Toasting St Patrick in the US
If St Patrick was around today you might think his tipple of choice would be a pint of snakebite, but now a Co Down brewery has paid the ultimate honour to Ireland’s patron saint and named a beer after him.
The Strangford Lough Brewing Co has actually been in business for six years now, but this year they have particular cause to celebrate as St Patrick’s Best Ale will be widely available across the USA just in time for St Patrick’s Day next week.
Based in Killyleagh in Co Down, SLBC was established by Tony Davies and Bob Little and Tony is extremely proud that both St Patrick’s Best (4.2% ABV) and Legbiter Ale (4.8% ABV) are now available in at least 20 states across America.
“We’ve been trying to do this for about four years. We’ve been on various Irish trade missions and so on and we came to the conclusion that trying to export bottled beer to the States was going to cost us a fortune,” he says.
“We needed to come up with a different way, so what we do now is send the beer over in condensed form.
Then it’s finish-brewed in the US and we have this phrase ‘Born in Ireland, matured in America’ and that’s going down pretty well.
The first batch was produced at the end of January at the High Falls Operating Co brewery in Rochester in New York and I’m told that the St Patrick’s Best there is absolutely wonderful.
Eventually we want to cover the whole US. We want to get it as far as fast as possible.
We’ve since had to produce more St Patrick’s Best because of St Patrick’s Day. We have a quality beverage and I think the market’s wide open for that. Not only is it Irish but it’s quality Irish beer as well.”
The export process involves using barley grown in St Patrick’s country (Co Down) and producing malt to export to the US, where it is finish-brewed and distributed across states including New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
So rather than drinking American ‘light beers’ with green food colouring added on March 17, the Irish, Irish Americans and Americans can opt for a real Irish beer direct from Co Down.
“If you check the Irish beer finder website, that lists 2500 Irish bars across the US and most of those will want an alternative for St Patrick’s Day. There’s a huge market there” says Tony.
“A lot of people want to be Irish in America (On St Patrick’s Day) but they don’t necessarily want to drink loads of Guinness and basically it could knock out things like Stella and Heineken and those sorts of beers.
Because our Irish competitors have done such a good job of putting the credentials of Ireland to the fore in terms of quality beer, people see our beer and they’re taking it.
The plan now is to get a lot of it drank around St Patrick’s Day and then people can find out it’s a good beer and we’ll go on from there” He says there are an estimated 42 million Irish Americans in the US, so you can understand why it’s such a desirable market to get into.
Tony describes St Patrick’s Best Ale as “Light and refreshing on the palate, with a classic Irish malt and traditional hop aroma”, while Legbiter Ale “Offers a very different flavour with an inviting citrus fragrance, in a brilliant golden ale giving a full but refreshing clean caramel malt bitter finish”.
The eventual plan is to introduce three more SLBC products to the US: St Patrick’s Dark, St Patrick’s Golden and Barelegs.
Another great selling point for the SLBC ales is the distinctive labelling on the bottles “The label and branding have always been very important to us and have been incredibly well received in the states,” says Tony. “The view on the label is across Strangford Lough on the other side is Portaferry.
“We want to sell the part of the country we come from as well as the beer, County Down is an area that’s full of history and beauty and wildlife, but it’s not full of tourists.” Somebody came up with the statistic that only 5% of American tourists travel North of the border and we have St Patrick’ buried here and the place where he preached his first sermon”
As well as promoting the brewery’s products at home, Tony says there is also interest further afield. “As a result of this US push, we’ve also had enquiries from France and Japan, they’ve seen the beer and thought ‘Here’s something different – we’ll have a look at that.’
“No matter what part of the world you’re in, there’s always an Irish pub and the demand for Irish beer. Believe it or not, there’s even an Irish pub in Kathmandu!” For further information on Strangford Lough Brewing Company, please visit www.slbc.ie.
