I am posting this press release because A) I want to seem like I have a clue about yeast and B) I would like to get on the free beer gravy train. Don’t you dare judge me.
O’Hara’s Brewery has collaborated with Tullamore D.E.W. to brew the limited edition ‘Irish Wit’. The beer is a take on the classic Wit style and is brewed using 50% wheat malt, flaked oats, local ale malt and fermented with Tullamore D.E.W.’s own yeast.
The collaboration was based on the idea of designing a beer specifically to pair with Tullamore D.E.W. whiskey.
Seamus O’Hara, founder and CEO of O’Hara’s Brewery commented on the collaboration,
“Usually when we think about working with an Irish whiskey it’s for our award-winning barrel-aged series but this time we’ve done something a little bit different and novel. While not as common in Ireland, the idea of pairing a beer with a whiskey is nothing new, in fact I’ve found that Tullamore D.E.W. pairs particularly well with our Irish Red Ale. When the possibility of collaborating with our good friends at Tullamore D.E.W. came up we considered the idea of a barrel aged version of our Irish Red, but then we thought why not try to create the perfect beer to pair with Tullamore D.E.W.? How could we collaborate outside of simply using Tullamore barrels?
“When the opportunity arose to work with the Tullamore D.E.W. yeast, we jumped at the chance, and once we decided this was the route we were going to take, it was obvious that a wit style beer would best show off the yeast and evoke some of the fruity and spicy notes typical of the whiskey, while at the same time allowing us to keep the ABV at a manageable 4%, perfect for pairing with a glass of Tullamore D.E.W.”
Kevin Pigott from Tullamore D.E.W. echoed Seamus O’Hara’s sentiments,
“Our belief is that the blending of cultures, thoughts and ideas creates a world infinitely more interesting. We were super excited to work on this collaboration with O’Hara’s to create the perfect beer that pairs with Tullamore D.E.W. and we achieved just that. The beer is a Belgian wit style with an Irish twist, appropriately titled Irish Wit. It is a limited edition small batch where we wanted to reinvigorate the art of the boilermaker. Tully and beer are good friends and good friends always meet over a good drink.”
The Brewing Process: O’Hara’s take on the classic Wit style is brewed using 50% wheat malt, flaked oats, local ale malt and fermented with Tullamore D.E.W.’s own yeast as part of a mixed culture fermentation.
The Look: Dark amber colour topped off with a white head.
The Aroma: A complex and full aroma bursting with sweet orange and zesty lemon notes. The Flavour: A mix of sweet and dry with strong citrus flavours of orange followed by hints of lemon, banana and grapefruit leading to a clean and refreshing mouthfeel.
The Food Pairing: Some might like it hot, and this Irish Wit certainly does, pairing particularly well with spicy dishes, seafood, shellfish, and also offsets the clean saltiness of a Greek Salad perfectly. If you are serving the beer with a cheeseboard, it works best with goat’s cheese or feta.
Irish Wit will be available in select independent bars, off-licences and retailers with a RRP €2.55 for 33cl bottle.
In the hills outside of Midleton lies the village of Clonmult. It is one of those blink-and-you-miss it places that is hard to find when you look for it, and passes by almost unnoticed when you drive through it. There isn’t a huge amount of things to see up there – the site of one of the worst massacres of the War Of Independence, the three spindly streams that unite to form the Roxboro (better known as the Dungourney river), the holy wells of Knockaneo and Garrylaurence, the parental purgatory of Leahy’s Open Farm, and, if you know where to look, a megalithic tomb known as the Giant’s Grave.
It’s not an especially well-flagged place; of the few scraps of information about it online, there is this, which gives a sense of the wreckage – the tomb and its surrounds look like it has been looted. But if you were planning on looting a site buried deep in the woods of Dungourney and Clonmult, a half mile from the Giant’s Grave lies a bone fide golden hoard, albeit a liquid one.
The Giant’s Grave on top right, and Irish Distillers Limited’s massive Dungourney warehouse complex on bottom right.
The Dungourney maturation site, which is to be expanded.
