Craft beer is growing day by day. Many people have jumped on the craft beer movement because domestic beers have become a little boring, a little lacking in the “taste area” and the idea of making beers for millions of people turns off just about any beer enthusiast. When you pick up a Miller Genuine Draft, Coors Original or other domestic beers sometimes don’t you wish it tasted more like a Guiness, Murphy’s or Beamish? Yeah, American breweries thought so too. That’s why over the course of the last few decades they’ve snatched them all up. Most famous “Irish” beer brands now belong to the red, white and blue (of America, not the UK).

So naturally, the craft movement is not limited to just America - it’s worldwide! And guess what? The land of the stout (isn’t that the Gaelic translation for Ireland anyways?) has some great ones themselves. Today, the common tourist has as much chance of walking into a microbrewery as he/she does of walking into a pub. And you can imagine what concoctions they are coming up with, when they have the afore mentioned beers as their inspiration. But these microbreweries are not limited to darks and stouts, they are producing a full spectrum of delicious brews.

Microbreweries are on the rise in Ireland thanks to a tax-cut implemented by the Irish government in 2005. Benefiting from this financial break, pubs began opening microbreweries left and right, creating new and exciting beer and serving it to patrons that had been visiting them for years. Now the world is beginning to take notice. With tourism to Ireland on the rise, more and more people are sampling the craft beer of the Smiling Irish. So if you’re considering checking out the Blarney Stone, Glasgow or the castles of Ireland for your summer vacation - make sure to check out the amazing microbreweries!

Microbreweries to check out:

Biddy Early Brewery www.bid.ie

Porterhouse Brewing Co. www.porterhousebrewco.com

Franciscan Well Brewery www.franciscanwellbrewery.com

Kinsale Brewing Co. www.kinsalebrewingco.com