Hagstravaganza: 100 new beers to try at this Sligo festival

If you fancy trying out a few new beers, the White Hag Hagstravaganza is taking place on August 6th in Ballymote, Co Sligo. Tickets are €32.55 from Thewhitehag.com. There will be 30 breweries from around the world and five Irish showing more than 100 beers, all being poured in Ireland for the first time. There will also be food stands serving fresh Sligo oysters, chips from Prátaí and burgers from Flipside, as well as a DJ and live music. If you can’t make it to Sligo, you can buy a Boxtravaganza with 25 of the beers.

“This is festival number eight and it is our 8th birthday,” Bob Coggins of White Hag Brewery in Ballymote, Sligo, tells me. “Our first festival was at Christmas in our first year. We expected about 30 people and 170 turned up. The next summer it was 300. We are capped at 1,500. Everyone gets the train there and back, or stays in Sligo. It’s great for the town, lots of pubs will be hosting new beers all that week so you get to try them beforehand and after the fest people can meet brewers from Hawaii, Italy, the US and elsewhere.”

White Hag is now selling at Dublin Airport. “We now have the SSP Tap & Bar in Terminal One and are listed at every outlet in the airport. We have Altitude, exclusive to the airport, a transatlantic pale ale made with American style hops in a European style beer,” Coggins says. They also supply a sample four pack to Dunnes Stores with two IPAs and two pale ales.