You won’t find this on tap in Dublin anywhere today.
Walking through Temple Bar, you can’t help but spot the fantastic ‘Beoir’ stickers in the windows of pubs, telling the punter that the establishment offers a selection of Irish craft beer. They are a fantastic and welcome addition to the front of Dublin pubs, and give hope that an era of new selection and taste for the Irish pub frequenter is upon us. What Daniel O’Connell failed to do (that is eh…take down Guinness in the city), Irish craft brewers may manage in time. Of course, I love a few pints of plain as much as the next Dubliner, but diversity is the spice of life.
Our pubcrawls have taken us from Windy Arbour to Lucan and everywhere in between, but I thought rather than look at a geographic location I’d go for a theme. Could we manage an entire pub crawl without a pint of Guinness or Heineken being consumed? I thought it worth a shot. Could we do it without crossing the River Liffey and staying on the northside? Challenge accepted.
The numbers were low at the outset. I’m not really surprised, as I’m up to my eyes at the minute and I don’t think I made the same gallant effort to recruit troops as the others have on past efforts. Still, anything over a dozen people entering a pub can resemble a riot and not a pub crawl, so perhaps starting with six and ending with around ten isn’t a bad days work in terms of numbers. The route I had planned would take us from The Brew Dock opposite Connolly Station to The Black Sheep on Capel Street, with plenty of variety on between.
‘The Brew Dock’ (From official site)
The Brew Dock occupies what was formerly home to Kate’s Cottage opposite Connolly Station and within pissing distance of the IFSC. Kate’s Cottage always struck me as a real ‘locals’ establishment, and the outside is unrecognisable today. The folks behind Against The Grain are responsible for this new effort. Actually, they’re behind much more than that. Against The Grain, The Black Sheep, The Brew Dock and a host of brilliant Galway pubs are part of the one family tree.
‘Life is too short for crap beer’ reads the blackboard behind the counter. The selection can knock you back a bit, but we run with 5AM Saint from Brew Dog in Scotland. It’s become a CHTM favourite. It’s a damn good red ale, 5%, and something we’ve been drinking for a good while now and enjoying. It’s great to see it on tap. The only problem? A pint comes in at over €6.
Now, of course you get what you pay for and all that, but €6 for a pint is a bit much and it’s only when Ci draws by attention to it that I notice. It’d be a pricey pubcrawl at that rate across the board. Still, this is a great pub, and there’s a selection of beers at a variety of prices, and the offer of a beer of the week for €4. They seem to have a good line of coffees on offer too, and follow the company standard of offering two-for-one dinners once a week. We like this one. Will it take off and enjoy the success of its sister established Against The Grain? Who knows. The IFSC is a ghost town in many ways, it might come down to the locals warming to the change.
The company seem to have a ‘standard theme’ for their pubs, I’d like to see a bit of variety on that. There’s nothing wrong with some local history and snaps on the walls of a pub. This is a very welcome addition however, and shows that even closing inner-city pubs present an opportunity for something new.
We take off for Dorset Street and WJ Kavanagh’s. It is pissing rain, and the walk feels a lot longer than it probably is. We’d been here before. It was a decent boozer with a good pint, and a bottle of the cringy Michael Collins whiskey sat in the window back then in March 2010. Today, it’s
following the trend in Dublin at the minute and it boasts a whole new range of taps and bottles.
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