Beer with us

Rising Sons Brewery is one of my favourite pubs, serving their own beers while also offering beers from other craft breweries.

But beer can be so much more than just a drink. Professional chefs have long used beer to enhance dishes, think of beer-battered fish and Guinness in stews.

Beer brings three things to a dish. Bitterness, sweetness and depth. Malt adds caramel richness, hops lend brightness or bite and yeast-driven fermentation rounds everything out with complexity. It’s why beer works so beautifully in slow cooking, baking and even desserts.

But not all beers are created equal in the kitchen and choosing the right one is everything. If you’re starting anywhere, start with my favourite beer, Redemption. It’s a beautifully balanced red ale, malty, slightly sweet, with a gentle hop finish.

In the kitchen, it shines in classic Irish comfort dishes. Swap it into a beef and onion stew and you’ll get a richer, rounder flavour than you would with a stout. It also makes an exceptional base for a glaze, perfect for sticky sausages or slow-roasted pork.

Then there’s Changeling, a beer that lives up to its name. Rotating different hops, changing in style, it leans brighter, more aromatic and sometimes more hop-forward depending on the batch. That unpredictability is part of the fun.

In cooking, it is ideal for batters, where it brings a light, crisp finish to fish and chips or even reduced into a sharp, slightly bitter syrup to cut through richer, fattier dishes. Beer loves time. Add it early in stews, casseroles or braises and let it mellow gently. A bottle of Redemption in a beef stew doesn’t shout - it deepens; the alcohol cookS off to leave behind a savoury sweetness that clings to the meat.

For something quicker, swapping water or milk for beer in a batter is a small change that makes a noticeable difference, especially with a lively beer like Changeling.

For pork, a more hop-forward beer (try some from Eight Degrees Brewing) can cut through the fat beautifully, especially in glazes or marinades.

Chicken can be rather bland but can come alive with a lighter pale ale, where citrus and floral notes lift the flavour rather than weigh it down.

The key is balance, matching the intensity of the beer to the cut, letting one enhance rather than overpower the other. In a braise, it softens and blends, while in a glaze it can reduce into something sticky and concentrated, almost treacly.

Even desserts, which might still raise an eyebrow, can benefit from beer’s complexity. Malt-forward styles bring notes of chocolate, coffee and caramel, turning something like a brownie or sticky pudding into something richer and more layered.

Baking with beer might seem like a step further but in reality it taps into something deeply familiar. Ireland has a long tradition of quick breads and swapping in beer adds both flavour and lift. The natural carbonation helps create a lighter crumb, while the malt brings a gentle sweetness that works beautifully in brown bread or soda bread.

Cooking with beer is less about rules and more about curiosity, a chance to bring a bit of Cork’s brewing craft into everyday meals. And with so much happening on our doorstep, there’s never been a better excuse to pour a little into the pot as well as the glass!