Drinking craft beers ‘exploded ’ during Covid

If Irish craft beer has a father figure, it must be Dean McGuinness. Readers may be familiar with his dulcet tones on Movies and Booze on Newstalk, where he claims to be the longest-serving in the studio, starting some four to five weeks before Séan Moncrieff. His day job is running Premier International Beers, which began importing beer into Ireland in the 1980s.

“We were seriously niche,”says McGuinness, “with classic Belgian and German styles known only to people who had travelled.” Today they have 200 beers on sale at any one time, rising to over 300 with seasonal beers.

They set up one of the first craft breweries in 1996, and at one stage they were the largest, but with below-cost beer flooding the market, they decided to step back with the intention of returning. “But I have successfully avoided it for the last two years, first with a broken leg and now Covid,” laughs McGuinness.

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“We’re seeing a couple of things with Covid. People who would have been religiously drinking the same beer in pubs have been offered a choice of 200-500 beers instead of the usual 20-23. They choose the more interesting beers. It exploded during Covid.”

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Under lockdown he saw a return to the classics. “We did Twitter tastings with Chimay; given that it is brewed by cloistered monks, these must be people with empathy for someone in lockdown. We don’t have a historic beer heritage here; German, Belgian and British beers laid the groundwork for Irish craft breweries. Now there is a swing back to unusual Irish breweries and familiar international craft brands. There is a symbiotic relationship between the two – a lot of inspiration for Irish beers comes from international beers.”

He is full of praise for Irish craft breweries. “They have been superbly resilient and innovative, completing projects that would take a big brewery three years in three weeks. They are nimble and usually lead by someone with less sense, because you need a little madness to run a craft brewery, and that really helps. I take my hat off to them.”