TD 1
– You recently hosted Fidelity, a craft beer fest
ival in Dublin’s Mansion House. What was the reason for putting this on? What makes it different from other beer events? How did it go down? Yeah, Fidelity was absolutely incredible and it’s a bit emotional still, looking back at it. We decided to put it on to launch our brewery and celebrate us finally having a home. It was the first beer festival of its kind in Ireland where your ticket covers your beers and you can sample at your leisure. The format was pretty much pioneered in the US and really perfected by Mikkeller with their Copenhagen Beer Celebration years back. What’s different too is that we’d air freight in beers from the US and Europe for their maximum freshness and most of what’s on offer has never been poured in Ireland before. Between the amazing venue of the Round Room in the Mansion House, their great soundsystem and our partners at Hidden Agenda and The Big Romance playing tunes throughout all the sessions, it really became a big party atmosphere with loads of people dancing and singing throughout. It was only meant to be a one-time thing to open our brewery, but given the response from brewers and customers we took a couple of days afterwards with some long discussions and have decided we’re going to do it again next year. Honestly, we can’t wait to do it again. Even the Lord Mayor came for a scoop, chain and all. What a party. It’s been about a year since I sat down and started writing documents and planning everything from shift patterns, production capacities and down to where the cleaning equipment should go or where to put the drains and hoses. Equipment will arrive in early September and that’ll have made it over a year of my life of planning, but if it works it’ll bang out beer until we all retire. – What have been the biggest successes so far? Last year, we began exporting to a few countries around Europe and consumers taking our beers seriously has been a massive encouragement and success for us. We’ve had the pleasure of attending loads of great beer festivals since then and made some incredible friends along the way from other breweries too. Hop City, Dark City, Indy Man and the London Craft Beer Festival were all absolutely massive achievements, to just be invited and be amongst that standard of international beer. We’d always dreamed of pouring at the Mikkeller Beer Celebration in Copenhagen one day and this year made that a reality – and had a few beer people cheering when they saw the Irish flag above our stand for the first time in the history of the festival. Our own festival, Fidelity, last month in the Mansion House was a massive culmination of all of those friendships, and bringing the first festival like that to Ireland was huge for the beer community here and abroad. Dublin felt like a fully fledged beer city in its own right that week and it’s what we’d always wanted to achieve with Whiplash. Next big one is owning our own brewery. – Your brand is creatively interesting in every way. The name, branding, illustration, final production quality and more oozes Above: can design and illustrations by Sophie de Vere Extended interview at totallydublin.ie whiplashbeer.com care and effort. What drives you to pour so much energy into every aspect when you could choose an easier path? Thanks! We’ve always lived by “If you’re going to do something, do it right” and that has to be applied to every part of what we do. We want to give people a good sense of what we’re about from our philosophy of using cans as an art space to being able to use a beer to start a conversation about a song or an album while you’re at it. Brewing is an art and like all good art it’s honest, so we wanted to lay out what the beer is about down to the ingredients on the front with a simple white canvas. When we started, I’d become jaded with beer branding in fridges and everything was about noisy primary colours and their only job was to sell sell sell. This was just a project for us at the beginning, so we had space to take more risks, opting to give consumer’s eyes a break and slow down that visual pollution in the fridge with something just white and straight forward. I’m a big fan of that film They Live too and have my own hangups about consumerism, so there’s definitely a bit of that in there too. We’ve been inspired by the beer design revolution that breweries like Mikkeller and To Øl brought about in Europe as well as how cans are really turned into works of art by breweries like Other Half and Finback too. I don’t really know if there’s an easier path really as it comes pretty natural when you get excited about how you’d like a can to look or feel, and had we gone a more traditional route I’m not sure we’d be doing what we set out to do either. Sophie De Vere does all of our can art and it’s amazing to see the response in the art world for her stuff, as well with invitations to do galleries and shows focusing on the work she puts in this year as well. It’s very heartwarming and she deserves full credit for her amazing designs. – Three Irish brewers or beer companies you’re into and why? Yellowbelly – For their constant innovation from their beers and design work and being absolute legends of people Boundary – For their deep passion for all things geeky and modern in brewing along with their co-operative principles and drive Trouble – For their great commitment to how to run a quality driven brewery that continues to innovate and bring consumers into drinking great beer. – Three international brewers or beer brands you’re into and why? Wylam – For their constant re-invention over 20 years mastering everything from malt forward cask to the best hoppy beer you’ll find this side of the pond Beerbliotek – For their absolute commitment to brewing everything and brewing it well. Their appreciation for all beer styles and successful dodging of being pigeonholed in any way is something we aspire to do with Whiplash. Garage – Not only are these folks making some of the best hop forward beer in the world right now, we’re almost married to them as it’s rare to find people in the world who are just as mad as you. – Your top three beers and why? Schlenkerla Märzen – Smoked malty German Lager, always in my fridge and I’m an absolute fiend for smoked beer. Drie Fonteinen Oude Geuze – My favourite lambic, ages beautifully forever or great once it’s ready. Hill Farmstead Harlan – The first hoppy beer the really blew my mind. The level of clarity and space afforded to all the sum of its parts is just masterful brewing. 17