the porterhouse. dublin.

as promised, our first two chicks & some beer adventure took place in dublin, ireland. and we most definitely had a little adventure. here’s what happened…

two weeks ago we headed to dublin to celebrate the wedding of two of our friends, and before all the wedding festivities we had a chance to do a little pub crawling – a must when you are on the emerald isle, of course.

our first night in dublin, we thought we’d grab a guinness for our first beer. you know, to celebrate traditionally, and then move on to new & different beers. so we headed to the Porterhouse in the middle of the temple bar area. we’d been there before, last fall, and knew that it was a great place to hunker down with some beer and enjoy the irish atmosphere.

so, we went up to the bar, and firmly stated, “three guinnesses, please”, when the bartender asked what we were having. we ordered three because lina’s brother was with us. the more the merrier, ya know. anyway… completely unexpectedly, the bartender politely stated that they don’t have guinness there, all the while thinking “stupid tourists”, i’m sure. with extreme embarrassment and shock, we realized that this was an opportunity to try something new – perfect for two chicks who love beer. before we knew it, we had three pints of plain porter sitting in front of us on the bar, ready to be enjoyed. we paid and made our way up the 3 flights of stairs searching for a place to sit.

as we sat and began sipping our cold, smooth, yummy beer, we discussed & processed what had happened down at the bar. and we decided that it was even better that we ended up here, ordering something new. and the more we found out about the Porterhouse, the more we were impressed & excited.

the Porterhouse is a brew pub, which means that it is a brewery & a pub. they brew small batches of beer, so everything is local and fresh. love that. it’s ireland’s first brew pub, actually. and the beer we drank, the plain porter, won the gold medal and was awarded the best stout in the world in 1998/1999 and 2011/2012. no wonder it was yummy.

the owners of the Porterhouse now have brew pubs open in 4 cities… 3 in great britain and 1 in nyc. all serving beer brewed locally in small batches in the brewery in dublin. in fact, the nyc pub is most likely the only pub in the states that serves true dublin brewed beer. cool trivia fact.

you know, usually when the best-laid plans are ruined, things usually turn out for the better. yeah, we did get our guinness later in the evening, but if we hadn’t made the mistake of ordering guinness in the Porterhouse, then we never would have discovered & enjoyed 3 pints of plain porter and some awesome live irish music.

what did we learn? go with the flow. and always, always, try something new.

until we meet over the next pint… slainte!