Ireland | My name is Ola

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Ireland is not only Guinness although it might seems so after a short walk around Dublin. All the pubs in the city proudly announce having it in their offer. It turns out that its probably only the lure for turists. Once they get inside they can discover another world of different kinds and types of beer. In Dublin there is a pub at every corner but before choosing one it’s worth to check which are the best of them and not to waste time for others. Hope that knowledge will be particularily useful now as St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner.

1. The Brew Dock is considered by beer drinkers to be the best pub in Dublin. And indeed the amount of people on Saturday afternoon seems to confirm this opinion. The small place barely fits all the people interested in getting in. Although it’s not located in the very heart of the city, it was really crowded. The place has over 20 taps and 100 beers in bottles. They offer their own craft beers, brewed in Galway Bay Brewery as well as some bottled beers of other producers from Ireland and outside. Galway Bay Brewery is a small craft brewery, where the beers are produced in traditional manner. Their popularity in Dublin is growing and they already have couple of pubs in the capital city. All of them are the top rated Dublin pubs. No wonder since the brewery became no 1 in Ireland in 2014.
If you get dizzy of the great choice of beers there are beer experts behind the bar ready to help you make the right choice. Friendly stuff will find something right for you, either of your favourite tastes or something that will surprise you. For a visit with a little on we recommend some early hours when all the beer enthusiasts are not there yet. All others – do exactly opposite.
The place is located near Connolly Train Station at 1 Amiens Street in Dublin.

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2. The Porterhouse Central – the pub with the longest bar in Dublin but also with rich selection of beers. Run by Porterhouse, a craft brewery. They have couple of pubs around the world and Central is one of their latest. It was opened in 2004. The pub is very big; small entrance doesn’t indicate that but the bar goes deep into the building. The decoration resembles traditional Irish pub and it’s full of people even during the day. The view of the outside made us think that the place is hundred years old. Atmosphere we would describe as cheerful and fun. Besides beer produced in their own brewery they offer wide range of beers from outside Ireland. Apart from many of taps they also serve some beers from casks. As every decent pub, they have serve some food and live music in the evenings. Draught beer prices start from 5 euro and 5,50 after 11 pm.
It’s located near the important Dublin landmark – the Trinity College, at 45-47 Nassau Street.

[photosetgrid layout=”42″] Porterhouse Central [/photosetgrid]

3. Against The Grain – another pub run by Galway Bay Brewery with an incredible range of beers and friendly, humorous staff. Decoration of the pub is not rather simple, nothing impressive, although it became our favourite one. Walls are hung with different beer-connected posters. Bar is filled with taps; hard to say how many of them are there. Chalk board above lists 30 different tempting beers but we advise checking their degustative sets. Fantastic stuff will choose something interesting for you if only you tell them what you like. The set is three kinds of beers 150 ml each. That gives the possiblity to try some new tastes and either choose what pint to order or encourages to continue looking for new flavors. It’s a very good idea especialy that prices are fair – for that sample amount they charge appropriate part of the regular beer price. So you are not paying anything more and get to try different variations. Look for such offer in other multitap bars! It’s really a good way to experience the most. Prices start from around 5 euro for pint, the upper limit doesn’t probably exist. We visited the place early afternoon and beside couple drinkers at the bar the whole space was for us. Ola of course had to inspect every corner and luckily she didn’t disturb anybody. She was happy to run around the place. She even tried to get behind the bar but we held her up in the last second.
Location: 11 Wexford Street, Dublin.
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4. The Noorseman – they claim to be the oldest place in the Temple Bar quarter. Besides the bar they offer hotel rooms upstair. A good solution for those who like to party a lot – you are staying in the heart of entertainment district of Dublin and to start the party you just have to go downstairs! We made beer leitmotif of our pub crawl in Dublin but of course Ireland besides of beer is the home of whiskey. Of course all the pubs we have been to offer both whiskey and beer but on this trip we decided to stick to beer. To describe the bar it’s necessary to mention that they had a wide range of whiskey, not only Irish but also Japanese, American, Lowland, Highland, Speyside. For whiskey tasting they have even developed the special routine but again we decided to choose something from rich offer of craft beers. In Norseman we also tried some of their cuisine and the thing that we really liked was a seafood chowder. It’s a thick soup made of milk and seafood. It was invented by Irish people and is a really popular option for lunch in Dublin. It is served with some homemade porter bread.
The place has classic, traditional Irish design and kitchen open all day long. Live music on weekends starts from early hours.
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5. The Black Sheep – another place run by the Galaway Brewery that is in the top rated Dublin pubs. Again, place full of craft brews. Outside decorated with traditional Irish wooden cover but inside the place is, we would say, rather in hipster style. Different chairs at the tables, people playing some table games, chalk board with their seasonal and rare beers. For undecided there is an interesting proposal to spin the wheel and let the fortune start their evening. Multitap offers plenty of beer types starting from 4.00 euro for pint; in addition, just around the corner, at the opposite end of the bar they have a cask corner. There is a choice of 3 or 4 beers from the casks. The difference between tap and cask is that from the cask the beer is pumped out mannualy, using just air without carbon dioxide. Beer experts say that only some kinds of beer are to be poured that way because beers of higher bitterness do not taste as the should when pumped from cask. Place offers some simple food to beer.
The bar located on the other side of the river Liffey than Temple Bar area, 10 minute walk from O’Connel Street. Address: 61 Capel St. Dublin.
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Enjoy St. Patrick’s Days! Cheers!

