Beer is going upmarket to cater for a growing band of barley connoisseurs, writes Fiona McCann
Caramel, prune, vanilla and oak - it's certainly not how your average Irish beer drinker would describe the first post-work pint on a Friday evening. Yet these are all words used to describe the nuanced flavours detected in Carlsberg's newest beer, introduced to great fanfare this week not least because of the hefty price tag attached. A bottle of Jacobsen Vintage Number 1 will set you back some 2,008 Danish Kroner, which translates as somewhere around €270. A bottle.
Unfortunately for Irish people well used to paying through the nose for their brew, Jacobsen Vintage Number 1 will not be available in Dublin; it is currently on sale only in the most exclusive Danish restaurants. To a nation of beer drinkers, though, its very existence raises the bar, if you'll excuse the pun, and the regular draught options of your Budweisers, Heinekens and the odd Millers or Coors immediately pale in comparison.
It's no secret that we have a tendency to consume lorry-loads of lager, so has quality ever really held sway in a nation where quantity is king? Can a beer that has been aged for six months in Swedish and French oak barrels ever hope to win out over the much more swill-able big brands that flow, if not exactly freely, from taps the length and breadth of the country? According to Dean McGuinness, head brewer at Celtic Brew and managing director of Premiere International Beers, which has been importing a number of international beers into Ireland for the past 25 years, our beer-drinking habits are stealthily changing, and our tastes have become more refined in recent years.
"Twenty years ago, people were looking at us askew, asking why we were going to so much trouble to bring beers in, and saying 'aren't we fine with our Harp and our Smithwicks'," says McGuinness. "That's been turned on its head." The sums testify to this, with sales figures showing a decline in the consumption of some of the better-known beer labels. "An awful lot of the brands of beer that would have been stable brands before are in decline. In comparison, [ market researchers AC] Nielsen are putting growth in speciality brands at 44 per cent," says McGuinness.
Microbreweries are among the happy beneficiaries of Ireland's changing tipple tastes. "We're coming out of the beer equivalent of Blue Nun culture," says Oliver Hughes, one of the two proprietors of the Porterhouse microbrewery, which began brewing beer some 12 years ago because "everything was getting global and bland". He says that despite the expensive marketing campaigns of some of the international heavy hitters, more and more people are turning to microbreweries like his own.
It's a change, though, that's not necessarily reflected nationwide, according to Brendan Burke, manager of the Biddy Early Brewery, in Inagh, Co Clare, who says that old habits die hard. "The reality is that the standard Irish drinker will walk into a bar and ask for a pint of Carlsberg, a pint of Heineken or a pint of Guinness," he says. While changes in the capital might be happening apace, Burke claims it will take time before they're manifest in more rural parts of the country. "Things are changing. We are slowly, very slowly, developing a cafe mentality. It will come to the area of beer but it's something that's going to take time."
Change is certainly afoot among enthusiasts, though, who are becoming more open to forking out for a quality product. "People are willing to pay a bit more for what they perceive to be a better beer." Which beggars the question: do we really know what a better beer is? "There's a definite trend in people trying different beers, challenging themselves and choosing beers specifically because of the flavour and because it appeals to them," says McGuinness. "Duval from Belgium has an explosion of different flavours in it, while you'd have your prune flavours and your dried raisins, curranty Christmas pudding flavours all coming through in a Trappist beer like Chimay Red." As delightful as the liquid equivalent of Christmas pudding may sound, the key question is whether we are ready to pay big money for the pleasure. Burke thinks so.
"You'll always have the wine snob, or the beer snob, the person who will pay €300 for a bottle of beer just because it's €300."
