He took some time for us to answer a few questions.
ICC: Tell us a little bit about you.
Derek: My name is Derek Neville, I come from Mallow, just outside Cork. I’ve been working here since last May and I am a big fan of beer.
ICC: What can you tell us about the story of this place?
D: This bar has been opened since last June, we started it initially as a craft beer bar to promote a new way of local brewery that has grown up last couple of years and run it as a craft beer bar between June and December until Porterhouse came on board. It was a long summer, we were in disarray to get up the ground since we had no name, no brand identity but as soon as the Porterhouse came along things started to pick up and we’ve enjoyed to be around since.
ICC: So it is quite new, isn’t it?
D: Well, yes, as I said the Porterhouse just arrived in the middle of December and we just had our official lounge at the start of February, so it has been a very exciting couple of months recently and we are looking forward to a few more exciting ones ahead.
ICC: What about the drinks that you serve here?
D: The beers that we serve are a mixture of Irish and International. We serve 10 Porterhouse beers on draft and a selection of the better Irish craft breweries as well. In total we have 15 craft beers and a selection of other 70 bottled beers.
ICC: Wow!
D: I know!
ICC: Could you recommend just one?
D: Ehm… My personal favorite would be Wrastled which is one of the Porterhouse’s beers, and it is an interesting beer because it is based on the recipe from a brewery which used to be in Clonakilty, in West Cork. The brewery was called Deasy’s and it closed back in the 1920s, and the Porterhouse somehow got their hand on this old recipe and revived the beer … Somehow. And apparently it used to be the favorite beer of Michael Collins when he was alive.
ICC: I am sorry, but I have to ask… How did you get the recipe!?
D: That, I do not know, the people that brought that, I don’t know where they came across it
ICC: What do you think about the ICC meetings?
D: I think they are brilliant! We have kind of grown together, the bar and ICC. They started to come here back in September / October and the ICC meetings have been settling here as well, so it is nice to be growing along and it is just a great concept bringing people together from different backgrounds and different nationalities getting to know each other better through beer. Through great beer!
ICC: So would you come to the meetings if you weren’t here working?
D: If I wasn’t always working I would make it my business to come to the meetings, it just looks so enjoyable and it is such a natural kind of environment within which to learn a language.
ICC: If you could learn any language straightaway… Which one would it be and why?
D: I would have to go for French, because I spent some time working in France a couple of years ago and I always regretted that I didn’t get the opportunity to become fluent in the language because I was working in a brewery and the other people who were working there were Australian and American, so unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to practice much French. So that is a kind of a regret of mine and that is something that I would like to adjust in the future. I would also like to improve my Irish as well.
ICC: Thank you Derek for taking time to answer our questions.