‘Covid has been good for craft beer in a weird way’, Dublin brewery go country-wide

Sales are going really well,” says Wim de Jongh of Hope Beer in Kilbarrack, Co Dublin. “We have a nice mix of business. We appointed Noreast as our distributor, so for the first time we can go country-wide, including Northern Ireland. We are thrilled with that. We are now selling kegs all over the country, something we could never do before. We also have a great distributor in France. Four or five bars in Paris are now pouring a lot of our beer, and Italy continues to do well.

“Covid has been good for craft beer in a weird way. People drinking at home were getting bored with the standard beers and began looking for something more interesting. They were looking at and buying our bottles and cans, which has been great for the brand.

“Now retail sales are down a bit, but bar and keg sales have increased. On the downside, there are price increases everywhere and we are having to deal with it – electricity is up, packaging is up by 30-40 per cent, as are bottles, cans – everything.”

Their current limited edition beer is the Amber Lager. “It is number 26 in our limited editions, we are trying to come up with something new all the time. We’ve done an amber ale before, but the idea for this came from Yeungling Brewery, one of the oldest breweries in the US.

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“They make one so we decided to give it a go. There will be only one batch. It’s an interesting beer, with a nice sweetness and great colour. We used a very traditional German method known as double decoction, which intensifies the colour and adds additional malt flavours.”