Beer Tour 4 & 5

Most drinkers of beer recognize the name of Guinness as representing the quintessential stout brew. It is an Irish brew, and its home is in Dublin. So our visit to Ireland and Dublin would not be complete without a stop at the Guinness brewery. Dublin is a very small city, so everything is within walking distance. We walked down to the city block where several huge silver columns rise up out of the ground—silos used in the brewing process. We saw the old wooden doors that led into the original courtyard of the place where Arthur Guinness began the production of this world-famous beer. And we saw that the admission fee for a brewery tour was 14 Euro.

14 Euro? For a tour and a half pint? Hey, we’re on a budget here!

You can get two pints at the pub for half that price, and remember the last time we went through a brewery. After all, in the words of my sister-in-law, “If you’ve seen one brewery, you’ve seen them all.”

Now, it’s all well and good to call it a “beer tour” when you’re in central Europe, where beer is the poor man’s water. But here in Ireland you can’t stop at beer. You have also to honour the deep tradition of the “water of life”: whiskey.

Jameson whiskey also hails from Dublin, Ireland. So, for the sake of those depending on us for the motivation of their future travels to Europe, we made a pass by the old site of the Jameson whiskey distillery. (Don’t worry—we’re actually going to visit one in Scotland.) We couldn’t go for a tour, both because of budget constraints and also because the place was jam-packed due to the World Cup madness. They’ve got a pub, you see, and during the World Cup all pubs become sardine cans of football junkies.

But for those of you more interested, perhaps, in a good whiskey than a good lager, there it is: Jameson distillery in Dublin.

~ emrys