Dublin – Brewdog
Since I’m trying to visit every Brewdog that there is (one of many slightly pointless hobbies I’ve picked up), a couple of weekends ago we meandered down to the financial area in Dublin to visit this outlet which opened in late 2019.
I’d say at the outset that this appears to be a troubled bar and it has slumped into nearly the lowest rated restaurant in Dublin on TripAdvisor. We were a bit time limited on our visit, partly due to my not realising just how far away this Brewdog is from the city centre, and there was a sign saying to wait at the entry desk to be seated. That’s in line with the rules in Dublin, but we waited for a few minutes and no-one was visible. Very conscious of time we went on in anyway and were then noticed by a team member who took us to a table.
This is a very large venue, the ground floor has this brewing equipment, but there’s a similar size floor above with outside terraces on both levels. I’ve been reading reviews of how the venue often has no tables available, so they must be taking some serious money at weekends and other busy times during the year.
The downstairs bar which we were seated near to, in what was pretty much an empty venue when we visited on a Friday lunch-time.
The upstairs bar which was shut, other than for customers to use the toilets.
The view from the terrace.
The upstairs shuffleboards, a popular feature of many Brewdogs, but I still haven’t played.
From our table, looking down the ground floor. It’s fair to say that the ordering process for drinks was muddled. The wrong beer menus were on the table and the pricing of the beers on the app was clearly wrong. I queried it with a team member, who didn’t have a clue what the situation was and he couldn’t tell me what the prices were meant to be, but he accepted that they were wrong. I ordered via the app to try and reduce the issues given the slightly chaotic situation, but we had fewer beers than we really wanted (well, I had fewer beers than I wanted to be more precise) due to the confusion.
I went for two beers, this is the Quench Cake brewed by Brewdog, which was a decent fruit sour.
And the Goodbye Blue Monday from Galway Bay Brewery. I probably wouldn’t have had this beer had I realised how many Galway Bay Brewery pubs we’d be going in during the rest of our stay in the city, but it was an agreeable IPA.
The service was always polite, but a little muddled and duplicated. The wave of negative reviews are often about staffing, but many are about pricing, including a very angry person who paid €9 and got three chicken wings. That’s not ideal if true, Brewdog should be doing better than that. Pricing here is though going to be challenging, it’s the only Brewdog in the country and these already expensive craft beers have to be transported here and there are clearly huge overheads. But, there’s money aplenty in this area, there’s a JP Morgan office next door and they even have their own table number on the app. Money talks….
I can’t say that I was overly impressed by this Brewdog, it felt formulaic and designed to make money rather than prioritise customer care. Obviously their priority is profits, but it all felt a bit overly decadent and style over substance here. The beer list was though well curated and there were a range of beer styles, with the beers we had being of a decent quality. The bar gave up a year ago responding to reviews, probably not an ideal sign and I guess they are just trying to avoid the now mostly negative comments that are being made. Although some of the replies aren’t really very illuminating, the reply to queries about high pricing was:
“It is true that our beers can cost more than those from more commercial breweries, but that’s because everything we serve is craft”.
That lack of explanation of craft is a little disappointing without any further details. Anyway, I digress. The bar is named Dublin Outpost, which leads me to suspect that the company might be planning to open another venue in the city centre at some point. So, everything was fine and it’s great to see craft beer of this quality being made available in Dublin, but given the money being taken here it really shouldn’t be bottom of restaurants in Dublin on TripAdvisor, that’s far from ideal.
