Franciscan Well Beer Festival March 2008

Over the easter bank holiday weekend the Franciscan Well Brewery runs a beer festival. This year the OH and I decided to go. The Franciscan Well is a lovely brewpub on the banks of the river Lee on Cork's North Mall. On the way in we bought some beer tokens and set off around the beer garden on a tour of the available beers. The hosts, The Franciscan Well, had some festival specials available on cask. Their normally available beers come from large tanks behind the bar which I thought was a good idea. You could also see into the brewery and of course I spent a while checking that out. The Rebel Red was a very good example of the irish red. I didn't like their Shandon Stout as much, I thought it was a bit chemically but maybe it was just an odd batch. The best of the lot though was the Purgatory Pale Ale on cask. A lovely balanced beer with great flavour. This deservedly won the beer of the year award from Irish Craft Brewer.



From the Hilden Brewery I tried the lager and silver ale which were both nice refreshing beers.

From the College Green Brewery I had Molly's Chocolate Stout which I liked a lot, great chocolate malt flavour.



I spent a while chatting to Aidan from the Galway Hooker Brewery and tasting their Irish Coffee Porter. A nice beer which really tastes of coffee though I think a little more caramel flavour from the malt would improve it. The Galway Hooker Pale Ale continues to impress though, it's a beer I couldn't get sick of drinking. It took the second runner up for beer of the year. In the photo above Aidan seems pretty happy about that.

Then I had some Druid's Brew from the Carlow Brewing Company. This wonderful stout won beer of the festival and deserved it. I didn't try the others as I have had them before and was too busy giving all my tokens in to get more of the Druid's Brew. Below you can see the Beer Nut making the presentation.



Then there were beers from the UCC Pilot Brewery. Frithjofs lager which I thought was like a Belgium Wit as it tasted grassy and fresh and was cloudy. They also had the UCCinator Bock which was strong tasting stuff.

Messrs Maguire had a selection of beers which included the MM Imperial. This beer was loved by many but I didn't like it that much. I thought it tasted like play doh but maybe I need to try it again. It won the first runner up for beer of the beer so my opinion didn't count.



After all this tasting we marked our cards and voted in the beer of the year and the beer of the festival. My skills as a calligrapher were called upon and hopefully I did an ok job of putting the beer names on the certificates. It was a great if rather boozy day out. I'll definitely be back next year...