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"Andrew":lwi7p1fi wrote: My guess is they are bottled by Carlow[/quote:lwi7p1fi]They're bottled by Robinson's[/url:lwi7p1fi]. It's possible Carlow is too as they don't have a bottling line.

"Tube":382ll3fx wrote: 75% of Carlow's produce is export so it probably makes sense to keep shipping in bulk to the UK for bottling. Just like most Irish cheese is packaged in the UK (and a lot of it is made there too).[/quote:382ll3fx]

Plus the cost of an automated bottling line is astronomical unless you buy an old dodgy one or a smaller that will require loads of labor and probably won't scale too far in capacity.

Exporting to the UK for bottling seems almost universal for breweries on this island both north and south of the border (Except for Porterhouse who spent what I'll lovingly call a gazillion euros for a bottling line and for 8 Degrees who I think made a pretty smart decision on a bottling line especially once the quantity of yeast gets dialled in.) -Anyone know of anyone else who is still bottling on their own?

It also SOUNDS LIKE the costs associated with EXPORTING beer from the Republic means that much larger quantities are required to ship beer to England to be bottled. (5x the quantity required based upon numbers I've heard on both sides of the border.)
-On the plus side for consistency it means that breweries in the Republic are blending beers from multiple batches to meet the minimum quantity that makes INTL contract bottling feasible. We as consumers benefit from more consistent beer because of the blending process. BUT if a brewery has to brew 5-10 batches quickly in a row to ship out to the contract bottler and STILL needs to keep kegs full for their pubs here it MIGHT mean that production schedules get cut for the bottled product and maybe little things like Diacetyl Rests get skipped in the midst of the new production schedule... (Just a theory.)

Because I doubt a brewery would invest in a 10x fermentation capacity just to support a bottling run every once in a while so we can pretty much ignore that as an option.



Adam