See below article courtesy of the Evening Echo.

Bruce Mansour of Make it Happen, Cormac O'Dwyer from Dungarvan Brewing Company and Stephen Clinch of Trouble Brewing

Its the morning after the night before. I just woke up with only a slightly groggy head after sampling some of Ireland’s finest craft beers at the inaugural Irish Craft Beer Festival. The event is being held this weekend, 23 rd – 25th September 2011. There were some well known brands such as The Porter House, O’Haras and Messrs Maguire’s and a few new brands (to me) such as Dunvgarvan Brewing Company, White Gypsy and BrewEyed Blonde. Check out the brewers list.

If you are new to Craft Beers, I would advise you to pop over to The Porter House lads. Tell them what you normally drink and they will point out a few options that you might like. They do it all the time in their pubs, so they probably have the most experience in pointing people in the right direction.

My favourite beers of the night:

• Mustang, White Gypsy
• Vanilla flavored  IPA, BrewEyed Blonde
• Copper Coast Red Ale, Dungarvan
  This is a smooth, fruity ale with a definite caramal character created by the use of crystal malt in the brewing process but with an added hop balance that is not always present in red ales, and which balances the sweetness of the caramel flavours.
• Smoked Ale,  O’Haras
  This ale has fruity notes on the nose, a biscuity malt base peaks in a zing of bitterness, rounded off with a subtle smoked finish – perfect for the beginner in the series and a taste of what is to come.
• IPA,  O’Haras
  Contemporary style I.P.A. dry hopped for extra aroma. In appearance it is a Rich golden colour with a white head. This pale ale has a light malt base with just the right mouth feel to allow the hop character to predominate. Grapefruit like bitterness is full and lasting and is balanced by a zesty citrus burst of aroma from the late addition of cascade hops.The Citrus flavours give way at the end to the floral, spicy bitterness of Amarillo hops.

After your chat, have a read though the booklet that you received with your free complementary glass on the way in. This booklet is like your encyclopedia Britannica to the craft beer scene in Ireland. If you drink larger, stick with the  pale ales and wheat beers. If your into something a bit fuller try some of the Red Ales, Stouts. Louise was on Tempted Ciders for most of the night, she is not much of a beer person.

The only other advice I can give is:

• Avoid the Wojitos (Whiskey Mojitos)
• Wash your glass out between drinks
• Buy your burger from GBK, buy your chips from the place on the right
• If ordering a cheese plate, ask can you swap out the blue cheese for something else (unless you like blue cheese)
• Don’t expect much in terms of entertainment (except for the Magician, I heard he was awesome)
• Bring your own camping chairs
• Grab your beer tokens when you go in the door. I got 20 quids worth and it lasted the night.

So in summary, great night had by all. I’ve never had that volume of drink before and been able to wake up in the morning and write a blog post. It must be something in the water!

Big thanks to Dave from Politics.ie for informing me that the event was on and to Ann from Yelp for scoring us 8 free tickets. If you have some time today, pop down to the RDS and check out the first Craft Beer Festival.  Its 10 quid in and you get a free glass and a half pint of beer.

Comments about the video from Anthony McG:

The Apprentice
The first sketch I wrote was based off the Irish version of The Apprentice. I had aspirations to have it filmed on the actual set and have the real Bill involved but we couldn’t get it sorted in time (although we tried). The majority of filming on both The Apprentice and The Death of Blogging was done in one day around Dublin. We actually only committed to filming The Apprentice after talking to comedian Eric Lalor that afternoon.

The shoot involved Jason Roe joining us to play the role of Brian Purcell, Steph tanning it up to play Jackie Lavin and Niamh playing Bill’s secretary. If your wondering why Eric’s suit jacket is so big then you won’t be suprised to hear that it was actually Jason’s. Jen took us through a number of takes filming the opening couch scene and then the boardroom itself to get the footage she needed. It really came together in the edit with Jen using the voiceover, titles and end really well. Quite happy with how it worked out.

You can view the 6 videos here in full on Youtube.

Quick post to tell you how the gardening course went. Its been almost 5 years since I’ve done anything horticultural. Being honest, gardening has never been high up on my list of interests. I have completed some basic horticultural /science studies but most of what I covered in that time is now a distant memory.

On the morning, we arrived to a freshly baked breakfast of scones, nibbley bits and freshly ground and brewed coffee. Everyone was introduced and we went over what we were going to cover for the day. Then headed straight out to the garden and got stuck in. Peter had a variety of pots, plants and seeds for us to work with. We covered the basics of growing from seeds, watering seedlings, potting and re-potting plants.

As Louise said to me, Peters gardening course could be summed up as “philosophy for gardening & life.”. Darren had a great comment “Peter knows how plants think.”.

Photo of Peter Donegan

The course was a mixture of hands on gardening, great advice and interludes of peter telling us about his gardening career. I was blown away by what peter achieved in his career at a young age.

A summary of what I picked up:

The brand of compost you use doesn’t really matter all that much. I had this idea in my head that there was some kind of difference in quality. At the end of the day its just the growing medium.

Drainage holes for window boxes or pots can be substituted with a variety of other scraps ranging from broken bits of cups, dead plants, polystyrene or whatever you have to hand. The main thing is to make some drainage space under the soil. Be warned that carrots don’t like this too much as they need this space.

When your prune a plant on top you often force root growth, this is useful when you have re-potted a plant.

