National Homebrew Festival

This Saturday, our friends at the National Homebrew Club will be hosting what is probably Ireland’s first homebrew beer festival. This is a completely free event both in terms of entry and beer. In fact, it has been worked out that there are roughly 500 pints of homebrew going for free.

This isn’t any old homebrew either, this is award wining homebrew. The winners of the NHC national homebrew competition earlier in the year are back with their brews so everyone can have a taste and ask questions of the brewer. This festival will highlight the sort of quality you can achieve with amateur brewing and this in turn can lead to brewers going on to open their own brewery and add to the ever increasing list of Irish micro breweries in Ireland, a number that should be over 40 by this time next year.

I will be there myself with my Dark Stranger Stout which won silver medal in the stout category and was also one of the few beers to get 44, the highest points on the day.

The beer will be served from corny kegs in a cask setup with hand pumps and since the beers are keg conditioned, this will be a real ale affair.

The overall winning beer, Ormeau Dark will also be there if you haven’t had it yet. The beer was brewed commercially by Trouble Brewing.

The event kicks off at the Bernard Shaw at 12pm and all are welcome.

By Reuben Gray