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 heard of it. Ale drinking is very much a minority sport in Dublin anyway. Guinness with blackcurrant, yes.
However, paying through the nose for a glass of diluted cordial is very much a Dublin pub tradition.
Vanilla is a pod. Odd.
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.
[…] 1960s article about Guinness included an intriguing assertion: that in Dublin it was considered the done thing to drink ale (i.e. pale ale, not stout) with a shot of fruit cordial. We still haven’t got round to trying it ourselves for some […]