Irish Distillers have a sizeable warehouse complex embedded in the woods, and are going to be building more over the coming years, because, in case you hadn’t heard, Irish whiskey is booming. Specifically, Irish Distillers Ltd whiskey is booming, a point made clear in this piece. Jameson is the re-animator of the entire category, but as that article asks, what happens now – how do you take Jameson’s success and expand it across the entire sector?
My take on the boom is the same as when I wrote this – let Jameson lay down the heavy artillery as the easy-drinking, beer-and-a-chaser go-to whiskey of average josephine sixpack. Then you push through with the ground troops, winning hearts and minds using our single malts, single pot stills and the premium whiskeys of Ireland. This is happening already – as noted in the Irish Times, sales of premium whiskey brands like MVR and Redbreast jumped 40% last year. But this isn’t all about the US – sales of Irish whiskey are also rising in the domestic market, outpacing scotch, something that could be seen as a sign of a growing consumer awareness of the category.
The boom, as they say, is getting boomier, which might explain why Irish Distillers Limited are planning another distillery – or are they? The Indo said they were, citing Youghal as a possible site. Then IDL CEO Conor McQuaid went on radio the next morning to discuss their booming profits and when asked about the Indo piece, poured cold water on the notion that they were going to build another distillery.
Then an updated press release came out that afternoon which basically confirmed that they were looking at exactly that, stating: At Irish Distillers, our objective is to drive the growth of our portfolio of premium Irish whiskey brands supported by the strength of the Pernod Ricard global distribution network. We take a long term view and naturally, as we grow, there are implications for our business. We are currently examining all options to increase our production capacity to meet projected demand and building a new distillery is one of them. These are exciting times for Irish whiskey and we are proud to be leading the way.
Midleton is not at capacity – yet. Give it five to ten years, however, and that will change. IDL, like any distiller big or small, need to plan decades ahead. If sales keep rocketing, they need to be able to guarantee supply. Supply is the same reason they bought 8 Degrees craft brewery, to ensure casks for the runaway success that is Caskmates.
What this planned distillery could signal is the start of a Chivas Brothers-style model for Irish Distillers Limited – distilleries operating across multiple sites creating key elements for blends like Powers, Jameson, and Sazerac’s Paddy. For any firm the size of IDL, you simply cannot put all your eggs in one basket.
It’s also worth noting that any distillery of decent size is about more than just stills, grain silos and warehousing, so the space they appear to have in Midleton may be needed for something other than the front end of production; have a gander at this device, which closed the main street of Midleton when it was being delivered:
I'm starting a rumour that it's the old Amgen site in Carrigtwohill. look, mysterious tanks already moving in! pic.twitter.com/YfjS4tgpJQ
It is an evaporator, which takes liquid waste such as pot ale and turns it into dark grains (animal feed) – because a beast like Midleton Distillery needs to manage waste as well as crafting wonderful booze. So it’s not all hewn stone and copper pots.
The new mechanical vapour recompression evaporator in our Midleton Distillery is part of a €150m investment to guarantee the supply of whiskey to over 130 markets across the globe long into the future. https://t.co/LZlOQgdt1spic.twitter.com/puIaptX9Wd
IDL have acres of storage space in Dungourney, but they will need more liquid. Midleton has the Barry Crockett Stillhouse, the Garden Stillhouse with its six stills, the micro-distillery and the biggest, baddest column still you are every likely to see, but with sales going the way they are, this new distillery, expected to be up and running by 2025, will be vital. Where it will be built is the next piece of the puzzle.
Two years ago IDL bought a farm next door which is part zoned for industrial, but I would imagine that after the floods in Midleton three years ago, and summer 2018 which saw almost no rainfall, they are thinking about how our climate is changing. In the decades to come, IDL will need a reliable, sizeable water source – one that doesn’t either flood the site or run dry. Little wonder that Youghal became part of the speculation, with excellent roads, oodles of space, a region that is crying out for a investment, and the monster that is the Blackwater. While it may flood lowland towns upriver, if that river ever runs dry, we will all be dead too long to give a shit about it.
