Comments on: Oldest Brewery In Ireland Closes

By: Oldest Brewery In Ireland Closes | Brookston Beer Bulletin | Ireland today

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:48:19 +0000

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By: The Beer Nut

The Beer Nut — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:08:19 +0000

I read it the other way around: the more that the big breweries close, the more room there is for the little guys. Remember, we have no large regional independents here: the Big Foreign-Owned Two and the native micros are completely separate business models, and they close for different reasons from each other. It’s not a single line. As long as no drinkable beer is lost I don’t mind.

And I get a bit miffed when a readjustment by the big corporates gets international coverage, but when Ireland’s first microbrewery closed up shop last year it was of limited local interest only.

By: J

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:04:34 +0000

I’d say most of these closures don’t rattle the cages of anyone and aren’t great losses in and of themselves, so I don’t disagree with that at all. But I do continue to mourn the historical aspects of closure after closure that we see all over the world, part and parcel of the rise of corporate power over individual liberties or even nation states. Heineken is more powerful than the dinky little mayor of Cork so they pay him no mind whatsoever. To me that’s scary. That fewer and fewer companies control such large portions of total beer production worldwide is, I think, a bad trend. Lose one brewery, so what, but this is just one more in a long line of closures and that I believe is quite significant. If it keeps up, you won’t have much beer left to be nutty about.

By: The Beer Nut

The Beer Nut — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:18:51 +0000

In fairness, the closure of a factory which made Miller, Fosters, Beamish Red and Beamish Stout is no great loss. The complete cessation of Beamish Red production has been a windfall for Cork’s only Irish-owned brewery Franciscan Well, who have been picking up orders for their own red ale as a replacement.

I don’t think the move from a Big Three in Irish brewing to a Big Two is really a sign of things getting out of control. The more that the likes of Diageo and Heineken consolidate and produce fewer and duller beers, the more Irish drinkers will hopefully turn to beer made by Irish companies, ones which spend more on ingredients than on advertising.

By: michael Reinhardt

michael Reinhardt — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 12:03:40 +0000

The loss of the historical site is to loose this beer. This conglomeration of breweries is getting out of control. The iron fist of profit has once again smashed the stream of common decency.