Most everything about Galway Hooker looks left-field, amateurish, punkzine, non-corporate. The website is coloured orange, and has bubbles rising. The fermenters and brewhouse levitate in cartoonish surrealism. There are jokes about the beer's name. The guys cavort like they are the John Belushi and Dan Akroyd of the West Coast: not Blues Brothers, but Beer Brothers.
Don't believe it. It's that old David Cronenberg vibe: I may look like a Canadian accountant, but would you like to see my movies...
Behind the whackiness, Aidan Murphy – who makes the beer with his cousin, Ronan Brennan – is deeply serious. You can't make a pale ale as fine as Galway Hooker – it is one of the iconic drinks of modern Irish craft brewing – without being deeply serious.
So, dig a little deeper, and you see the bedrock on which Hooker is built: Mr Murphy has the degree in food science from U.C.C. He has the Master's in brewing and distilling from Heriot-Watt University. He has brewed in the Isle of Man, and in San Francisco. He uses terms like “pragmatic” to describe himself. Left-side brain or right-side brain, Ronan? “You need both”, he says. Of course.
Hooker was established in 2006, and right from the out the drink was fashioned with food in mind. “We consider beer to be like any other food: the fresher and less processed the better”, is how their manifesto puts it. The ambition and altruism to create a drink that had distinction and flavour met with the ability to nail the flavours right from the start: a “wonderfully complex nose of citrus, especially grapefruit, and resiny hops balanced against biscuity sweetness from the malt”, wrote Iorwerth Griffiths in his book, “Beer and Cider in Ireland”. When we first tried the beer in late 2006, it fair blew us away, and one moment we treasure especially was a glass of Hooker drunk sitting at the bar of The Oarsman, in Carrick-on-Shannon, on a summer's afternoon. It was one of those moments when time stopped. Galway Hooker didn't conquer us, it seduced us.