irish alcohol

bunratty mead

the most green country i've ever seen, ireland is known for alcohol, and it's drinkers...it's not that all irish alcohols are fantastic, or that all irish are alcoholics, but it's definitely a strong part of the culture...kelley and jon had their actual wedding in an irish pub in bloomington, indiana...this mead is what they served at their wedding...mead is honey based wine, created originally by irish monks...after a wedding, couples were given enough mead to toast themselves for one full moon, usually about a month...hence the term we all know and love "honeymoon"...references to mead have been found in writing all the way back to the 5th century, and there are a bunch of stories of miracles occuring with mead involved...one of the castles we visited during this trip is bunratty castle, which has it's own winery just down the road...not only did they have mead, they had their version of moonshine, which apparently is now legal to export, according to the label...not surprisingly, the drinkers in the group were happy to have samples of both the mead and moonshine...hee hee...

the name of heaven in a glass...who doesn't know  of this amazing meal in a glass? the first time i ever drank it i lived in garmisch, germany...not surprisingly, i drank it at an irish pub...guinness...it's thick, dark stout...jon not only brews his own beer, he grows his own hops, one of the main ingredients in beer...since he's interested in anything beer related, of course he signed all of us up to take the brewers tour at the guinness storehouse in dublin...the guinness storehouse is open to the public, but the great majourity of people take the regular tour, which is self guided...you're greeted by a staffer, handed the recording gizmo, then sent on your way...the building is 7 stories tall i think, the top floor being a bar called zero gravity...obviously, it's not really zero gravity, but the views almost all the way around are amazing, especially on the day we had, with ridiculously fantastic weather...

we were met on the first floor by our guide...since we were signed up for a special tour, that meant we had a guide walking with us the whole way...we still wore the headset gizmos, it was much easier to hear him that way...the building was designed by a chicago architect, (or maybe it was based on chicago style architecture? i don't remember exactly, other than the word chicago was said...in a fantastic connection sort of way, chicago is likely the city in which jon and kelley will live for a while after jon gets his degree)...the guinness storehouse building is shaped like a draft glass inside, or so we were told...i don't have a lot of imagination, so i didn't really see it, but i think everyone else in the group did...i'm so lame...
i don't remember the name of the guide, whoops...he was blonde, and young, and if i remember correctly, not originally from dublin...guinness is now owned by an international conglomerate called diageo...other well known brands they own are jose quervo, smirnoff, bailey's, johnnie walker, captain morgan, gordon's, hennessy, and a whole lot more...the identification tags worn by the staff of guinness are on diageo lanyards...i don't know when the sale occurred, though he probably told us...until that sale, guinness had been a family operation for several generations...

the first thing the guide showed us was a replication of the lease contract originally signed by the family...the lease length is 9000 years!! i don't think it's possible to get a lease for that long now...the company doesn't know how that length was decided, but it's pretty nifty...obviously, they'll be around for a long time to come...and based on profits and such, anyone related will be very wealthy...
it turns out that the guiness we all now and love now isn't what the company originally started out making...they used to make a lighter lager...porter is dark because it's made with roasted barley...i think...it was originally a drink that was drunk by porters running around the city...guinness discovered that they really liked it, and were willing to pay for it...so guinness switched from the lighter lager to making porter full time...obviously, it was a good choice...too bad i only drank guiness for four short years of my life...come to think of it, i didn't start drinking guiness until i moved to germany, so i drank it for less than 3 years total...sooo much yumminess i've missed out on over the past 7+ years...yup, it's been over 7 years since i've had alcohol...WOW...

what many beer drinkers call heaven in a glass has just a few basic ingredients...barley, hops, malt, yeast and water...some of the barley is roasted, which is what makes guiness so dark and yummy...according to the guide, if you lift the glass up to the light it's actually dark red, not black...during the tasting session everyone did this, and surprise surprise, it is red:)...the water used all comes from one specific river, of which i can't remember the name off the top of my head...the company uses eight million liters a day!! eeeeeek!! this river is said to be clean and obviously that's a necessity for good beer...the ingredient to which i'm allergic is actually added last, i've forgotten why...(i have it written down in a little notebook, and will fix this part of this entry when i have time)...i wonder how different it would taste if the yeast wasn't added? hmmmm...maybe i can suggest it to guinness and see what they do? oddly enough, the hops guinness uses isn't grown in ireland...if i remember correctly, it's grown in the states!! jon grows his own hops, he's got it going up and down the side of his house...maybe he can start selling to guiness? hee hee...

the guide told us how each step of the brewing process goes...none of it meant much to me, obviously...from start to finish the process is about 10 days...there are specific temperatures for specific steps of course, and ideally the beer is drunk as soon as possible afterward...according to the guide, guinness really does change day by day...also according to the guide, new zealand and australia are too far away to send guinness draught, as by the time it would get there it would be past the drinking date...i kept meaning to ask, but does that mean there is no guinness on tap in aussie and nz? does anyone know the answer to this question?
guinness is ideally served at 6 degrees celsius...i don't know how that exact temperature was figured out...
one of the parts of the tour the guys in particular enjoyed was the tasting session...in the states we don't get all the types of guinness, but i don't remember why...i also don't remember the exact differences between the different types...probably since i can't have any of them, why would it matter to me? hee hee...everyone got to taste guinness extra stout, extra foreign stout (that isn't available in the states) and of course after pouring it, guinness draught in a glass...i'm sure people had a favourite, but again, i wasn't paying that much attention at that point...

