All Ireland Beer Survey: Data Collected and Data Used

The study first collected data readily available from Beoir: Ireland's craft beer consumers group. Their list qualifies “Irish Micro-breweries” as “produced on the island of Ireland by an Irish company which makes less than 30,000hL per year” (http://www.beoir.org/index.php/craft-beer-directories/a-z-of-ireland-s-beer-cider). This means breweries that were Irish owned at the time such as Franciscan Well is included and breweries that have relocated to Ireland more recently, such as Rye River are excluded. From here a data base was built listing:

• Brewers Brand name- defined as the label brand of the brewer, in order to include contract brewers who use other breweries facilities to produce their product. Figure 2 lists breweries discovered with those which closed and those for which there was incomplete information noted.
• Core beers- defined as by the author as “consistently brewed for throughout a year for at least a year” to exclude seasonal and special brews).
• County- which of the 32 counties of Ireland the brand's business is based.
• Province- which of the 4 provinces of Ireland the brand's business is based.
• Beer Style- styles was recorded based on the brands own identification which resulted in 46 styles, these were then aggregated into 11 broader styles (See Figure 1).
• Start/End- the year a beer became available and the year it was discontinued if so.
  

  
  

  

Introduction: All Ireland Beer Survey 1981-2014

This study originally carried out as part of an academic publication spatially and quantitatively tracks the development of micro-breweries in Ireland from the early 80's to the year 2014. This study presents the reader with a geography of micro-breweries in Ireland that will show the location and quantity of breweries in Ireland as well as the styles on offer.

Due to working full-time I was not able to finish the study in time for the original deadline, so I will publish and discuss it here- in what I hope will be a more accessible and flexible format.

There are omissions which I have tried to explain, there will be mistakes found over time and I hope we can end up with a common database that can be added to and developed!

Introduction

Ireland is an interesting case due to the dramatic changes the country underwent with a rapidly rising economy and then a rapidly declining economy along with two important tax rebates for micro-breweries producing under 20,000 hectolitres in 2005 and a recent increase in the threshold to 30,000 hectorlitres in 2015.

The size of Ireland allows for a rather concise and complete study of this type with a total of 70 brewing brands accounted for since the 1980's. We will refer the companies as brewing brands rather than breweries or brewers as some have their beer contract brewed in Ireland. The Island has been through a similar experience to the UK and other nations in that the micro-brewery scene has at first suffered from the dominance of global brewing conglomerates with the 90's facing stagnation as start-ups come and go and growth in the 00's.

 The total breweries that sufficient data was collected on the island of Ireland is shown in Fig 1, from the earliest recorded entry 1981, where only 1 brewery is recorded, to the end of this surveys time-scape 2014 where 36 breweries were recorded.

Fig 2 shows the level of beers in production over time starting with 1 in 1981 and ending with 135 in 2014.

I will try to update this project weekly, next time dealing with the body of data I have collected and what amount of that was complete enough to analyse. 

Very happy to be featured on Trevor Conways PoemsInProfile project.

The poem is an older one previously published in Ropes which annually produced by the Masters in Literature and Publishing programme (circa 2009?) based in NUI Galway.

It was nice to have an older poem given fresh light- and the questions posed by Trevor really helped in opening up the poem, to myself and hopefully the readers.

Enjoy!

http://poemsinprofile.weebly.com/the-poems/12-the-local-by-liam-duffy