Team Hop Press is counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until the Dublin Beer Festival returns to the RDS on September 13 & 14.

With 100+ new and festival special brews to sample, you might want to book both the Friday and Saturday sessions, which run from 2pm-10pm with live music, games and delicious food stands adding to the fun.

The Irish breweries heading to the RDS include – deep breath! – Eight Degrees, Brehon, Dungarvan, Hilden, Galway Bay, Hope, Hopefully, Jack Smyth, Foxes Rock, Legacy Irish Craft Cider, Lineman, Lough Gill, O’Hara’s, Outer Place, Rascals, Dew Drop, Rye River, Trouble, Wicklow, H, Wicklow Wolf, Bullhouse, Killarney and Wide Street.

It’s a great cross-section of the seventy-plus breweries who are currently operating here.

Also supplying kegs for the Communal Bar are Black Donkey, Kinnegar, Third Barrel, Stonewell, Tempted and Dutch guest Brouwerij & Demolen who’ll hopefully be bringing some of their 13.4% Balcones barley wine with them.

The large contingent of very welcome foreign interlopers also includes 2 Crows (Canada), Lone Pine (US), Portland Zoo (US), Vault City (Scotland), Baxbier (Holland), Brewski (Sweden), Mad Scientist (Hungary), Moersleutel (Holland), Garrison (Canada), Horizon T (Hungary) and Zichovec (Czechia).

2 Crows

Our man Stuart Clark has selflessly volunteered to host a series of Meet The Brewer events with beery stars being grilled over a glass or three of something special.

Stay tuned to hotpress.com for the imminent lineup announcement.

The action isn’t confined to Dublin 4 with festival kegs being tapped in Underdog, Hop Press’ near Capel Street neighbours whose regularly updated beer menu can be found at taplist.io/underdog.

Dublin Beer Festival participants are also being showcased by craftcentral.ie and their sister Stephen St. News shop at 38 Stephen Street Lower, Dublin 2, which is just a few minutes’ walk from the top of Grafton Street and has the shiniest display fridges in the world… ever!

Peruse their wares as craftcentral.ie.

As for those 100+ new and festival special beers, make sure to check out O’Hara’s Sub Tropical IPA, which is a very sessionable 4% and bursting with stone fruits, pineapple and mango flavours.

Most importantly, the Dublin Beer Festival underlines just how vibrant the Irish and international brewing industries are at the moment with even bigger and better things to come.

Sláinte!

Use the code HOTPRESS2024 to get a 20% discount on Friday and Saturday tickets for the Dublin Beer Festival at dublinbeerfest.ie/get-tickets

O'Hara's

Meet The Brewers:

SUPER NOVA SCOTIA
Garrison Brewing Co.

“I was a Navy diver deployed in a lot of places including the Middle East and when I was back in Canada used to home brew. When I left the service I was like, ‘What am I going to do for the rest of my life?’ and thought, ‘Hey, beer!’”

Brian Titus is describing the radical career change that in 1997 lead to him co-founding Garrison Brewing Co., which thanks to “art, science and good ol’ hard work” has gone from teeny-tiny micro to the proud producers of 2.2 million pints of artisan beer a year.

“Our first beer – and twenty-seven years later still one of our best-sellers – was Irish Red, which with its maltiness is such a lovely style,” Brian enthuses. “Back then no one was talking about hops – it was all European-style beers, which is fair enough because you guys invented it!

“We also did a Nut Brown Ale and a black Dirty Ol’ Town IPA, which, yes, is a nod to Shane MacGowan and The Pogues who I’m a massive fan of. We’ve some dirty old towns here in Canada too, so it really resonates.

“It’s amazing how a song like that can mean so much to people in so many different locations.”

Brian Titus

Garrison Brewing’s music connections don’t end there.

“We used to do a series called Backlot Bash in our parking lot where we’d put on local bands and have a few thousand people turn up, which combined the two best things in life – beer and rock ‘n’ roll!”

Asked what share of the market craft beer enjoys in Canada, Brian says, “It really depends on what part of the country you’re in. In British Columbia you’re talking close to 30%. In Nova Scotia, where there’s now over sixty breweries for a million population, it’s around 23%. Some would call that saturated but it’s working!”

And, hopefully, a sign of things to come in Ireland where craft currently makes up only 3.4% of the overall beer market.

Garrison’s 2024 sales figures have been boosted by their Pride-celebrating Queer Summer Brew: Proud Hazy Ale.

“That one really flew out,” Brian enthuses. “We’ve been the official Pride beer sponsor for the last four years. We follow our conscience and do what’s best for our customers and our community. Queer Summer is a great beer for a great cause.”

Amen to that! Having well and truly conquered Nova Scotia and its east coast of Canada neighbours, the Garrison crew are crossing the Atlantic for the first time to be at the Dublin Beer Festival. Accompanying them on the flight will be dozens of kegs of their summer thirst-quenchers.

“We’ve chosen not to bring our Irish Red to the homeland because you guys are doing it so well!” Brian laughs. “What we will have is Lil’ Juicy, a 6% New England-style IPA which has lots of tropical fruit; Georgia Peach, a lightly hazy 4.5% wheat beer with a bit of peach flavouring; and our 5% Mango & Dragon Fruit, a really lovely sour that reminds me of a soft drink I used to have as a kid, Hawaiian Punch. If the sun’s shining, that’s the one to go for!”

Weather Gods, do your thing!

SOUR POWER
Vault City

These are exciting times for Vault City, the Edinburgh brewery specialising in sour beers, a style that has skyrocketed in popularity on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Courtesy of a fully subscribed crowdfunding campaign, they’ve managed to purchase a new site at BioCampus, which is seven times the size of their current city-centre brewery.

This means they’ll soon be able to up production of bestsellers like Blueberry Blast Slushy, Cereal Spooner Red Berry, Passion Fruit Mojito, Strawberry & Kiwi Shake and Tasty Rainbow Orange to a whopping ten million litres a year.

It’s all a far cry from 2018 when Vault City brewed its first batch of beer in co-founder Steven Smith-Hay’s kitchen.

“I joined Vault City in 2021 when there was still only five of us, so the growth has been incredible whilst still feeling organic,” reflects one of Smith-Hay’s colleagues, Joe Cruickshank. “We release at least six new beers a month and will have additional space in the new brewery for all the research and development, which that requires. There will also be opportunities to make our business even more sustainable than it currently is.”

According to some of that research, 31% of UK beer drinkers have become more adventurous since Covid.

“One of the things we strive for when conceptualising beers is accessibility,” Joe continues. “Sours are considered niche and an acquired taste but, actually, a lot of people are now starting their beer journeys with them, which is great.

“Vault City also has its beer geek following – of which I’m one! – so the appeal of sours has become very broad.”

Asked what they’ll be tantalising our tastebuds with in the RDS, Joe says, “We’re definitely bringing our 6.2% Triple Fruited Mango, one of our core range which is essentially an Alphonso mango smoothie – really ripe and really juicy; the fourth iteration in our Stupid series, Stupid Black Forest Gateaux, a thick 6% sour with dark cherries, cacao nibs for the chocolate character and some vanilla – I can’t wait to see how that one goes down; and our Radler, the first beer we’ve released that’s not a sour, which is a pale ale base with tangy lemon, pineapple and grapefruit. It’s 3.4% so really crushable. We’re just deciding which other beers to bring, so watch this space!”