Skip to content
BeerCorp
Search

Irish beer beyond Guinness: Cork stouts, the Kilkenny red and the new breweries

Irish beer beyond St. James's Gate: Murphy's and Beamish in Cork, Smithwick's red from Kilkenny, Harp lager and the independents from O'Hara's to Kinnegar.

  • Published
  • 3 min read
Two pints of stout, a pint of red ale and a pale ale on the wooden bar of an old Irish pub

Guinness made Dublin famous for stout, but Ireland brews a good deal more than the beer from St. James’s Gate. Cork had its own stouts for well over a century, a red ale has come from Kilkenny since 1710, and since the 1990s independent brewers have opened from Carlow to Donegal.

Cork’s two stouts

Cork had two big stout brewers. Beamish and Crawford began brewing porter there on 17 January 1792 and was the largest brewery in Ireland until Guinness overtook it in 1833. James J. Murphy opened the Lady’s Well Brewery in 1856, and by 1906 it was the country’s second-largest brewer.

Heineken bought Murphy’s in 1983 and took over Beamish with Scottish & Newcastle in 2008. It closed the Beamish brewery in 2009, and Beamish stout has come from the old Murphy’s brewery since. Murphy’s set out to be the softer pint: brewed less bitter than Guinness, it ran its 1990s adverts under the line “I’m not bitter”. Both are dry stouts.

The red from Kilkenny

John Smithwick founded his brewery in Kilkenny in 1710, on the site of a Franciscan abbey where monks had brewed ale since the 14th century. His family sold it to Guinness in 1965, and Kilkenny brewed its last beer on 31 December 2013; Smithwick’s now comes from Dublin. In the 1980s a stronger Smithwick’s went to Europe and Canada as Kilkenny, a name drinkers there found easier to say.

Smithwick’s Draught is an Irish red ale, and Wikipedia’s survey of Irish beer finds most Irish ales today in that style. Murphy’s brews a red for export, and the BJCP counts a red as part of most Irish breweries’ ranges, next to a pale ale and a stout.

A lager from Dundalk

Guinness answered the continental lagers in 1960 with Harp. It converted its Great Northern Brewery in Dundalk to lager with the help of a German brewer, Dr Herman Muender, and weighed Atlas, Cresta and Dolphin before it chose the name. Harp left Dundalk for St. James’s Gate in 2013. It still sells best in Northern Ireland, Donegal and Dundalk.

The independents

Seamus and Eamonn O’Hara opened Carlow Brewing in 1996. The big brands had the Irish pub trade to themselves, so the brothers sold most of their beer abroad at first. O’Hara’s Irish Stout and Irish Red, both 4.3%, are still the core of the range. In 2013 Seamus O’Hara founded a trade body for Ireland’s craft brewers, which renamed itself the Independent Brewers of Ireland in 2025.

Galway Bay began in 2009 in a small brewhouse at The Oslo, a bar in Salthill, and sells most of its beer through its own pubs. Eight Degrees started in 2010 below the Galtee Mountains, founded by a New Zealander and an Australian. Irish Distillers bought it in 2018 to secure beer-seasoned barrels for its Jameson Caskmates whiskey, and the founders bought it back in January 2024. In Donegal, Libby Carton and Rick LeVert started Kinnegar on a pilot kit in their back garden; in 2024 the brewery made 1.5 million litres of beer, none of it filtered or pasteurised.

Others found their own angle. Wicklow Wolf grows its own hops on a 10-acre farm at Roundwood and brews a beer from the fresh harvest each year. In Sligo, The White Hag presents its Beann Gulban heather sour as the revival of an ancient Irish style. Whiplash started in Dublin in 2016 as a weekend project making one-off beers. Trouble Brewing began in a unit the size of two garages in Allenwood, on a second-hand brewkit shipped from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Some of the early names have changed shape. The Porterhouse sold its Dublin brewery in 2023, and Kinnegar and The White Hag now brew its flagship beers. In Cork, Molson Coors closed the Franciscan Well brewery at the end of January 2026; the original Franciscan Well brewpub on the North Mall, under separate ownership, stayed open.

Sources

Checked .

  1. Lady's Well Brewery — Wikipedia
  2. Beamish Stout — Wikipedia
  3. Smithwick's — Wikipedia
  4. Beer in Ireland — Wikipedia
  5. Harp Lager — Wikipedia
  6. Carlow Brewing Company — Wikipedia
  7. Board and structure — Independent Brewers of Ireland
  8. Galway Bay Brewery — TheJournal.ie
  9. We bought back our brewery — Eight Degrees Brewing
  10. Brewing in the hills of Donegal — Drinks Industry Ireland
  11. Kinnegar Brewing — Donegal Stories
  12. Wicklow Wolf Brewery — Wicklow Naturally
  13. About us — The White Hag Irish Brewing Company
  14. About — Trouble Brewing
  15. Our brewery — Whiplash
  16. Inside Porterhouse: Dublin's best craft beer bar — The Porterhouse
  17. New kid on the block comes out fighting — Paul's Beer & Travel Blog
  18. April 2026 — Beer Monopoly
  19. Franciscan Well brewery to close early next year — C103
  20. 15A. Irish Red Ale, 2021 Beer Style Guidelines — Beer Judge Certification Program
On this page
On this page