Cuilan Loughnane

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Cuilan Loughnane is to Irish craft brewing as Myrtle Allen is to Irish food: the hero of the locality.

Like Mrs Allen, Mr Loughnane's perspective is distinctly – and deliberately – limited. He wants local beers for local folk, the way things used to be, the way things used to be half a century ago, when Perry's in Rathdowney made a Tipperary ale for Tipperary locals. He rails against the economic subjugation of rural Ireland – “That supermarket sucks €82,000.00 euro out of this town every week!” – he told us when we visited the grand shed that is his brewing palace. “This town” is Templemore, where he was born and where he brews today, and one suspects that, like José Bové, he might like to drive a tractor through every German discount supermarket in the country, starting in his hometown. He is iconoclastic.

His signature and his influence are all over the shop. He has made contract beers for many other brewers, popping up here and there – The Brook Lodge; Metalman; Messrs Maguire – and he got his start in brewing in 'Tipp, when he bagged a job at Dwan's in Thurles, after returning from Canada where he was bitten by the brewing bug. He took over from Davy Jones to become brewmaster in Dwan's, where he made great ales, then moved on to Messrs Maguire in Dublin. When the Kinsale Brewing Co. folded, he bought their gear, and the gleaming copper vats, which were made in Germany but travelled to Ireland via a spell in Singapore, seem quite at home in Templemore. To watch Mr Loughnane at work is mesmerising: like a cheesemaker, or a dancer in the midst of a rhythm, he can't stop once the process is underway, climbing up the steps of the mash tun or the brew kettle to check the beer’s progress, and then sliding down on the handrails to the floor of the brewery, like a giddy kid, in order to turn on a tap or check a temperature. As he works, you can almost feel his brain fizzing with ideas, plans, ambitions: the alchemist in his lab in total control, thinking about smoked beers, thinking about Tipperary ruby ales, thinking about barrel-aged porters, about winter ales and pilsners, the world of beer brought back home to Templemore.

White Gypsy Brewery,Templemore,County Tipperary
+353 86 1724520
www.whitegypsy.ie