Almost everything the world knows about Irish beer is dark, and almost none of it is what most people in a Dublin pub actually drink. The two Irish styles you have probably already met, the dry stout and the red ale, are covered in detail elsewhere on this site, so this article deliberately stays off both. What is left is the far larger part of Irish brewing that almost never makes it out of the country: the pale lager that is the true everyday drink, the cream ale, and the ordinary bitter. If you have been to Ireland and only tried Guinness, you have had one corner of a beer culture that is mostly pale, light and lager-driven, and the gap between that and what you were sold is what this page is about.
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Ask for the Beer the Pub Actually Pours
- Order a local lager first, since that is the everyday pint in an ordinary Irish pub, and ask whether a pale ale or cream ale is on.
- Treat the cream ale as a dry, mild, top-fermented ale rather than a sweet dessert beer, despite what the name suggests.
- Seek out a session bitter for a dry, hop-led finish, and ask when the cask was changed or buy keg bitter fresh.
- Read the label of a supposedly native beer with care, because a true dark stout is rarely what a mainstream pub is built to pour.
The Export Stout Crowding Out Everything Else
The reason Irish beer abroad equals stout is a story about marketing and shipping rather than about what Irish people drink. Stout, in its dry black form, is a beautiful, distinctive, easily recognized beer, and it travels and keeps better than almost anything else a country makes, so it became the face of Irish beer worldwide. Meanwhile the pale and amber beers that make up the bulk of Irish brewing are ordinary to the point of invisibility, because they look like lager, drink like a session beer and do not stand out on a shelf. The result is that the two beers an outsider is most likely to know, the dry stout and the red ale, are a small and skewed sample of a much larger tradition.
The stout and the red ale also have the opposite problem in the other direction, because within Ireland a pub that lists nothing but stout and red ale is the exception rather than the rule. If you order a pint blind in an ordinary Irish pub, the statistical answer is a light lager, not a black beer. This article is about that answer and the small number of things worth asking for instead.
The Pale Lager Is The Real National Drink
The dominant Irish beer is not an ale at all, it is a pale lager. Lager arrived in Ireland in the nineteenth century from continental Europe and, as it did almost everywhere, gradually displaced the older ales that preceded it. Over the twentieth century, aided first by war-time strength limits and then by the rise of the big international brewers, Irish lager became the default pint. Today the typical Irish lager is a light, carbonated, cold-fermented pale lager of ordinary strength, brewed to be clean and refreshing rather than distinctive, in much the same international style that dominates the rest of the world.
It is a perfectly drinkable beer and it is what a pub is built to serve, but you will not travel far in Ireland to find it, because it is the same style you can buy almost anywhere. The more useful thing to know is how to recognize the better version when a pub takes its lager seriously, since a good Irish lager with a clear malt character and a clean, short finish is a different drinking experience from a thin one, and the difference is in the malt and the length rather than in the strength.
Cream Ale, The Quiet Irish Middle
Between the lager and the red ale sits the cream ale, and it is the most genuinely Irish beer most people never encounter. A cream ale is a top-fermented pale ale, lighter in body and colour than a red ale, closer to a pale ale than to a stout, and it carries a soft, smooth malt character with a clean finish. Historically it was a domestic answer to imported lager, an ale that could be brewed and drunk in the way people wanted, and it was once one of the most common beers in Ireland. It fell out of favour the way it did in Britain, pushed aside by lager, but it never disappeared the way some styles did.
The name causes trouble because it does not mean what a North American drinker expects. A cream ale is not a sweet, heavy, opalescent beer, and it is not a cream-coloured drink in the sense of dessert. It is simply a pale, mild, top-fermented ale, and the honest way to think of it is as the Irish cousin of a session pale ale. If a pub or a bottle shop in Ireland has one, it is worth asking for, because it is a genuine piece of the domestic Irish canon rather than an export style wearing a national label.
The Ordinary Bitter And Its Irish Cousin
The other beer worth knowing about is the Irish bitter, which sits close to the British ordinary bitter in strength and attitude without being quite the same style. Like its British counterpart it is a pale, moderate-strength ale with a hop bitterness that finishes dry, built to be drunk in quantity over an evening, and in Ireland it is less a defined style than a habit of ordering a pint of ale in a pub that still pours one. It is worth seeking out for the same reason the British bitter is worth seeking out, because the whole style depends on being fresh, cool and uncomplicated, and a sessionable dry ale is a harder thing to brew than a strong one.
