Grub & Jars on a random Tuesday

Random nights are the best. Sometimes it's just much more fun to go with the flow and see where you end up. Last Tuesday was one of these random nights for me, and during the course of it I discovered some delish new grub & jars that are worth sharing.

First, I was off to Probus Wines, who were lovely enough to have offered me a free Trooper beer for being the 666th person to like them on Facebook. My boyfriend (henceforth referred to as Mr. S.) gladly came along because we'd been to Probus Wines before and really enjoyed it.

Probus Wines is quite a unique place in Dublin. It is an Off-License with a license! This means that you can buy wines and hundreds of craft beers from their great selection to take away, or you can choose to stay around for a while, sit on one of the bar stools at barrel tables and enjoy your beers there, for a 20% surcharge on the price. It works out a lot cheaper than a normal pub and it is a really great concept!

My Trooper beer was quite nice, a solid ale. Nothing too special, but still enjoyable.

They also serve a great selection of food and you can tell that they care about the produce they use, which translates into the taste. This was the first time I tried the food there. We both went for the Daily Special, which was a Lamb Kebab in a crusty baguette with a mint yoghurt sauce. The lamb was very tasty and the mint yoghurt was refreshing and went perfectly with the lamb. The baguette was good enough to eat on its own! At only €7.95 this was amazing value for money and definitely set us up for some further beer sampling. :)

Next, we tried the beer they had on tap. I had never heard of it before, so it needed to be sampled! It was a Copper Ale from VG Noster Brewery in the Basque Country. Now this was something else! It was delicious. I think what'll give you the best idea is to get yourself in there asap and taste this lovely brew before it's all gone!

We also got to meet fellow craft beer enthusiast Alex (check out his blog here!) who used to work at Probus Wines and was helping out that night. He recommended the extremely tasty Kentucky IPA to Mr. S., which he enjoyed very much. We would have loved to stay longer, but it was time to gradually make our way home.

Next, we decided to pop into Kelly's Wine Cellar. It is in my neighbourhood and after walking past it many times, we had finally taken a look inside over the weekend and were delighted to discover a huge range of craft beers! So on Tuesday night, as we had already sampled some beers, we thought we might as well sample another few.

We took a good look around their "Craft Beer Corner" and the other shelves and fridges offering a huge collection of Irish and international craft beers. There was even a little book with info on the beers to help people decide! The beers are reasonably priced, too. There are 2 other off-licenses on the same road which also stock craft beers, but this one has by far the best collection and the best prices. It's always great to see an independent place like this getting it 100% right.

I decided to buy two beers I had been meaning to try for quite a while and which I was very happy to find in Kelly's: Mountain Man Green Bullet and Black's Kinsale Pale Ale. Both were so delicious, had it not been a school night, I would definitely have gone for a few more bottles of each! These two are great additions to the Irish craft beer world.

After all this, the night was still young, so we decided to visit another place we'd walked past a few times and had been meaning to check out for a while:
The Bram Stoker pub.

The reason we wanted to check out this place is because it's in the neighbourhood and it seemed like a place where one could have a relaxed drink with great sea views. We were not expecting to find many craft beers there. All this proved to be true. The sea views are great, and there was no craft beer to be seen in the place. I was quite surprised that they didn't at least offer one or two bottled options, which seems to be pretty normal these days. Especially because this is also a hotel and I'm sure the visitors would be interested in trying an Irish craft beer. I think it would be a great idea for them to stock at least one or two bottles.

When we got here, we found out that it happened to be "Cheap Ass Tuesday". This meant that all main courses (except steak) were only 5 Euro and all pints and long necks 4. Since we had already eaten the lovely food at Probus Wines, we shared a portion of chicken wings with hot sauce, blue cheese dip and celery sticks. The portion was generous and the wings were tasty. The sauce was just the right degree of hot and the blue cheese dip was delish. Other people were having the main courses and the portions looked big, like what you would usually expect to pay about 12-15 quid for. And if the chicken wings were anything to go by, I would expect the rest of the food to be tasty, too. Options included Fish & Chips, burgers, lasagne, nachos with beef chili and cheese, etc. We will definitely be going back here next Tuesday to avail of the great main course offer. Serious value for money!

When this random Tuesday came to an end, we were very happy to have discovered so many lovely new beers and food offers in just one night.
Cheers to randomness! :)