In the meantime, Irish whiskey is becoming more diverse – Slane started production, Teelings auctioned their first in-house three-year-old pot still whiskey for more ten grand, and the tide is rising and lifting all boats. The challenge for many brands-turned-distillers will be moving from sourced stock to their own, and this is particularly true for the Jameson-in-waiting, Tullamore DEW. They are second biggest in the market, and will have to nail the transition. Consider that they currently have three disparate elements in their ubiquitous blend – malt (presumably Bushmills), grain (presumably Midleton) and pot still whiskey (obviously Midleton). So they need to replicate those three liquids perfectly in their new 35 million distillery in Tullamore, along with making standalone expressions.
I’m no scientist, but I would suggest that if the chaps at Wm Grant & Sons wanted to perfectly replicate Bushmills malt and Midleton pot whiskey, they could do it with relative ease. Science means that a modern master distiller or blender may talk about the romance and poetry of whiskey, but behind closed doors they are brilliant chemists who can perfectly recreate a whiskey if they need to.
Date Captured: 03/07/2014 Pictured here is the newly installed Tullamore Distillery Spirit Safe. Also in the background are two of Tullamore Distillerys copper stills.
So I’m going to assume that Wm Grant & Sons have a healthy supply contract with Midleton and Bushmills, but if sales keep going at the rate they are, everyone is going to be watching those corners – whiskey is not going to be something you will want to share. Their own plans for Tullamore were thus:
Located on a 58-acre site in Clonminch on the outskirts of the Co Offaly town, the distillery draws on spring water from the nearby Slieve Bloom mountains, and will be capable of producing the equivalent of 1.5 million cases of Tullamore Dew annually, when fully operational.
The move brings whiskey production back to Tullamore for the first time since the original distillery closed in 1954.
The new plant contains four hand-crafted copper stills, designed to resemble the original stills from the old Tullamore distillery, six brew house fermenters each with a 34,000 litre capacity and warehouse storage for 100,000 casks.
So Tullamore is back on the distilling map, but their own stocks are only just hitting maturity so I would imagine that like Walsh Distillery et al, the supply contract will keep going for another few years.
On that note, here comes this 18 year old single malt, which is triple distilled. In the olden times I used to believe double-distilled meant Cooley, triple meant Bushmills. Then I read this post by Whiskey Nut in which former Bushmills master distiller Darryl McNally reveals that Bushmills did, in fact, double distil, and that this double distilled stock was offloaded and makes up the bulk of what the Teeling boys are selling. This is part of the Bushmills conundrum; why was this excellent stock sold in the first place? Bushmills is obviously the source of massive amounts of sourced whiskey, but it seems odd that one of Ireland’s great distilleries has become our MGP, rather than our Macallan.
This 18 year old Bushmills single malt is triple distilled and finished for ten months in a quartet of casks – bourbon, sherry, madeira and port. Bottled at 41.3%ABV, this is limited to 2,500 bottles, and is a reasonable 80 euro on the Whisky Exchange. I’m growing used to seeing Irish whiskeys over 15 year being around the 100 mark, so this makes a pleasant change. That said, I paid fuck all for it, as it was a gift from John Quinn, Tully ambassador extraordinaire, whose signature the bottle bears. To the tasting notes:
The colour is that amazing rose gold you get from port finishes – like bloody brass. On the nose there is rich cherry, vanilla butterscotch, while there are also fresher elements, pine needles, lime, and, oddly enough, a mouthwatering scent of meaty jus. On the palate – that extra percent in the strength is felt, then there are dried apricots and goji berries, a little cola bottle fizzle. Butterscotch nose makes way for fudge, tiramisu, and a gentle peppery finish. I like this – it’s a reasonably priced, interesting whiskey, and one that is finite. Cask finishes are too often seen as a variation on the expression that ‘you can’t polish a turd but you can roll it in glitter’, but this is a decent single malt with a stylish little kick, not an upcycled hot mess.
Pernod Ricard took many people by surprise when it announced on Monday that it had agreed to sell its Bushmills Irish whiskey brand to arch rival Diageo.
The French group’s decision to sell its Number Two Irish whiskey to a company with the marketing might to make Bushmills a serious challenger to Pernod’s top brand, Jameson, might seem at first sight a strange one.
