Passion unlimited…

Guinness tapped into the growing renaissance in the craft beer sector in late 2015 when it opened the doors of its experimental brewery in Dublin to the public. With the open nights now regularly booked out and a steadily growing repertoire of unique beers to showcase, the Brewers’ Project has so far exceeded expectations…

Diageo’s innovative Open Gate Brewery closed 2016 on a high note after welcoming around 12,000 visitors into its cosy bar at St. James’s Gate in Dublin to trial a selection of its brand new beers.

Guinness has had an experimental brewery at his site in the Irish capital for more than 100 years and it’s been in its current spot since the 60’s, but its doors were opened to the public for the first time – under the new moniker of the Open Gate Brewery – in October 2015.

“We wanted to open Guinness up to people a bit more,” explains brewery general manager, Padraig Fox. “We’ve been experimenting at this site for a long time, but we just thought it would be a good idea to bring people in and show them that Guinness brewers are able to produce much more than just one type of beer.

“We have more expertise at this than people might think and this is a great way to share some of our small-batch brews with the public before they go to the trade – if they go to the trade.”

The brewing team at Open Gate are given complete licence to explore new beer recipes, re-invent old ones and even work on their own personal projects. Since the brewery opened its doors to the public, they have produced about 22 new beers.

Perhaps surprisingly, Padraig reports that most of the visitors to the Open Gate are locals:

“About 90 per cent of them are Irish,” he tells LCN. “We get a real mix of people who are into beer and people who don’t really know what they like but are willing to try something in an actual brewery. Some of them just want to be part of the brewing process.”

The brewery is a working production facility and it’s open to the public only on Thursday and Friday evenings and visitors need to book online. For six euros each, guests will get a flight of four, third-of-a-pint glasses and they can fill these with their own choice of the beers on offer. There are always eight varieties in the brewery’s cosy bar area and around 120 people will usually visit each night the brewery is open. However, they don’t get to tour the production facility itself.

In January, the beers being dispensed by the taps at the Open Gate included vanilla stout (5.5%); nitro coffee stout (5.5%); Antwerpen export stout (8%) and Guinness Rye Pale Ale (5%).

“We did think that we had something special here before we opened the doors, but it’s been brilliant,” says Padraig. “We’re starting to get return visitors now. It’s a lovely vibe in here in the evenings, people come and relax, wander around and talk to us about the beer and some of things they would like to see.”

There are currently five brewers working at the Open Gate along with a small scientific staff including microbiologists and the like. There are also 12 ‘beer specialists’. These people work full-time at St. James’s Gate, covering the Open Gate and the Connoisseur Experience at the Guinness Storehouse. They also travel with Guinness as brand ambassadors. All of them are studying for their beer sommelier qualification and a couple of them are qualified brewers.

“For the brewers themselves, the attraction in all this is simply the freedom to brew beer, being able to brew what they want and experiment with different ideas,” says Padraig. “They use ingredients that we’ve always used but they see where they can take it. They’re in it for the fun of it. What would happen if we used strawberries and basil in a beer? All of it’s about experimentation, seeing what’s possible and seeing if we can create a beer that will make it outside the gate.

“Some of the brewers will have their own personal projects and some of what’s done here might lead to a commercial launch down the line, but it really is for the brewers to go and do what they want here.”

Not many of the small-batch beers produced at the Open Gate actually make it into full-scale commercial production. When Guinness rye pale ale was moved into the main brewery across the road at St. James’s Gate in the second half of last year, it was just the fifth of the Open Gate brews to go into mass production.

That said, craft beer enthusiasts north of the border are not neglected. Guinness decided to bring some of the Open Gate magic to Belfast in July of last year when it unveiled 25 pumps at venues across Belfast. Each Open Gate tap dispenses a fresh brew from the Dublin plant every month – and the number of northern pumps has since grown to 55.

In Dublin, a new beer becomes available to visitors at the Open Gate every two weeks. And usually, depending on how popular a variety proves to be, it will stay at the bar for five or six weeks. A very popular beer will run out well before that.

“Sometimes we do consider bringing back a beer,” says Padraig. “We brought back the rye pale ale for example and the Antwerpen export came back because of popular demand.

“But you have to remember that there can be much more to brewing a batch of some beers than people realise. If we use strawberries, then that’s 50 kilos of fresh fruit that we need to source. When we used toasted oatmeal in a recipe, that meant one of the brewers taking the oats home and roasting them himself in his kitchen. So we do think hard about what’s involved in bringing beers back into production.”

For Padraig, who has been with Diageo for 13 years, his post at the Open Gate Brewery is “a dream job”:

“I love it here,” he says. “I love talking to people, I love the hospitality business and I love beer, it couldn’t be better.

“There is unlimited passion here and for the future, I want to see this continue, I want to keep giving people fresh reasons to visit us, I want us to be coming up with new ideas, new beers and always something fresh that’s going to interest people.”