The style details for bitter, the ordinary, best and best-best ladder, the pale malt and the restrained English-type hops, are set out in our guide to English bitters, and the English members of the family are covered there. The Irish end of the same idea is real but smaller, and the practical instruction is the same one that works in Britain: ask when the cask was changed, or order a keg bitter fresh, and drink it cold but not fridge cold. The relevant contrast in this article is not with the stout or the red ale but with the lager sitting next to it, because the whole point of a bitter is that it tastes of something other than cold and clean.
What Has Happened Since The Craft Wave Started
The other thing that separates this article from a stout piece is time. Irish brewing spent most of the twentieth century consolidating into a small number of large brewers whose portfolios were dominated by stout, red ale and lager, and the independent scene was thin. That has changed. Ireland now has a genuine craft and specialty tier, with independent breweries concentrated in Dublin but spread across Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford and the north, and with a modern international influence running through them. These newer breweries are doing what craft brewers do everywhere: taking styles that the export market ignored, including pale ales, session lagers, sours, farmhouse ales and hop-forward beers, and brewing them with intent.
The large brewers have not stood still either, and most have added a rotating selection of seasonal and specialty releases, so even in a mainstream pub you are more likely now to find an Irish lager, a red ale and one interesting option rather than two house ales. The practical consequence for you is that asking for something other than stout is no longer a special request in much of the country. The barrier is no longer supply, it is that stout is still what the menu leads with and what a visitor is offered by default.
What To Ask For When Dark Beer Is Not What You Want
If you are in Ireland and dark beer is the last thing you want, you are in a good position once you know the vocabulary, because the alternatives are ordinary and easy to request. Ask for a local lager first, since that is what the pub is built to pour, and ask whether they have a pale ale or a cream ale on cask or keg, because that is the beer most unlike the stout and the most like the rest of the world. In a city, look for a bar or taproom that keeps more than one beer on, and ask the bartender what is good rather than reading a menu of one.
For a homebrewer, the honest reading is that Irish pale beer is a more useful exercise than Irish stout, because the light styles have nowhere to hide a fault. A light lager needs a clean fermentation and a long enough lagering time, and a cream ale needs a restrained yeast and a short, dry finish, and both of those are things you can learn on a single batch without a cellar full of equipment. What you will not get from brewing them is a story about stout, which is fine, because the stout and the red ale are already documented elsewhere, and this page is deliberately about everything the two of them pushed off the bar.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most common beer in Ireland?
A light lager, by a wide margin. Stout and red ale are the beers Ireland is known for abroad, but the everyday pint in an ordinary Irish pub is a pale, cold, session-strength lager in the international style. This is the same concentration effect that made Mexican beer read as one export lager, and the fix in both cases is to look past the famous name to the beer that is actually being poured.
What is a cream ale, and is it sweet?
A cream ale is a light, top-fermented pale ale that is a traditional Irish domestic style, sitting between a lager and a red ale in character. Despite the name it is not a sweet or creamy dessert beer, and a good one finishes dry and clean. If you have never had one, it is a genuinely different beer from both the stout and the red ale, and it is the style this article is most trying to point you toward.
Is there a difference between Irish and British bitter?
They are close relatives rather than the same beer. Both are pale, moderate-strength, dry session ales with restrained English-type hops, and the British version has a more precisely defined style ladder than the Irish one. In Ireland, bitter is more a habit of drinking a session ale than a tightly policed style, and the details of the British family are set out in our guide to English bitters, which is where the hop and malt detail belongs.
Why is Irish stout so well known if it is not the main beer?
Because stout travels and keeps better than almost anything a country brews, which made it a natural export, and because a distinctive black beer is easy to market to people who have never been to Ireland. Within Ireland it is one style among several, not the everyday drink, and the pale lager is. Our guides to dry stout and to the stout family cover that end of the canon in detail, while this page is about the pale and amber beers the export trade never bothered to introduce.
Order The Beer The Pub Is Actually Known For
The useful habit in Ireland is to stop defaulting to the black beer and ask what the place is known for, because in most of the country that answer is a lager, a cream ale or a session bitter rather than a stout. One of those is a real and better introduction to Irish brewing than another pint of the export style. And if you are brewing at home, the pale end of the canon is where the work is, because a light lager and a cream ale have nowhere to hide a mistake, which is the same discipline the red ale and the stout ask of you, just in a different colour.