But viewed as part of a wider picture, it makes more sense.
The prize for Pernod was to take Diageo out of the running in the race for control of Allied Domecq. The price to be paid was Bushmills, which has long played second fiddle in the Pernod portfolio to Jameson.
The €295 million (£200 million) price tag attaching to the Co Antrim-based distillery confirmed for some that there were other factors at play in this deal, which is conditional upon Pernod securing control of Allied Domecq.
While the price represents 14 times Bushmills’ €21 million contribution to Pernod’s coffers last year, one industry source noted that LVMH paid a broadly similar multiple for Glenmorangie, a less prestigious brand, last autumn.
That is just a sample, but that article is worth a read in its entirety to get a sense of just how far we have come in 13 years – a period of time which, in whiskey terms, is not all that long.
The initial reason for the sale of Bushmills was to break IDL’s monopoly on the market – something that we have no fear of now, with distilleries of all shapes and sizes popping up everywhere. So here’s my pitch – instead of building another distillery, why don’t IDL buy back Bushmills? Granted, a new distillery would only cost a few million, and Bushmills could be 400m plus, but it’s clear already that the new owners are struggling to figure out what makes the place tick. Those massive warehouses in Antrim are absolutely packed with stellar single malts – something the IDL portfolio is sadly lacking. Now is the time for an operator with deep understanding of how to run a distillery, and a passion for Irish whiskey, to take the reins and make Bushmills great again. It is long-past time for the giant of Antrim to rise and make the ground shake.
The Cork branch of the Irish Whiskey Society went independent, so to help promote them as they were out of the warm bosom of the national body, I wrote some guff for a freesheet here in Cork. They cut it down, but here it is in all its glory.
Cork people have trouble following orders. From siding with Perkin Warbeck in the War of the Roses, to siding with Roy Keane during the Battle Of Saipan, we have a long and illustrious history of rebellious, independent thinking – and a new chapter in that history has just been written. The Cork branch of the Irish Whiskey Society was set up three years ago to satisfy the growing interest in all things whiskey. Initially operating under the auspices of the Dublin branch, the Cork strand has since grown in numbers to the point where they felt it was time to fly the nest and become the fully independent Cork Whiskey Society.
The rebels leading this charge – Liam Murray, Eric Ryan, Ray Foley, Conor Ryan, Arney Gadegast and JP O’Riordan – hosted their inaugural event just before Christmas, and followed this up with their second tasting last Monday night in the Porterhouse – a bar that has strong links to whiskey, having been owned by the late Oliver Hughes of Dingle Distillery, and housed in the old warehouses of whiskey bonders Woodford Bourne, now part of the Mardyke entertainment complex. The host for the night was Tullamore DEW brand ambassador John Quinn, who was full of praise for the Cork society and the professionalism of their operation.
John talked the 40+ society members and guests through some of the whiskeys on the menu for the night, going into the history of each of them and throwing in a few anecdotes and legends while he was at it.
The Cork Whiskey Society spend a lot of time and effort (and obviously, money) sourcing rare whiskeys, and Monday night’s collection was no different – there was a 1950s Tullamore Dew blend, a 1960s Tullamore Dew blend, a selection of cask strength Tullamores (comprising of grain, pot, malt), the new 14 and 18 year old Tullamore expressions and a special treat from a private distillery cask.
The piece de resistance was the presence of the illusive Knappogue Castle 1951, which costs between 700 and 1,000 a bottle. The other whiskeys, while released under the Tullamore DEW brand, came from Bushmills in the North and Midleton in the deep south, but Knappogue Castle 1951 is a 36-year-old pot still from the original Tullamore distillery owned by the Daly family – a whiskey not many people will ever get to try. The Knappogue Castle 1951 that the Cork Whiskey Society tasted on the night was a family cask – in other words, one of the best single casks chosen by the Andrews family, founders of the Knappogue Castle brand. This makes it even rarer – with a value of more than a thousand euro. The night also featured other good fortunes, as there was a raffle of rare and collectible whiskeys, proving that as with all things Cork, independence is the way forward.