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“Ulysses” – second attempt. James Joyce’s Dublin

22/03/2015 — by Magdalena Kuźma — 1

Probably everybody has some day tried or at least planned to read James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. So did we. But we have to admitt that none of us finally managed to read the book. Maybe some day Ola will try and will be the one in our family who makes it. We believe in her. Until then she will be the witness of our second attempt to Joyce because we decided that “Ulysses” and his other works will lead us through the streets of Dublin.

1. Our first point is located outside the city center at Eccles Street. House number 7, where Leopold Bloom, main character of “Ulysses” started his famous day, doesn’t exist any more. Under number 7 today there is a hospital. Main entrance to Bloom’s house was exactly where the sign Mater Private Hospital is today. Fans of the novel will probably be happy to hear that the doors were saved from demolishion and today they are exhibited at James Joyce Center at North Great George’s Street. Accross the street from the hospital, private clinic at 78 Eccless Street has decorated their building with details from “Ulysses”. Don’t let that trick you – this is NOT a real Bloom’s house.

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2. Located nerby, St. George’s Church has also appeared in Ulysses. The bells that Bloom heard being in his home at 7 Eccles Street, were those of St. George’s Church. The church was built at the begining of 19th century. 60-meter high spire and four-column portico are the most important features of the building. In 1991 the church was deconsecrated and since then it has had many different functions. It used to be for example a theatre. Today it’s being renovated and the bells, that Bloom has heard ringing, were moved to Taney Church w Dundrum.

3. We moved quickly to O’Connel Street where we found another object, this time refering to the person that appers in Joyce’s works. Writer was influenced by ideas of Charles Stewart Parnell, a 19th century politician, leader of the movement for Irland’s autonomy. His monument closes Dubin main artety – O’Connel Street from the North. It shows the figure of Parnell with a 17-meter high obelisk of solid marble behind. Parnell in his efforts almost succeeded in the 80. of 19th century, 30 years before Ireland in fact declared its independence. In Joyce’s works we find Parnell in “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” – during Christmas dinner at Stephen Dedalus’ house the discussion about Charles Parnell becomes a family quarrel.

4. Going down the street we arrived at General Post Office – the headquarter of Irish Post. This is a very important place in Irish history – during the Easter Rising in 1916 it was a headquarter of the rebel’s leadres and it’s here, on the steps of GPO, where the independence of Ireland was declared. This is a monumnetal granite building constructed in 1818. It is characterised by six-column portico and what is interesting originally tympanum was decorated with the royal arms, removed during renovation in 1920.
In Joyce’s works GPO did’t play any significant role. For example in “Ulysses” it was mentioned as a place where bootblacks provided their services.

