When life gives you barley: Irish pubs turn stale beer into animal feed to offset losses

Both Ronan Lynch and Hugh Hourican ask the same question straightaway on the phone: how are the pubs getting on in Germany?

As two of Dublin’s best-known publicans, they are eager to know how bars in other countries are handling the pandemic. The word ‘publican’ comes from the Latin publicus, meaning ‘of the people’. A pub is literally a ‘public house’. Naturally, a trade based on constant public interaction found itself right in the firing line of social distancing policies.

The Swan, run by Ronan, and The Boar’s Head, run by Hugh, have been closed now for almost 10 weeks, along with the rest of Ireland’s estimated 7,200 pubs. Under the government’s phased plan for exiting lockdown, they are not due to reopen until August 10.

Bars all around the world have faced similar fates. As popular as they are, pubs are not deemed essential services. “We were the first places to close voluntarily when this started and we will be the last to reopen,” is how Hugh Hourican puts it.

Due largely to a mass marketing initiative over several decades by Guinness, now wholly owned by Diageo, there are now at least as many Irish-themed pubs outside of Ireland as there are actual pubs in the country. However dubious the resemblance to pubs in Ireland, their commercial success is based on imitating an original that can found all across Ireland and which remains a massive draw for tourism. The Swan, located on Dublin’s Aungier Street, is a magnificent example. A public house since the 1660s, the Victorian interior is largely unchanged since it was constructed in 1897. It has been run by the Lynch family since 1937. For Ronan, used to seeing it busy with both tourists and regular customers alike, the current time is bizarre. “I walk in here and to see the whole place just boarded up...this place is always busy. It’s busy from 11 in the morning until late at night. And now you’re the only fella in here. It’s weird. It is a strange time to be a publican,” he said.

One of the strangest things the pub trade has had to deal with since the crisis began is the vast quantities of undrunk, untapped beer in their premises. Hugh and Ronan both closed on the weekend before the St Patrick’s Day festival, typically one of the busiest days for the pub trade in Ireland. They had stocked up for that purpose but 10 weeks on, all the undrunk barrels in their basement are set to be collected by their main brewery suppliers, with the beer to be repurposed as animal feed and fertiliser.

Due to strict EU environmental regulations around the disposal of beer, the aim is for as much beer to be recycled as possible. According to Marc Oliver Huhnholz from the German Brewers Association, beer unopened in barrels would typically have a shelf life of between three and nine months, but because beer refrigeration equipment has been turned off in pubs, beer not sold since March has to be disposed of.

In the UK, the equivalent of 70 million pints (one imperial pint is equal to 568 ml) of beer has had to be disposed of. In the US, even more has gone undrunk across the country. In Ireland, Guinness alone had around 250,000 barrels of beer unused in trade at the time lockdowns came into effect.