You don’t need to buy fancy plastic pots, trays to get stuck in. A great example Peter had was an old wheel barrow that had been re-purposed as a semi-portable raised bed for green house. It really gets you thinking about what you can use from around the home or garden.

Photo of Watering Seed Tray

Allotments are a lot of work in terms of maintenance. Water can often be a pain point as you may have to bring your own supply. Peter suggested that people should be made aware of this before they take on an allotment. Some kind of allotment driving license or a mentoring scheme needs to be put in place.

In Summary:

I felt that got a lot out of the course, not alone did I get a ton of useful information but our balcony is full of pots and window boxes. The hands on experience really cant be beaten. I feel like I got more hand on experience in the 5 hours than I did during my two years of class room based horticultural / science studies.

If your interested in getting started in gardening, Id strongly advise you to drop Peter a line and ask him when his next course is.

I had a great St. Patrick’s week/day this year. It was a bit of an odd one as it’s my first year living in the city centre whilst the Paddy’s day festival was on.

I’ve recently moved into an apartment, located on Capel Street with Louise. Before you ask, yes the noise from the street can be a pain sometimes. For anyone who doesn’t know, Capel Street is a small one way street that is located directly at the end of one of our main pedestrianised shopping streets Henry Street. We are just far enough away to avoid most of the hustle and bustle. To be honest, the benefits of being so central really outweigh any of the negative stuff.

Last year I was invited to the grand stand by the guys at Pix.ie. I got some amazing photos but it was a bit of a pain not being able to leave the grand stand without having to walk through the parade. This years Paddy’s day was a bit of an interesting one. I was invited by Eamon Leonard to watch the parade from his office roof top. We had such an amazing view! His office is located in the middle of Dame Street, just a stones throw from Dublin’s City Hall.

To be honest it was a bit bizarre.. We some how managed to get sandwiched between a pack of Greenpeace folk and a few anarchists who liked the idea of waving massive Palestinian flags! They were the types who seemed to think it was wise to stand on a railing in front of a directional mobile phone  antenna. They also seemed to take pleasure in risking life and limb jumping over a set of roof top spikes to get on to the roof of the five story building next door.  The things that people do sometimes boggle the mind!

What was hilarious was when one of the anarchist guys started selling some sort of raffle vouchers in support of Shell to Sea campaign. At this point, Louise started cracking up. For anyone who doesn’t know, Louise is a mechanical engineer who is building a pipeline for a power station in the UK. I’m sure you can see why she wasn’t too impressed. Be warned, don’t bring up the subject of pipelines or pigging a pipe around Louise.

We were also invited by Darragh Doyle (Official Guinness Storehouse Ambassador) to Guinness store house for their festival party. They had the usual diddly dancing, DJs and live music including Rattle & Hum, Jimmy Smyth, The Gravel Walk and Sliotar. There is nothing like a few pints of Guinness, but I couldn’t help noticing that many of the people there looked like they were bored out of their tree! At least that was until Rattle & Hum (Spotify Link), U2 cover band kicked off.

All in all it was a fun day. Check out our photos from this year.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, Peter Donegan is blogger who is obsessed with everything green. I have a lot of time for Peter and his greener events.

I did horticulture in school but always felt like I only had a summary view of the world of horticulture. After a lengthy phone conversation and a number of tweets Peter decided to try his hand at a DIY gardening course. I thought it was a wonderful Idea and signed myself and my other half Louise up straight away.

Peter has one space left available for March 20th. So make sure to drop him a line if your interested.

“Basically: this is for the [wo]man, parent, adult, child who wants to do a bit of green living but not farming. Enough to have summer salads, fresh herbs, maybe even some fruit – at the same time logic enough that you’ll watch footie/ daytime tv and go out rather than hug trees. You’d like a bit of green, you need a place to start but without getting bamboozled – and let it grow from here….”

Peter’s gardening course:

• A one day crash course from 9.30am – 3.30pm
• The first day/ date is Saturday March 20th
• Cost of materials only to be covered set at €60 per person
• You take home what you make on the day
• Lunch will be included
• To take place in Ballyboughal [it's near Swords/ North Dublin ]
• Numbers will be limited to a maximum 8 people only

I have room for three people in my car, if anyone needs a lift from Dublin city center.

Peter Donegan’s  garden group is also planning a boat trip to Ireland’s eye. They are meeting outside The Bloody Stream pub, Howth, Co. Dublin on April 18th, Sunday at 11.30 am. Cost For Boat Trip from Island Ferries is €15 return.  For more details on the boating trip check out Peter’s blog post.

As part of the latest round of ad-hoc meet-ups in Dublin (Ireland) .. we decided to run another Blogger-Twitter-Whatever (BTW) meetup.

The plan is to meet in the KOH, Cocktail Lounge (Dublin) at 7pm on Thursday 29th April. KOH is located on the fashionable Millennium Walkway, which is a pedestrianised street running from the river Liffey to the Jervis street Luas stop.

The event is free to attend. We will be asking for donation on the night for St. Francis Hospice who provide specialist palliative care to patients with advanced Cancer and Motor Neurone Disease. Please

We have space for up to 150 people this time round, so it would be great if you could bring some people along with you. more the merrier!  There will be finger food and 2 a special on cocktails. Id really appreciate if everyone could give this one a big push!!

Short URL: http://short.ie/btwapr29

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