It’s Ireland’s turn. Guidebooks for beer and cider lovers exist for many countries with great brewing traditions, and Ireland needed a good one. This is it, the first book to discuss in detail all the breweries and cideries in Ireland—both in the North and the Republic. Iorwerth Griffiths, originally from Wales but now based in... View Article
Walk through The Front Door in Galway and the ear-splitting volume of the music and the size of the fashionable crowd spilling between the first and second floors might deceive you into thinking that you have stumbled into a nightclub in Manhattan.
This is a book about just one brand of beer: many, many pints of just one brand of beer. Evan McHugh, like many other young Australians, strapped a pack to his back for a long odyssey away from his remote homeland. With him was a companion named Michelle, but referred to as Twidkiwodm (“The woman... View Article
There’s an old saying in England that when the ravens leave the Tower of London, the monarchy will fall. Is there, I wonder, a similar maxim in Ireland when sales of Guinness slump: the Blarney Stone turning to dust, perhaps?
True story: A woman walks into a bar and orders a glass of Connemaragh. Now, this particular bar being an “Irish” pub (albeit one in Toronto rather than Ireland) and Connemaragh being an Irish whiskey, one might well presume that this is exactly what she would receive—especially since the spirits menu clearly lists the brand.... View Article
Guinness, the name, appears on beers brewed in 50 different countries and sold in 100 more. Guinness the name, then, is one of the world’s great global brands. Guinness the name appears on something else rather remarkable, the best-selling copyrighted book in history. Nearly 100 million copies of Guinness World Records (previously the Guinness Book... View Article
In American cities, it seems that every time you turn around, someone has opened a new Irish bar. So many authentic bar fittings have been shipped from Ireland to equip the new bars that you might be forgiven for wondering if any pubs are left intact back home. Riding the same wave of popularity that... View Article
