Rick LeVert expresses surprise at the demand for his Kinnegar Brewery beers.
He shouldn't be surprised.
For sure, it's somewhat surprising that a farmhouse brewery set way, way up north past Rathmullan village in farthest County Donegal, should have proved to be such a success in its first year of business that it had to add an extra 2 new fermenters after only a year in business.
But look closely at each element of the Kinnegar beers, and their success seems set in stone.
For a start, the bottles and their labels are gorgeous. But then, given the design background of Mr LeVert and his partner, Libby Carton, you expected that. You can get a quartet of Kinnegar bottles folded up in a cardboard sleeve, for example, and the design and aesthetic of the cardboard sleeve is an utter masterpiece. Details matter.
And the names of the beers! Rustbucket! Who could resist a Rustbucket! Or a Devil's Backbone.
Rustbucket, of course, is their dog (sadly no longer with us). And the Devil's Backbone isn't a Guillermo del Toro moment: it's a hill behind the farmhouse where the brewery works away busily.
What Mr LeVert has brought to the Kinnegar beers is a cosmopolitanism, much as you would expect of a guy from Boston who studied film in NYU, and who lived in Germany after the wall came down. But he has also brought a yen for for beers and the design to be “clean.” Clean flavours. Clean, crisp style. Clean appearance. Mr LeVert strips things back, all the better to get to the essence.