The Top 20 Best-Rated Irish Beers to Celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day

Guinness Draught Stout is the typical choice as a festive drink for Saint Patrick’s Day. But if you’re looking for alternative choices, here are our Pint Please statistics of the best-rated and most popular Irish beers.

This Thursday 17 March we’re celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day, which means a national holiday at least in Ireland where the festival comes from. It has been named after Saint Patrick, the foremost patron saint of Ireland, but the festival is also celebrated in the US, Canada and the UK.

From the beginning the day was completely religious, but nowadays St Paddy’s Day is a cultural festival with mostly earthly rituals. The decoration includes green colour, green colour and green colour. I mean everywhere. Even the big rivers are coloured green. As a cherry on top of the cake comes the green three-leafed shamrock, which refers to the Holy Trinity.

But how does all this have anything to do with beer? Well, the Irish beer is of course the usual drink to celebrate Saint Patrick, but it came along quite late in the 1960s, when they started to allow for the pubs to serve beer also on the festival day. 

Nowadays it’s popular to colour all the food green, and it applies to beer as well. So don’t be afraid if you get a green pint in front of you. It’s just food colouring, and it won’t affect the taste at any level.

Many breweries, or at least Guinness, have succeeded to connect their brand with the festival. That’s why there’s a huge raise in the sale of Guinness during this holiday. About 13 million pints are drunk on Saint Patrick’s Day.

The Best-Rated Irish Beers

The White Hag Brewing Company is clearly the number one concerning best-rated Irish beers. Brewery’s Atlantean is on top of the list with an average rating of 3.82. Being a New England style IPA it isn’t actually very typical Irish beer. Atlantean NEIPA, brewed with barley and oats and seasoned with lactose, is said to be one of the creamiest and cloudiest NEIPAs on earth, without forgetting to mention its juicy fruitiness. A true ‘hopshake’, indeed.

Guinness ain’t actually bad choice either. There are in total seven beers manufactured by Guinness on the top 20 list, the best one climbing even to the second place. 

Guinness West Indies Porter is a well-hopped dry porter. In the 1900th century, when travelling was slow, beer was hopped well to improve its preservation, so that it would keep till the destination. The typical porter flavours, such as roasty dryness, vanilla and chocolate, taste as well besides the hops. 

The third one on the list is another beer from The White Hag Brewing Company: Bran & Sceolan Irish IPA. This IPA brings together Irish malts and American hops tasting piny and citrusy.  Five different hop varieties produce bitter grapefruit and floral aromas.

In total there are four beers on the list brewed by The White Hag Brewing.

The Most Popular Irish Beers

Though the ranking may change, the amount of the placings stays the same. There are as many Guinness beers on the list of the most popular beers as there was on the list of the best-rated ones. This time the winner is, without a doubt, the most familiar one of the Guinness products, Guinness Draught. This roasty dry stout is known for its almost pitch black colour and magnificent creamy foam, which also forms when served from the can, thanks to a nitrogen filled capsule called widget. 

According to Pint Please stats, the next most popular Irish beer is Kilkenny Irish Red Ale, which is also served with the name Kilkenny Draught. Nowadays it is manufactured by Guinness. Its name comes from its city of origin Kilkenny where this red cream ale was brewed for the first time in the beginning of the 18th century. Kilkenny is known for its sweet and malty flavour. 

The third one on the list is Hop House 13, also brewed by Guinness. This time we are talking about a lager, a well-hopped one, actually. The Irish malts are seasoned with American and Australian hop varieties: Galaxy, Topaz, and Mosaic. It it said that you can taste the specific Guinness yeast also in this lager. Together the ingredients form a crisp and fruity beer with  gentle apricot and peach aromas.