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.