports of this and they were all  true, a very tasty beer. Hops but malt to back it up. At 6% it a bit stronger than a typical beer here.

They have a pretty good selection of beers, most of which I'd try. I passed on the Molson's Canadian, probably to the dismay of my Canadian relatives.

Out side the "Gents" was a warning sign.  Many people I know would compete to see how many boxes they could check off.

It was time for some food, so I walked over to the recently reopened W.J. Kavanagh's.

When I was here last year, this was my favorite new place and I ranked it was one of the best in Dublin. I was very sad to hear that it closed in December. It was not that is was not doing well, but the owners -- who also own L. Mulligan Grocer's -- felt they were spreading themselves to this with two places.

Luckily, I few weeks ago it reopened with new owners. I was curious to see how it had changed.

The beer list was not quite as extensive -- not the least because the four hand pumps were relocated to L. Mulligan Grocer's -- but there were a couple of beers I had not tried before. I started with the Kennegar Brewing Scraggy Bay IPA. I was told they had an American brewer and the beer certain had an American style aggressive hopping. A good choice.

The food menu was not quite as experimental as the previous owners (no Wasabi Mushy Peas or Black Pudding WonTons). I had a couple of appetizers: a smoked salmon plate and an Irish cheese plate. Both were very tasty and I look forward to trying a main course.

The new WJK is not up to the very high standard of the previous version, but it is a nice pub and I can recommend it to anybody visiting Dublin. The new owners are making a good effort and I expect it will improve in time (It has only been open three weeks).

Well, the jet lag caught up to me so I decided to call it a night and went back to my hotel.

Off to Dublin

It's time to do an update to www.DublinBeerGuide.com -- that is my story and I'm sticking to it.

First beer of the trip was at the Alaska Board Room in Terminal 6, LAX. A Hanger 24 Amarillo Pale Ale. Very tasty.

The other choices were Alaskan Amber and Gordon Biersch Czech Pils (and Schlitz). Not a bad selection for an airline lounge. Delta used to have one decent beer in most of their lounges but they have reduced that to Bud/Bud light.

I'm doing a short stopover in Atlanta (23 hours -- anything less than 24 is considered a "connection" and doesn't cost extra) so I hope to have a couple beers at a Taco Mac on the way to the airport.

Well, This Really Sucked...

I realized I had never finished the trip.

It got worse -- I really didn't do anything Friday and Saturday except go downstairs for meals. I wasn't having any flu-like symptoms, I was just tired all the time and probably slept 15 hours a day.

Saturday was a big deal, because Spezial closes at 2pm -- so I had to walk all the way across the street to Fässla for dinner. I even missed the annual meeting of the Franconian Brewery Museum.

Luckily, I felt better Sunday and managed to make it to Mahrs for another Der Weisse Bock (much better from the bottle) and spent the rest of the afternoon in the Schwemme at Schlenkerla. Then back to Spezial for dinner.

Friday I had a 3pm train to Frankfurt. I stashed my suitcase in a locker at that train station and then had a nice lunch at Cafe Abseits.

In Frankfurt I had dinner at the same Malaysian restaurant where I ate in October. Then I was coming off 2 days in Salzburg and 3 days in Munich and the Bittburger with dinner tasted pretty good. I had the same dish this time and the Bittburger was pretty meh. It all goes to show Einstein was right -- things are relative.

Rest Day

Thursday found me not much better. I managed to surface enough to head to Schlenkerla for lunch and couple of Fastenbier.

I also took some more pictures of the ceiling in the Dominikaner Klause.

Then a stop a the drug store for medicinal supplies and back to the room for a rest. 

The nice thing about staying at brewery is you don't have far to go for a beer. Just downstairs for dinner and a beer or four. I hadn't had the Spezial Märzen yet so I started with that.

It is not smoked and has a nice toffee aroma and a good malty flavor. A nice beer, but I still like the Lager and U better. The limiting factor in the brewery at Spezial is the production of Rauchmalz, which is why of their regular beers only the Lager is smoked.

The waitress (Helga) was too efficient and brought be another Märzen before I could order a Lager. Definitely a first world problem...

I played around with my new camera and took some pictures of the main room.

Uh Oh.

Wednesday morning found me waking up with a sore throat and a cough. Not a good sign. But there was beer to be drunk so I soldiered on.

First up was the Mahrs Weizenbock Anstich.

Surprisingly, it was served on draft (from a keg not a barrel) and I think it suffered from this. It was a bit too cold and it was a bit under carbonated compared to the bottled version. Still, it was good and fairly deadly. Supposedly 7.2% but they say that every year and every year I think it is a bit stronger than that.

Then it was along to Schlenkerla for the Fastenbier...

It is a less smokey than the Märzen, sweeter and richer -- as you'd expect for a beer you drink while you were fasting for Lent -- more food value. It is also unfiltered as the yeast would also add food value.

A note to future visitors: Drink the Fastenbier first, then switch it the Märzen -- if you do it the other way around you will find the Fastenbier to be too sweet.

By now I was starting to feel my bug, so it was back to the room for a nap. I did surface enough to have dinner and a few beers downstairs.

Faschingdiestag ("Fat Tuesday") in Bamberg.

Tuesday was a bit of a milestone for me -- I visited only two breweries and neither of them was Spezial or Schlenkerla (both were closed).

People were all taking about the Fasching parade. I guess it has become a big deal since I was last here during Fasching (2003, I think). It started at Max Platz, when thru the Grüner Markt, down Langestrasse then up over the Luitpold Brücke and then up Obere Königstrasse then over the Ketternbrücke and back to Max Platz.



I spent the afternoon at Fässla, watching the crowd -- lots of people where in costume and most of the rest at least had funny hats. I sort of lost track of beers, but I think I had seven Pils. Plus or minus.

For a change of pace and some fresh air, we headed up the hill to Greifenklau

They didn't have any special beers on, just the Lager (and Weizen, which is brewed elsewhere). In recent years the Lager is much improved and it was in good form.

They have a bock beer coming out April 3. We managed to score a sample. It is a bit darker than the Lager. If you are in the area then, be sure and stop by for one (or more) as it will be very good.

Greifenklau Bock from the lager tank.

We had some food and a few more beers.  Only two breweries and neither of the Spezial or Schlenkerla. Whouda thunk it.