1 Guinness Draught | Irish dry stout | Guinness, St. James’s Gate | 4.2% | The Palace Bar, Fleet Street | Yes, it’s the obvious one. But a well‑kept pint at the Palace still feels like the control group in a stout experiment: creamy, roasty, gone before you realise you were ‘just having one’. When friends visit, this is Episode 1, Scene 1. |
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2 Plain Porter | Irish porter | Porterhouse Brewing Company | 5.0% | Porterhouse Temple Bar, Parliament Street | The pint that makes you realise ‘plain’ is Irish for ‘actually quite complex’. Cocoa, coffee, a touch of smoke. Sitting with one in Porterhouse while tourists chase shots next door feels like finding the quiet seminar room on a crowded campus. |
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3 Buried At Sea | Chocolate milk stout | Galway Bay Brewery | 4.5% | The Black Sheep, Capel Street | This is dessert‑adjacent without going full milkshake. Chocolate and lactose sweetness, but still recognisably stout. It’s my reward beer after surviving a particularly dense theory chapter: comforting, a little indulgent, still coherent. |
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4 Two Hundred Fathoms | Barrel‑aged imperial stout | Galway Bay Brewery | ~10.0% | Against the Grain, Wexford Street (when they have it) | This is not a casual pint; it’s a season finale. Whiskey barrel, dark chocolate, waves of roast. I treat bottles like limited‑run box sets: pull one out once or twice a year, pay attention, don’t rush, accept a small cliff‑hanger in the hangover. |
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5 Elevation Pale Ale | Pale ale | Wicklow Wolf Brewing Company | 4.8% | Isabelle’s, Dublin 2 (in cans) | My token non‑dark entry, the way every good syllabus sneaks in one comedy among the tragedies. Bright, citrusy, easy to drink without sliding into bland. When I’ve hit my stout quota for the night, this is the palate reset button. |
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6 Irish Coffee Stout | Coffee stout | Rascals Brewing Company | 4.8% | Rascals HQ, Inchicore | Does what it says on the tin: coffee, roast, a little sweetness, like someone peer‑reviewed an Irish coffee and asked for ‘more stout, less sugar’. Best with pizza at the taproom, pretending you’ll ‘just take a photo of this one’ and failing. |
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7 Daily Stout | Irish dry stout | DOT Brew | 4.8% | Galway Bay bars around town, or in cans | Named like a habit, which is dangerous. Straightforward roast, a bit of chocolate, lean body. It’s the series you put on in the background and suddenly you’re five episodes in and looking at the empty glass wondering what happened. |
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8 The Sup | Porter | Whiplash Beer | 5.0–6.2% (varies by batch) | Whiplash Fidelity, Smithfield, or good bottle shops | Whiplash does for porter what prestige TV did for crime dramas: familiar structure, sharper writing. The Sup is all dark chocolate, coffee and toasty edges, quietly intense rather than shouty. Ideal for slow chats in a corner of Smithfield. |
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TheLysts
