Ireland’s west is awake! The thriving breweries of Galway
As an undergraduate in UCC in the late 1990s, co-founder Aidan Murphy developed a passion for craft beer and out of desperation due to the lack of “decent beer” in Ireland, eventually es- tablished the brewery with his cousin Ronan Brennan in 2006. Brewing started initially in an abandoned DME kit in Roscommon before eventually moving to Galway. I met with Aidan in his welcoming bar-cum-sample room on the day. He told me the brewery was soon re- named to the current colourful name after an early example of crowd-sourc- ing by the enterprising cousins. They held an online naming com- petition, and with much hilarity and ribald comments, ‘Galway Hooker’ rose to the top of the pile. For those not familiar with Ireland’s boating styles, the hooker is a traditional fishing boat with sails used primar- ily in Galway Bay, and features in the county’s coat of arms. Needless to say, the association of ‘hooker’ with late night revelry has brought ready brand recognition with it, and is worth its weight in gold in terms of advertising. Aidan gave me some of his back-
By Gerry McGovern
On the far west coast of Ireland, Galway and its hinterland have long been associated with magnificent and magical vistas of nature at its best, vaporous mists and mischievous fairies. The West’s Asleep, often (but incorrectly) also called The West’s Awake, by Thomas Davis, is one of the anthems of mid-19th century Irish nationalists, and is considered by many the Galway anthem. The area is also known far and wide around the world mostly through the gently crooning tones of Bing Crosby in his famous rendition of the song Galway Bay.
M any an American was persuaded to come ‘home’ after hearing Bing in action. Not so widely known is the French song Les Lacs du Connemara sung by Michel Sardou. An anthem devoted to Connemara, it too has had an influence on the number of French visitors to this most naturally beautiful corner of Galway. Given its international appeal, it is not surprising that the area is now the home of a number of excellent and inno- vative craft breweries, and on a beautiful
bright day in August, it was my pleasure to visit two of them, the Galway Hooker and the Galway Bay breweries. Galway Hooker brewery This is the third oldest still-operational craft brewery in the Irish Republic (af- ter the Porterhouse and Carlow brew- eries) and the oldest existing brewery in the province of Connacht.
8 z Brewer and Distiller International
www.ibd.org.uk
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