The social drinker

Do you know that feeling when you ‘discover’ a great new place, musician, or even a useful word, and then find that everybody else has known about it for ages?

I feel that way about Mescan, a craft beer from Mayo, which has been around since 2010 and comes highly recommended from several quarters. Now, in truth, Mescan was very much under the radar for much of this time, because the two founders were experimenting with tiny amounts of beer for three or four years. However, I have to admit that Mescan has been available in some off-licences for at least five years, and it is remiss of me not to have brought this excellent brewery to your attention until now.

Let me start by saying that you will like Mescan’s beers if you like Belgian beer, and you probably won’t if, for some odd reason, you don’t like Belgian beer.

The brewery, named after the monk who reputedly brewed beer for St Patrick, was set up 10 years ago by two bearded vets; Bart Adons from Belgium and Cillian O Morain from Ireland, after more than two decades healing animals. Their mission: to create beers inspired by Adons’ native country, which tend to have intense flavours and a high alcohol content.

Hampered by a lack of marketing and the distribution issues that bedevil many Irish micro-breweries, Mescan is not as well-known as it should be, but this has not stopped Adons and O Morain from engaging in endless experimentation.

Mescan recently brought out two new beers, but when I tasted several beers recently, I liked the traditional Westport Blond Beer, an excellent and unusual stout; and a nutty Red Tripel, which pays homage to the wonderful beers made in Belgium by Trappist monks. These are instant classics, and it’s a pleasure to (belatedly) recommend them all.