Dublin Beer Views

I much prefer stout from a bottle. I've always been a nailed on Guinness drinker in the pub, but at home I'd far prefer a bottle to a widget can. As far a s Guinness goes I really only drink Foreign Export these days and when I can find some, Special Export. So as Special is hard to get, I've been trying a lot of speciality stouts. Harviestoun I'm not convinced these even fully count as stout, but hey These are a Scottish brewery and they produce some astonishingly good recipes. "Old Engine Oil" is supposedly a development of a homebrew recipe (close to my heart ) and has a bit of a choc-latty taste, now this is what got me on to this tread of thinking n the first place. I also have a liking for Ola D ubh which I have tried in the 12 variety but not yet 16. 12 is aged in single malt oak casks - 12 year whisky. 16 as its name suggests in 16 year old whisky. 12 has a very smokey flavour, a real sipper of a drink. So having discovered that there are

Recently I went out to collect some take away and with €5 left in my pocket, in coin, I decided to nip into one of the large chain off-licences to see if there was anything remotely interesting worth picking up. I was intending on just getting a single bottle to go with the lazy dinner. To my surprise the choice was almost overwhelming. Now the selection was no where near what is on offer at what I'd call proper enthusiasts vendors such as Devenney's or Drinkstore , but the stock has come on in leaps and bounds in the last year. Put it this way it took me so long to choose that the dinner was on the counter when I got back to the take away.... Oh and I went home with a bottle of Ola Dubh 12 - out of a high street offy ... brilliant. I think I'll check out the branches of the big guys local to me and do a little comparison test this weekend.

There seems to be a bit of this floating around the Irish market. €1.99 per bottle in both Dunnes and Tesco Its a nice quaffable, English ale. goes well with feet up and a bit of football on TV.

Attended the Devenney's Beer Festival in the Bull and Castle last Tuesday Feb 2nd., which was really great fun, tasting 10 completely different and new beers from all corners of the craft beer world. It was well attended with over 200 there and over 100 beers to sample. One that stood out was the Lithuanian company Svytury. Who had a busy table dishing out their wares. http://www.svyturys.lt/en Svytury's Baltas (unfiltered wheat beer) Svytury's Baltijos (dark red ale) Svytury's Ekstra Draught (mild, but hoppy pils) All three of the above are available in a special 6 pack presentation box of 500ml bottels form Dunnes Stores for €11:49. All three are above 5% ABV. Special note on the bottles, which are lovely things in themselves with an embossed bottle. I've saved mine for homebrew duties.

Well, in Tesco yesterday and they have 4 bottles of Hoegaarden for €7:49...or individual bottles for €1:49.... so thats 4 X €1:49 or €5:96 if you can handle 4 individual bottles in your trolley. Supermarkets are nuts!!

Hello, well, me.... The purpose here will be to keep track of any bargain prices and mystery products I find on my trawls thru Dublin's supermarkets, off licences and speciality shops. I'm forever telling myself to write that down but I never do. So here's a new year resolution in practice. I'm interested in craft and speciality beers, all the good stuff and I might stick in a few threads on my homebrew. I wont be blogging on which supermarket is best for boxes of "bud" or "steller"