Kinnegar Brewery - Donegal

Kinnegar claims to be probably Ireland's newest and smallest brewery. I can't dispute that claim as it probably is even if about a year old, though more are opening for business in the near future so it will be short lived as newest.

Finding bottles is not an easy task because the brewery is set in the wilds of Donegal and since the brewery is, from what I've heard, a large home-brew sized setup, production is very limited. Nano-Brewery might be the buzz word of choice here.

I've only had one bottle of their Devil's Backbone and I'm not sure what to make of it. Without slamming them completely, I will say that the beer has potential but seems to be suffering some production issues. As you can see from the image above, even a carefully poured beer results in pretty much half a pint of foam. It's far too carbonated and this ruined a lot of the beer for me making it hard to pick out any real character and what I could pick out might only have been because of the biting fizz.

There might be a missed opportunity to tap in to the surfing population that travel to Donegal each weekend to catch the waves. Kona does very well in Hawaii with such tactics. Perhaps a special summer beer aimed at surfers, they can even stick their bunny on a surf board, it already looks like it could be on water.

Anyway I think that's all I will say for now because they are pretty new and it's always great to see new Irish breweries, especially out in the back-o-beyonds. I hope they sort out the teething problems and move on to making fine beer. Perhaps it will even be available on tap in Dublin some day. For now though, Donegal has a local brewery that its inhabitants should seek out and support.