We have well over 200 breweries, cideries, distilleries and meaderies in Ireland today — most of which are small, independent, producers. The last decade has seen a surge of new producers in Ireland, and an interest in the drinks they sell. People are starting to care about where their drinks come from, who makes them and how they taste.
The Drink Irish blog aims to encourage you, and pubs, to support local and small Irish drinks producers. Every bottle of beer, cider, whiskey or gin that you buy makes a difference. Every bottle or keg that a publican gets in from a local brewery or distillery makes a difference.
There are many reasons to support the little guy — all of which we’ll explore in this blog!
#DrinkIrish
Social media has given small producers a platform to engage with potential customers and to advertise their products. This is something they cannot usually afford to do in print or televised media. A unique thing about these producers is, rather than compete with each other, they actually tend to club together. They support each other, collaborate with each other, and even sell each other’s products.
A lot of people are getting behind these producers and promoting them as much as possible, especially on social media. To that end, we would like to encourage the use of the hashtag #DrinkIrish, for use when promoting Irish breweries, cideries, distilleries and meaderies. This hashtag is simple and to the point. Including terms like “craft” or “independent” can complicate things, and the drinks we are promoting don’t necessarily have to be “local”. We think it’s best for the hashtag to be Irish. This grabs more attention and makes it unique to Ireland.
The spirit of #DrinkIrish will, of course, focus on local, independent producers. We believe that supporting local producers is the way forward, and would love to see more pubs stocking them. However, supporting all Irish producers is still a good thing!
Obviously, we can still use whatever other hashtags are appropriate, but this one #DrinkIrish would be great to tie them all together.
More information
You can find out more about independent Irish brewers, news, meet-ups and events at the following places:
For info on Irish cider mills go to Cider Ireland, and for whiskey go to Drinks Ireland.
If you think any others should be added to this list, let us know!