Categories
Beer history

Ale in Dublin: Mit Schuss?

‘Vanilla is a Bean’ by Christian Newton, from Flickr, under Creative Commons.

The Dubliners who took to ale showed what seemed a clear contempt for the stuff by sprinkling fruit cordial into it — a row of cordial shakers stood on every bar and the choice included raspberry.

That’s a claim made by ‘Dublin boy’ Gerard Fay in a 1965 article about Guinness called ‘My Goodness…’ and included in The Complete Imbiber Vol. 8 edited by Cyril Ray.

This is the first we’ve ever heard of this practice and it sounds very… Un-Irish.

Can anyone confirm or deny? And is anyone else up for giving it a go?

7 replies on “Ale in Dublin: Mit Schuss?”

Never seen it put in ale.
Mind you I do get some odd looks from my Irish chums when I try to improve a poor pint of stout with a dash of blackcurrant.
And a shot of port in stout goes down on a winter’s day.

Slightly unrelated I suppose but when I used to live in France virtually no one would drink beer (the local blanche or blonde) ‘neat’ but with a slug of cordial mixed in. I used to enjoy a ‘pint citron’, lemon cordial went very well on a summers day. Some bars specialised in having every flavour of cordial you can imagine available, bubblegum, kiwi, peanut butter etc….

Fascinating — thanks! This sounds like something we can imagine taking of as a craftified trend — with artisanal cordials, etc.

Comments are closed.