Brewing city
Dublin
Where Irish porter diverged from the London original into dry stout, and where nitrogen dispense was developed.
In Ireland.
Why it matters to beer
Dublin water is high in carbonate, which suits dark roasted grain. The Irish adaptation of porter used unmalted roasted barley rather than roasted malt — partly a response to tax treatment of malt — and that single substitution produced the sharper, drier, coffee-like roast that defines dry stout.
Styles from here
Beers brewed here
- Guinness 0.0
An alcohol-free version of the world’s best-known stout, made by brewing normally and then removing the alcohol.
- Guinness Draught
The nitrogen-dispensed Irish dry stout that is, for most of the world, what "stout" means — and a much lighter, drier beer than its colour suggests.
- Guinness Extra Stout
The bottled, carbonated Guinness — a sharper and more bitter beer than the nitro draught most people picture.
- Guinness Foreign Extra Stout
The strong, heavily-hopped export stout that predates the draught product by well over a century, and a completely different beer from the pint most drinkers know.
- Smithwick’s Irish Red Ale
The most widely distributed Irish red ale, and the reference point for a style defined by restraint.
Breweries
The water
Hard and strongly alkaline, with very high bicarbonate — well matched to the acidity of heavily roasted grain.
Water is shown here as a property of the place rather than as the reason its beer turned out the way it did. The correlation between a city’s water and its style is real; the causal story is more contingent than it is usually told, and BeerHQ treats it as contested. See Dublin water.
Last reviewed 2026-08-15.