Discover our 2017 December Pub of the Month!
Underdog is an Underground Craft Beer bar beneath Brogans Pub on Dame St. showcasing the best of Irish & International craft breweries. It is the brainchild of 3 of the most experienced craft beer barmen in Dublin, Paddy Delahunty, Barry Kavanagh & Chris Murray. They felt that there was a gap in the market for a proper dedicated craft beer bar in Dublin to consistently showcase & rotate the best beers available. At the start of the year they were on the hunt to find the perfect venue to launch their bar, and when the opportunity came up to take over the basement underneath Brogans Bar they could not pass it up!
Brogans has been in business since the early 1990’s and is known to be one of the most traditional Irish bars in Dublin and is always the main meeting spot for drinkers before gigs in the Olympia. While we dug a little deeper into our research we also found out that the bar was originally called the Viking and was proudly Dublin’s first gay bar!
Brogans basement had been unused for the last 15 years, but the lads have put in a tremendous amount of work to turn it into a really impressive dedicated craft beer bar.
They currently have 18 beer lines dedicated to serving the best beers available in Ireland. When chatting with Paddy he mentions “70%-80% of our beers pouring are Irish because over the last few years the quality of Irish beer is now competing with the big international craft breweries” . They also serve some of the best quality international beers when they get their hands on them. For cask beer lovers they have a €5 pint special running every day. Every week you go back to this bar you will see a different list of beers pouring and they have found a clever way to keep their customers interested. If you are feeling peckish they are now serving tasty meat & cheese boards which pair perfectly with most beers. They were the first bar in Ireland to sign up to a digital live taplist so customers can see online what beers are pouring before they head in for a few beers. The guys strongly believe that this could be the start of a new wave of exciting underground craft beer bars as there is a lot of unused basements in old bars around the country. We certainly hope that is the case because this pub is a gem!
We asked the guys, what do you like about Rascals? The response from Paddy was simple “Rascals are consistently bringing out top class beers one after another and are now a trusted and respected brewery”. Chris also reckons “Rascals have the best beer stand at the festivals as he is a big fan of our Disco Keg”.
Paddy, Barry and Chris are great characters, so you will always get a laugh out of them when you visit the bar but more importantly, their knowledge of beers is second to none and it’s great to see them speaking openly & honestly with customers about beers.
Finally from chatting with the guys we also found out that we hold a big record in the bar: Rascals Foggy Juice New England IPA was the fastest selling 50L keg ever!
Lets hope we beat these records at our barrel aged beer night on Wednesday 6th from 7pm – see our social media for more details!
