CHAR’s top picks for Fidelity this weekend
Words: Shamim de Brún
Images: Instagram
Fidelity 2022 welcomes over 40 of the best craft breweries from around the world to Dublin city centre this weekend. Up from thirty in 2019. This festival gifts craft beer enthusiasts the opportunity to sample an array of beers that would take years to track down across the world in just two days with their all-inclusive tickets.
My congratulations if you’re lucky enough to have nabbed a fidelity ticket. This weekend’s hottest ticket is the annual beer festival’s triumphant return to the mansion house.
Here are five breweries you can’t miss at this weekend’s festival:
TO ØL
These danish lads are well known for a quality core range and consistently banging seasonals. My favourite was Whirl Domination and IPA, so hoppy bunnies would be jealous. The chance to taste their zingers on draft is an opportunity not to be missed.
JACKIE O’S
This is the producer that turned me on to sours. At Fidelity 2019, some people queued up for over 20 minutes to ensure they got a taste before they inevitably sold out. So if their new stuff is even half as good, it’s worth making a beeline for.
BREWSKI
Sweedish beer is low-key brilliant every time. The Swedes do many things well, but they never get a lot of credit for them. Didn’t We Saison? by Brewski is a Farmhouse Ale – Saison that I seek out whenever I’m in a land of plenty of beers. I don’t know if they’ll have it pouring this weekend, but it’s definitely a brewery worth discovering this weekend.
Wakefield Brewing
These bad boys are known in the crafty beer circles for two distinct and different styles—the fruited Berliner and the adjunct stout. However, Jonathan Wakefield and his team have chiselled out a niche in southern Florida with their signature flavorful, culinary-inspired brewing. This is one that even the nerdiest nerd will learn something from. But their beers taste so unique you have to experience them to even conceptualise them.
CEREBRAL
If I could only hit up one brewery out of the 45 at Fidelity for some horrific reason, it would be these guys. They’re Michelin guides without going full evangelical; go out of your way to taste level. They’ve won all the awards possible for a small neighbourhood brewery. They’re all about their scientific methodology and an artistic viewpoint which together make gad damn good beer. Get on it.
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