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&amp;quot;Westbrew&amp;quot;:2ekltmhe wrote: Like The Carlow Brewing Companys - Curim Gold Celtic Wheat Beer which has brewed in de. on the bottle <!-- s:shock: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_eek.gif" alt=":shock:" title="Shocked" /><!-- s:shock: -->

The more Irish the name the less Irish the beer <!-- s:roll: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_rolleyes.gif" alt="" title="Rolling Eyes" /><!-- s:roll: -->[/quote:2ekltmhe]

really, must keep an eye out for that

&amp;quot;sbillings&amp;quot;:yl42zvaj wrote: No it's not. Bud was formulated and brewed in the US, then duplicated here. These beers were never brewed here. Do they even have a brewer?

I am willing to bet that they came up with a brand and then just shopped around for a contract brewer, to make them some beers and that the beers were designed by the brewmaster of the Belgian brewery they hired.

I mean you can't even fit a bottle of Árainn Mhór into an Árainn Mhór glass. It's too small. That suggest to me that the company in question doesn't know or care what is happening in the brewery.

Read the lables. They wax lyrical about the island of Árainn Mhór and the “secret essence” of Árainn Mhór, but they tell you bugger all about the beer in the bottle. Árainn Mhór is about branding and the beer is just the product, which comes a distant second.[/quote:yl42zvaj]

I think that's a very harsh assessment.

What would you have them do? Write "Brewed in Belgium" on the bottle in inch high letters. They are clearly trying to establish an Irish branded product, going down the contract brewing route that they felt was necessary to create a market for their beer.

I also think the comparison with the American mega-breweries is valid, I'd see no distinction between "a taste born high in the rockies" and "contains an essence of Arann" as both are just a bit of clever advertising. There are no outright falsifications on the bottle, it only states that it's brewed in the EU. The blurb about the "essence of Arainn" is just that, blurb, it essentially means nothing.

I'm sure the people behind the Arainn Mhor would like nothing more than a nice brewery on the island, if they've chosen a bit of sleight of hand about the exact location where their beer originates over the outlay of a couple of hundred thousand euro to set up a brewery without an established product to support it, I can see more than enough justification for the route they've chosen.