Soundbite: Clonakilty Brewing Company


Posted March 29, 2017 in Food & Drink Features

We talk to Dubliner Lisa Tonge and Norwegian Frank R. Fredriksen (aka Thirsty Frank) about the Norwegian influenced brews they’re developing at their innovative Clonakilty based micro-brewery and plans to become known as a brewery that works with good quality food.

 

Tell us about the origins of the Clonakilty Brewing Company.  

Frank: I first started brewing beer a good few years ago at home in Norway. I’d always wanted to produce something and beer was the passion, so when we moved to Clonakilty we had some nice sessions during our first summers there. I was brewing beer in the kitchen and through our neighbours we met Joan and her husband Don who are great beer enthusiasts. I suppose it was there in the kitchen that we first realised that the beer was so good that it would be commercially doable. We formed a company with family and friends and set up a small Nano Brewery in Joan’s garage.

Lisa: Clonakilty was known as “The Brewery Town”. There was a brewery here for over two hundred years and after it closed down it was the brewery town without a brewery, so when Frank and Joan and Don decided to set this up local people were really supportive. The local Enterprise Board was really helpful and there was so much support behind it that it felt like a community project. Frank is passionate about beer so the important thing was making good beer that he could stand over and be proud of rather than just catching onto the current trend for craft-brewing.

 

What kinds of beers have you developed so far?  

F: The beer is brewed and bottled in Clonakilty and we use as many local ingredients as possible. We have our own well on site and we get as much as we can from the maltery in Cork. There are some fantastic brews in Norway and craft breweries are very friendly with their recipes, so my initial recipes were adapted from my Norwegian influences. Our first brew was a pure style American pale ale at 5.5% with tropical fruits on the nose, a bit of sweetness and a nice, not too bitter finish on it. We recently developed Inchydoney Blond, a Belgian Wit style, which is quite light, refreshing and citrusy, 4.5% alcohol. We’ve also launched Smuggler, a chocolate and coffee flavour porter with 6% alcohol that first started out as a Norwegian recipe I’d tweaked.

 

We sometimes think we have the monopoly on porter in Ireland. What’s your Norwegian style version like?

L: A lot of people automatically compare Smuggler to other well-known stout brands in Ireland when they first try it, but it’s actually very different from them. It looks and tastes different; it wouldn’t be as big but it’s a bit stronger, bolder in many ways, and it goes really well with food. Frank’s very modest, but it won a bronze medal a few weeks ago in Alltech.

 

Speaking of food, you recently held a food beer-fusion event at the Fumbally. What was the thinking behind that? 

F: The idea was not only to pair the food with the beer but also to use the beer in the food. We have this fantastic chef, Caitlin Ruth of Deasy’s Harbour Bar and Restaurant just outside Clonakilty who took the raw materials, the grain and hops and so on and used them in the tasters she made.

L: We’re trying to showcase how our beer can be used with good food. Caitlin did really interesting things, moving a step beyond food pairing. For instance she poached and fermented monkfish in chilli brine and Inchydoney Blond butter with some puffed wild rice and sea spinach, while the Pollack was cured in the Inchydoney Blond and then smoked. She also took the spent grain the Smuggler Porter was made from, dried it out, ground it into flour and made crackers with it. I think people were very surprised at the things that she’d done. The reaction was great and I’d love to do it again.

 

You’ve also included some some quirky local lore in your labels.  

L: West Cork and Clonakilty has such a strong history of good food and interesting stories that it’s really important to the Brewery that the stories we use on our labels are rooted here. So our American Pale Ale has a monkey called Tojo on the label.

F: Yeah, the story was that in 1943 an American bomber got off course on the way to England, and ended up making an emergency landing in the White Marsh just outside Clonakilty. They had a monkey on board called Tojo, and they were taken as “prisoners of war” into O’Donovans Hotel. They had a big hoo-ha over three days and the monkey was part of the party, but he didn’t survive, so they had a wake and a full military honour funeral for the little guy. Now there’s a plaque and a bronze statue outside O’Donovans Hotel in memory of this event. We think it’s a brilliant story.

 

What else do you have brewing? 

L: For the first year we want to get the core brews established and keep developing. We’re also working out how it will be possible to visit the brewery over the summer, so keep an eye on the website and facebook for more on that.

F: The idea is to have a few specials every year, something nice for summer, Christmas and maybe a few Easter beers. People who like craft beer want to try all different kinds of beer. I’m one of them so that’s what we’re doing!

Brews from the Clonakilty Brewing Company are available in off-licences including Drinkstore Stoneybatter, Martins Off Licence, Clontarf, Redmonds Off Licence, Ranelagh, Sweeneys Wine Merchants, Glasnevin and pubs such as Ryans Dundrum House, Dundrum and the Palace Bar, Fleet Street Temple Bar. For a full list of stockists visit www.clonakiltybrew.ie

Words: Martina Murray

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