Guinness and Irish whiskey

The center of pub life, besides the talk, is the distinctive, robust black beer with a creamy white head known as stout: Rich and full-bodied in taste, it was brewed for the first time in Dublin in 1759 and is now consumed in Ireland to the tune of more than 2 million pints a day about half the beer drunk in the country.

The singer Burl Ives and the Nobel prize-winning novelist John Steinbeck were devotees of stout, of which three different brands are available: Guinness, which is Dublin's brew, made in Europe's biggest brewery, and two stouts from Cork, Beamish & Crawford and Murphy's. Each brand has a distinctive flavor, but even the same make varies from one pub to the next, depending on how the pints are pulled.

Pulling is considered a high art in Ireland: The method by which the brew is put into the glass is paramount; the stout must be left to rest a minute while the glass is partly filled before being topped off, and the excess foam must be wiped off with a ruler or other straight edge, then topped off again so that the drink can be consumed through the creamy foam.

Other factors are equally important, however: the temperature in the cellar where the casks are kept (it must be constant and just so), the distance between cask and tap, and the frequency with which the stout is drawn. It all makes a difference. Certainly, what passes for Guinness stateside would be sent back to the bar straightaway in Ireland.

But stout is not the only drink. There is also Harp, which is brewed in Dundalk, and Smithwick's, the brew for which Ronald Reagan passed up a stout while on a presidential visit to Ballyporeen, County Tipperary, the village of his ancestors. Smithwick's is a bit darker than Harp, but not as dark as stout, and has been made in Kilkenny since 1710 in a brewery on the site of a 12thcentury Franciscan monastery whose Romanesque tower still stands.

In addition, reaching deep into Ireland's drinking past is the fiery white distilled spirit known as poteen (also known as poteen and pronounced putcheen). Many Irish-Americans deeply involved in bootlegging during Prohibition had learned how to distill spirits from making this liquid fire at home in Ireland by boiling together barley, sugar, yeast, and water over a constant flame with the steam running through copper pipe in a barrel of icy water.

It was illegal then and continues to be so, though it is still widely manufactured around Connemara and is sold at about half the price of legal liquor. But if it isn't made with scrupulous care or if it's unscrupulously adulterated with pure alcohol it can be dangerous, so it's wise to avoid it. Whiskey is also traditional, the word itself deriving from the Irish uisge beatha, meaning water of life. (Note that it is spelled with an e, in contrast to Scotch whisky.) Russia's Peter the Great called Irish whiskey the best of all the wines.

Irish whiskey

The top brands are Jameson, Power, Paddy, and Bushmills the last made at a distillery dating from 1608, the world's oldest. Located in a pleasant hamlet that gave the liquor its name, this plant is open on weekdays for tours and samples. In Ireland, whiskey is seldom drunk with ice, and it used to be that ice was simply unavailable in a bar.

A story is told about an American in a rural pub who, requesting his liquor on the rocks, was asked what he meant, and then was told that they had ice in the area only in winter. The American shot is slightly less than the measure (the half one) in the Republic, slightly more than in Northern Ireland, where drinks cost less in any event, especially beer and stout.

In both the Republic and Northern Ireland, hotel residents are entitled to drink outside the legal hours, though availability depends on individual circumstances and staffing. Check with the hotel management beforehand about their own policy regarding legal closing time.

Bars are generally quiet in the daytime, since most people don't usually come out to drink until about 9 in the evening. So to meet a few locals and swap some yarns, late evening is the time to start. But while enjoying the convivial drinking scene until the very moment that the publican's Time, gentlemen, time sounds serious, remember the saying of the wise old seer:

The first cup for thirst, the second for pleasure, the third for intemperance, and the rest for madness. As for getting over the night before, there's nothing quite like a brisk morning walk in the fresh, unpolluted Irish air, preferably by the sea.