Leinster Beyond Dublin

One of the founding brewers of the modern Irish craft revival, going since 1996 when the entire market was Guinness and everything else was imported. O'Hara's Irish Stout was the first credible…

Solar-powered and growing its own hops in the Wicklow hills — one of the few Irish breweries where the sustainability talk is backed by the electricity bill.

Named for the field the barley comes from. Estate brewing in Laois, where the grain does not travel further than the yard.

A farm that has been in the same family since 1639, now growing its own barley and brewing it on site. Thirteen generations of tenancy and then somebody finally decided to make beer with the crop.

A serious packaging operation on the Boyne, built at a scale that suggests ambitions well beyond Meath.

O Brother Brewing brews in Co. Wicklow. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

The commercial workhorse of Irish craft — Rye River brews its own brands and a great deal of what ends up on supermarket shelves under other names. Unglamorous, and quietly one of the biggest…

St Mel's Brewery brews in Co. Longford. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

Kilkenny is a brewing town that spent decades with its beer made by somebody else — Smithwick's went to Diageo and the brewery closed. Sullivan's revives a name from 1702 in a city that badly wanted…

One of the earlier arrivals of the Irish craft wave, brewing in Kildare since 2009 and still making the case for a hoppy beer in a stout country.

Attached to Mickey Finns, which is the sort of arrangement that keeps a rural brewery alive — the pub sells the beer and the beer fills the pub.

Comic-book branding and genuinely good beer out of Wexford — yellowbelly being the old nickname for a Wexford native, which makes the name a local handshake.

Overlooking Carlingford Lough with the Mournes across the water — a medieval village that does a brisk trade in weekend visitors and now brews for them.

Named for Athlone's claim to be the dead centre of Ireland, which the town wears with more humour than most. A brewpub on the Shannon in a place people usually drive through.

Dundalk Bay Brewery brews in Co. Louth. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

One of the newest breweries in the archive, opened in 2025 into the hardest market Irish craft has faced.

Larkins Brewing Co. brews in Co. Wicklow. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

The Dew Drop Brewhouse brews in Co. Kildare. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

Wild yeast, mixed cultures and oak in rural Longford — the most patient brewing in the Irish midlands, and the least commercially sensible, which is usually a good sign.

River Shannon Brewery brews in Co. Offaly. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

In the Slieve Bloom mountains, the oldest hills in Ireland and about the emptiest — brewing for walkers who have earned it.