Deep in Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands, in the county of Roscommon, sits the prehistoric Rathcroghan Complex, where 60 monuments from the Neolithic to the Iron Age evoke the ancient past.
Known as Cruachan Aí, the site was the seat of Gaelic royalty for two millennia and contains the Oweynagat cave – a gateway to the underworld and the place where the legendary warrior Queen Medb was born.
It’s also the birthplace of a unique Irish craft beer, which has been developed by Black Donkey Brewery using wild yeast strains gathered from Oweynagat cave. Fittingly the yeast is called Morrigan Strain #1 after Morrigan, the Celtic goddess of destruction who is said to have emerged from Oweynagat.
Black Donkey Brewery was set up in 2014 by brewmaster Richard Siberry and his wife to focus on creating a singularly Irish beer. The quest took him inside the Oweynagat cave at Halloween time to search not for spirits from the underworld, but for the special ingredient that would give his beer its distinctive taste.
The resulting Underworld brew, made with 85% Irish barley, Connacht water and the unmistakeable character of the wild Irish yeast, is a light-bodied, dry and citrussy farmhouse ale with plenty of funky and earthy flavours. It became an immediate hit.
Other beers in the Black Donkey portfolio include critically acclaimed and novel Sheep Stealer (an Irish farmhouse ale), Buck It (hybrid amber ale), Beyond, (rye pale ale), Happy Out (pale ale) and Western Warrior (lager).