my favourite part of the tour was learning how to pour a proper guinness...who knew it was so specific? (probably everyone who has ever bartended at an irish pub anywhere in the world)...a perfect pour takes 119.5 seconds...or so we were told...you have to put the glass at a 45 degree angle, and pour till it reaches a certain point by pulling the handle toward you...when it gets to the middle of the harp that's enough, and you put it on the holder thingy to wait until the "waterfall" effect is done...when that's finished, you put it back under the tap, and by pushing the tap forward, you top it off...pushing the tap forward means less gass comes out with the beer, and this is how you get the perfect head...even though i couldn't drink, i still learned how to pour...needless to say, it wasn't hard to find a volunteer to drink my beer...hee hee...i even got a certificate saying i had finished the "class" and passed...

the tour ended up on the 7th floor, in the bar they call zero gravity...you can see out over most of dublin, and since the weather was great, we could see for a long way...out of curiosity, i asked one of the bartenders how many pints she pours on an average day, she said 2000...and that's just her...i think i saw 3 bartenders? she said on st patty's day she alone poured 4000 pints...that's a LOT of beer!! apparently the place was absolutely crazy...which isn't at all surprising...i used my ticket to have a glass of sprite...with a lemon! that's about as crazy as i'll ever get:)

ireland is also known for whisky...according to the people in the jameson distillery, it was irish monks who originally taught the scots how to make whisky...i never drank whisky even when i could drink, it's not sweet enough for me...but i was still excited to go on the tour...at some alcohol event in the states, jon had scored tickets for free tours for all of us from a jameson representative, which was pretty fantastic...he had enough tickets that we all could've done the tour twice...hee hee...in addition to brewing his own beer, jon also judges beer contests, and has met a lot of interesting people that way...

we arrived in midleton at 0930, before jameson even opens...(is it wrong that we were at both jameson and guinness before 10 in the morning? some people would say that qualifies our group as a bunch of alcoholics:)...so to kill time we stopped at a farmers market...cheese, chocolate, fresh baked bread, organic veggies, what else could a girl want?

jameson was actually founded in dublin, but has been distilling in midleton for quite some time...the very original distillery in dublin is now open for tours, but it's not nearly as big as the distillery in midleton...in midleton we toured the old distillery, as the new distillery is where ALL guinness is produced now, and it's a whole lot more modern...plus, they're never going to show tourists the actual place the stuff is produced...that would be sharing secrets, or at least the potential would be there for that to happen...
the reception area is full of jameson bottles, and there is even a little bar set up...you can walk into the gift shop, which of course is full of jameson stuff in general...golf bags, polo shirts, different types of jameson, golf tees, postcards, just about anything you could dream of...i think some of the boys started salivating just by walking into the gift shop, lol...

our tour guide met us in the reception room, and took us into a theatre where we watched an introduction sort of video...it told the basic story of how jameson became a company...an irishman a few years back decided that he wanted to be a success, and decided to go for it with making whiskey...it's a process that takes quite a while, so he was putting his life on the line, with no guarantee of a return...obviously, things worked out pretty well...i don't remember when the distillery moved from dublin to midleton, but now all jameson is distilled in midleton...our tour was of the "old" distillery, the modern, "new" distillery is right next door...for the same reasons as with any other majour name brand, we didn't get to tour the current distillery...which is okay, i'm sure the story was way better by walking around the old distillery...
our guide then took us outside, and started the tour...the main ingredient in whiskey is barley...part of it is slightly sprouted to make something else, which is also really important...our guide told us some of the biggest differences between irish and scotch whiskeys, naturally there is a rivalry...irish whiskeys are distilled 3 times, whereas scotch whiskeys are only distilled twice...(the irish say their whiskeys are more pure)...also, when the barley sprouts into the something else, that happens because it's being heated...the scotch provide the heat with anthracite, and don't block the grain from the smoke, so it picks up the smokiness, which apparently comes through in the whiskey itself...the irish use something else as a heat source, and block the smoke, so the grain just sprouts, but doesn't pick up the smokiness...

i could bore you with the details of the whole process of whiskey making, but it's really only interesting if you are walking through the distillery...we got to see the original distiller, which is huge...the whiskey is distilled three times, which leads to a higher alcohol percentage each time...after the third distillation, it's put into casks...curiously, these casks come from other countries, not ireland...each country that makes the casks has used them for something else, a different type of alcohol i think...they're also made from different types of woods...
the whiskey is put into the casks, and stays there for a minimum of 5 years...considering all the whiskey produced, i wonder how they have room to store all those casks!! in the above picture you can see what the whiskey looks like immediately after the 3rd distillation, then after a few years, then more years, and so on...the third cask is what is sold as normal jameson...the whiskeys that are aged longer are also sold, for a higher price, as better quality whiskey...since i wasn't a whiskey drinker even when i did drink, the differences don't mean anything to me, but to people who like the stuff, the longer it's aged, the better...
after that room, the tour was over, and we ended in the bar...8 people in our tour group were chosen to be part of a whiskey tasting...they got to taste the differences in scotch, irish and american whiskeys...since jon had arranged the tour for us in the first place, and he was a new groom, we made sure he was in the tasting group...he had fun...

 

part of our tour tickets included a free drink in the bar...obviously, most people have jameson...straight, on the rocks, or with a mixer...out of curiosity, i asked the bartender two questions...one, how do most people take their whiskey...straight...and two, what is his favourite drink...i was saddened and disappointed to find out that he prefers budweiser over everything else...of all the choices he has, he chooses budweiser?!?!

the last picture is of the bottles of midleton rare...it's jameson, but has been aged at least 15 years, maybe as much as 25 years...each year the master distiller chooses a batch that deserves to be sold as midleton rare, and only 35,000 bottles are sold...each bottle is numbered...jon and eric and andrew tried a shot of midleton rare, and loved it...jon bought a bottle...it's not cheap stuff, at 129 euro a bottle!!