5. On the other side of the Liffey we find Trinity College – 16th century protestant University of Dublin. Catholics were not accepted there until 1793 and only until 1873 some restrictions in their functioning on the University remained. That refferes for example to scholarships and professorships which were not achievable for catholics. If there were some catholics, who despite that, wanted to study at the Univeristy, first thing they had to do was to ask their bishop for permission. Until 1970 catholics were forbidden to attend the University without such permit. One object of Trinity College definitely worth attention is the Library. It has around 5 million books and some important manuscripts like Book of Kells dated back to 800. The Book and other manuscripts they exhibit in the Library museum, part of which is the famous Long Room. It’s an impressive room where part of collection is kept. It’s definitely worth visiting.
James Joyce was a catholic and that might explain why Leopold Bloom passing the Provost house says that he wouldn’t lived there even if he was paid.

[photosetgrid layout=”52″] Trinity College, Dublin Long Room, Dublin [/photosetgrid]

6. Following Dames Street to the West looking for Dolphin house, another place connected with Joyce, we passed among others the Town Hall, Dublin Castle, and not knowing how and when we arrived at Christ Church Cathedral. Admiring the medieval cathedral we realised that the point that we were looking for we have surely already passed.

We had to admitt we were lost, we found ourselves somewhere else than we expected. But the situation wasn’t that bad. Right next to the Cathedral there is a place we have planned to visit anyway – Leo Burdock, a bar that has served traditional fish&chips since 1913! That is probably the most popular such bar in Dublin. They used to wrap fish&chips to go in one day old newspaper, today it’s just a plain grey paper.

Although at Leo Burdock it went really fast, within few minutes it got dark outside and Ola lost her patience for runing around the city so we had to give up the idea of continuing our walk. We pushed the stroller towards the hotel. So just like with the book – we didn’t manage to finish our walk through Dublin with “Ulysses”. The novel on the shelf will be reminding us that it might be a good idea to come back to Dublin some time and try to explore the story of Leopold Bloom and the city as well. Maybe some day Ola will do better than us, with the book and with the city.

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Guinness – the pride of Ireland

17/03/2015 — by Magdalena Kuźma — 0

There are couple of things that Ireland is commonly associated with. These are shamrock – the four-leaf clover, St. Patrick, the harp and of course beer. Out of really big variety only one got popular all over the world. Guinness is probably the most recognisable Irish brand but in fact it is only one example of Irish dry stout. There are dozens of stout beers avaliable in Ireland but it’s Guinness that got famous. What is the reason for it? Is it really the best? Or is it the marketing? We decided to check it visiting Guinness Storehouse in Dublin. Ok, that’s fun for parents but wht about Ola? Don’t worry she was more than happy to run around, climb the barrels and pose for photos. See for yourself.

Guinness Storehouse is a seven storey presentation of most importants for the company facts. Unfortunately they don’t let visitors actually see the brewery. On the first floor we start with raw ingredients they use for beers manufacturing. Of course all of them are the finest selections of their kind. First of the fundamental ingridients is barley. It’s the roasted barley that gives Guinness its color. And you have to know that it’s not black but deep ruby red. It’s underlined at every occasion so every ignoramus will leave the exhibition with that knowledge. 100 000 tones of barley are used only by this factory every year, malted, unmalted and roasted.
Another important ingredient is hop. The one used by Guinness is grown all over the wolrd: in Czech Repiblic, Australia, Germany, UK and US. What is interesting hop plants grow up to 4,5 meters.
And the most important component, here called the trasure, is the yeast. It’s so precious because it’s the yeast that does all the job – it makes alcohol from the sugar and nutrients in barley. Thanks to its work we are able to enjoy the liquor. Ginness claims that since 19th century some yeast from each brew has been transferred on to the next to ensure consistency. All before mentioned ingridients are supplemented with the best quality water.

