West Kerry Brewery

There are no other beers like the West Kerry beers, brewed by Adrienne Heslin and her head brewer, Daniel O'Connor.

Irish craft brewers tend to follow a standarised template – a stout; a red ale; an IPA; maybe a lager or a pils – but Adrienne’s beers aren’t like any of those touchstones. Instead, they seem like pure sports of nature, fashioned out of some West Kerry wildness, and magical water, and a brew team who feel no constraints.

But, if there is a path to understanding their singularity, it lies in the fact that the beers are top fermented in open-top fermenters using an old English strain of yeast. So, if something in your brain says - English Bitter from a great brewer! - then you are on the path. You might find something like the West Kerry ales in a true brew pub in deepest Suffolk or Sussex, amidst the chalk hills and Channel coastlines, but you certainly won’t find them anywhere else in Ireland.

And there’s more. Along with fine water, Adrienne gathers rosehips and blackberries and other botanicals, which is why the West Kerry ales have a zest that other ales don’t enjoy.

To drink these superb ales in Adrienne’s brewpub, Tig Bric, is one of the most magical experiences in Irish food and drink – nothing can beat a glass of the classic Béal Bán, especially after a walk along Wine Strand, and with the chance to stay the night in their cosy rooms, or the brewer’s lodge. Magic, pure and simple.