CHRISTMAS BEERS FROM EIGHT DEGREES BREWING

CHRISTMAS BEERS FROM EIGHT DEGREES BREWING

 

Christmas is a special time at the brewery. A time to look forward to a new year and new beers, a time to look back at what we’ve achieved. For 2025, we decided to release a pair of beers that sum up both parts of this equation.

 

First up is the new: Hōne's Red IPA takes an Irish red ale and adds deliciously dank hops from New Zealand for a richly aromatic take on traditional. It’s NZ meets Ireland - we’re celebrating nineteenth-century solidarity between Māori and Irish vs English colonisers - and bringing these very NZ hops to the party.

 

Building on our strengths (forgetfulness and barrel ageing), V3 of our Black Ball Metric Stout features the strong stout that was a hit when first released in 2019, then again in 2020. When we rediscovered a small batch of this beauty and brought it to the 2025 Dublin Beer Festival, it got such a welcome that we decided to put what was left into cans.

  

Hōne's Red IPA
5.2% ABV

Hōne Mohi Tāwhai was a Māori member of the New Zealand parliament in the nineteenth century. He felt a deep bond of solidarity between Māori and Irish people who, at the time, were all fighting to reclaim land rights from English colonisers. Expressing his solidarity in 1879, Hōne declared: “I am an Irishman” in the NZ Parliament. To celebrate these links, we have enhanced a traditional Irish red ale with the aromatic splendour of some New Zealand's finest dank and resinous hops, Rakau and Wakatu. The flavour reminds us of Christmas pudding, a deep toffee and caramel body overlaid with mild tropical and orchard fruit aromas. Kia ora!

 

Black Ball Metric Stout
11.4% ABV

V3: You know that feeling when you find something you thought was gone forever? In our case, it was a small batch of barrel-aged Black Ball from five years ago with a flavour that was even more intense and smooth.

Still the same modern stout that shuns imperialistic, old school vernacular, the mash for our Black Ball was rammed full of dark, complex malts before being poured into those Irish whiskey barrels. It's always been a big, bold stout, but, after five years, it has completely rounded out. This rediscovered stout is deep, dark, rich and rewarding. 

 

More information: www.eightdegrees.ie

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