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Next floor shows us the whole process of brewing, beginning with mixing milled barley with water, mashing and sieving. The process is probably more complicated but here it is presented by showing the most significant steps. The mixture recieved as a result of processing the barley is called the wort. In next step hop is added to the blend and it is boiled in 100 degrees for 70 minutes to extract as much flavour as possible. Afterwards they add their treasure – the yeast – and here the liquid becomes beer. Fermentation takes two days and the product is provided with alcohol and carbon dioxide. The beer is almost done. It only requires one more stage – maturation, which allowes the distinctive flavour to develop. To finish up the beer is filtered to make sure none solids remain and blended. Whole nine-day process is finnished by multiple testing to make sure the quality level is reached.

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When the beer is already produced next thing we need is to deliver it to customers. Guinness claims that the history of the company is the history of transport itself. And indeed, looking back to the beginnings of this beer production, we see the wooden barrels, carefuly produced by brewery coopers, and we can follow all means of transportation like horses, trains, barges, ships and road transport. Here Ola couldn’t stand sitting in the stroller when there was so many interesteing things around her. She had to get out and start running around; thankfully there was not too many people there so she didn’t disturb them too much.

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For their visitors Guinness prepared a special training of beer tasting. The aim of the training is to make sure every visitor gets the full taste of beer with every sip they take. It’s all nicely arranged. In the first room there are four columns producing steam with different aromas characteristing for the stout. And here we recieve the miniature glass of beer that we’re going to taste in another room. Ola seemed very interested in as the glasses were in just perfect size for her. Of course she could only watch it through the aromatic steam. Next room was a great performance, the show given by a professional taster was supposed to deepen our sensations. Honestly speaking – the “revolutionary” way of drinking did not knock us down with some newly discovered richness of taste.

Having already first sips of beer from those little glassed we moved on to next level. Since now we are sure how the beer should taste it;s time to find out how to pour ourselves a pint of Guinness. The instruction of pouring a perfect pint says that it should take neither more nor less than 119,5 seconds. It describes six steps we need to perform to reach the perfection.

See the movie with the instruction of pouring the Perfect pint of Guinness.

Mom was designated to give it a try and fill an excellent pint of Guinness for Dad. After short training glasses and taps were given to visitors. Whole group following the instructions did a good job and deserved a certificate and a souvenir photo. The best reward was of course the possibility of drinking that perfect pint of beer. Just to remind: a pint is more than half liter – it’s exactly 568 ml and pint of Ginness gives us 196 calories.

[photosetgrid layout=”31″] Guinness Storehouse [/photosetgrid]

Quick overview of company advertising history since 1929, meeting the well known symbol of Guinnes beer – toucan bird and we were taken to the tv room with huge beer cups where we realised that Guinness is not only that one Guinness draught sold in widget cans that we know. The variety of Guinness beers is way bigger than we expected. Beside different kinds characteristic for different countries there are three basic types of beer they produce: Guinness Draught, Extra Stout, Foreign Extra. Foreign extra is the oldest type they have produced. They claim it has been made with extra hops to preserve freshness. The extra hops are supposed to result in floral overtones throughout the beer. Extra Stout’s bitterness is allegedly great company for smoked seafood. In Draught we should taste the sweetness of caramel and the coffee aroma so using it to create dark desserts would be a good idea. Running between big bottle caps was Ola’s favourite play. They were perfect size to become huge drums for her.

[photosetgrid layout=”32″] Guinness Storehouse [/photosetgrid]

Finally we got to the last floor to grab one, included in the ticket price, glass of beer. With a pint of stout one can admire the view over Dublin – the Gravity Bar is located on the 7th floor and with its glass walls round room becomes a good observation deck. They indicate on windows the most important landmarks for the city and the company as well. There are not too many of them so atmosphere upstairs quickly focuses on beer again. Only upstairs we found out that Ola wasn’t the only kid visiting the storehouse. There were couple more kids in their strollers.

Practical info: there is an entrance for wheelchairs and strollers before the main entrance when going from the parking lot. Buy the tickets online, that lets not only you avoid queuing but also save some money – it’s 10% off online. Ticket price includes free on site parking. There are few restaurants inside, they all have high chairs.

And remember: