Irish Beer: A Pint O’ History

“A long time ago, way back in history, when all there was to drink was nothin’ but cups of tea. Along came a man by the name of Charlie Mopps, and he invented a wonderful drink and he made it out of hops.” If you’ve spent enough time at pubs in Dublin, you’re likely to encounter this drinking song sooner or later. Get it? Charlie Mopps – rhymes with “barley” and “hops”? Ireland celebrates one of world’s most dynamic and longstanding traditions of brewing. In truth, its history dates back millennia before a song was every sung dubbing the mythical “Charlie Mopps” as “the man who invented beer.” Evidence traces the origins of Ireland’s beer culture as early as the Bronze Age. It certainly was around by the time Saint Patrick banished the snakes the Emerald Isle. According to legend, one of Saint Patrick’s close friends was a local priest named Mescan, who also purportedly served as Saint Patrick’s personal brewer. Like the Trappist breweries of Belgium, monastic orders furthered the Irish beer industry. Should you visit Smithwick’s Brewery, you’ll find the medieval ruins of St. Francis Abbey, where monks had been making beer since the Fourteenth Century. If there’s one ingredient you have to remember when drinking Irish beer, it’s barley – and unmalted barley at that. Hops are not native to Ireland and proved difficult to grow there. Thus, brewers were reliant solely on roasted barley to give their beer flavor. Malted barley was taxed in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century, as was coal – a critical resource for producing the in vogue pale ales. The Guinness family capitalized on these constraints, and over two generations settled upon a dark ale created with unmalted barley, which was not prone to the same taxes. The resulting beer was a dry stout , which has since become nearly synonymous with the Irish beer tradition. Ireland has long been heralded as a beer-lover’s Mecca, but the diversity of its beer culture has waxed and waned over the course of the last two centuries. At the beginning on the Nineteenth Century, approximately two hundred breweries dotted the island, but by the turn of the Twentieth Century, only around thirty remained. The Irish beer industry continued to consolidate until the 1980s and 1990s brought a new wave of passionate microbrewers, eager to leave their mark on Ireland’s millennia old tradition. Over the next several decades, those microbreweries paved way for the craft beer movement that has swept the globe, Ireland included. Charlie Mopps may not have invented beer – but he’d be proud of Ireland’s beer scene reinventing itself today. — Bryce Wiatrak Are you celebrating with something Irish this St. Patrick’s Day? We want to see what you’re drinking! Scan the label or search by name to add your tasting notes on Delectable.