BREWING l
Galway Hooker founder Aidan Murphy pouring a beer in his sample room surrounded by awards and plaudits
first brewery (from DME Brewing in Canada) constrained them in terms of meeting market demand for their pale ale and did not allow of any chance to try out new beer styles and flavours. They eventually reached their maximum output of 2000hL per annum and after some soul searching were persuaded that the future lay in a new expanded brewery – which they located to the tourist village of Oranmore, just outside Galway city, in 2014. The new brewery Aidan told me that the new site had immediately increased their brewlength to 40hL. Supplied by Eco Brew Tech of Italy, it should meet all their needs for the foreseeable future. It’s a two-vessel brewhouse style, with the ability to extend to three vessels
when the timing merits it. In 2016 they produced 5000hL of a variety of beer styles, and could conceivably triple in size before they need to do any more. The first impression of the brew- ery is that it is surprisingly spacious. The business park in which it sits has a multitude of other activities going on and the brewery externally does not stand out. But on the inside it is a revelation. First up is a 2000kg/hr two-roller ENGL malt mill, also from Germany. A typical grain bill of 625kg is pre-milled here and transported to a grist case six metres above the brewery floor. The single brew a day is then mashed into a combination mash and lauter tun. After conversion and recirculation the wort is pumped to the adjacent kettle/whirlpool and from here the
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ground. He obtained a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Food Science from University College Cork in the mid-90s. During these years he worked in Ger- many in the summer months, and thus became aware of its excellent brewing traditions and beer styles. Later he went to the west coast of the US on summer J1 visas, where he was blown away by exposure to the early burgeoning of the craft beer experience in San Francisco. This focused him on achieving a Masters in Brewing from Heriot-Watt University in 2003. After his Edinburgh education he then spent a couple of years on the Isle of Man working for Okells Brewery just outside Douglas. But he hankered to establish his own brewery, and along with his cousin Ronan snapped at the chance to kick- start the then Emerald Brewery back into new life. They worked hard, and developed a style of beer not known in Ireland at the time: a full-flavoured hopped pale ale, which called naturally enough Galway Hooker Pale Ale. It has since become their flagship beer, and indeed was the only beer they pro- duced for a long time. The small 6hL brewlength of their
The spacious interior of the Galway Hooker brewery
Brewer and Distiller International z 9
www.ibd.org.uk
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