Old Portland
Kells Irish Pub is a Portland institution. The downtown bar encompasses almost an entire city block with all sorts of banquet rooms and drinking nooks. It’s an Irish themed pub on the edge of the weekend “entertainment district.” You get a mix of tourists, step dancers, rowdy townies, bachelor parties, and drunks.
About four years ago, in a stroke of genius, they opened a brewery uptown, to supply Celtic brews with a more reasonable margin. That’s where we spent our Saturday afternoon, raising money for BonZeb, Inc -- creators of sustainable charcoal in Haiti -- and sipping pints on the patio.
The beer selection is surprisingly varied. Though they serve three IPAs -- as all Portland bars must -- the menu includes two lagers and five beers under five percent alcohol.
I started the afternoon with the nutty Irish Red Ale. It’s only four and a half percent, which might add to it’s flavor. When you imperialize a red ale, you lose some of that subtle flavor. Still, it tastes more American than European, but I thought it was a nice intro to the brewery.
Somehow, the Irish Style Lager is a traditional Bohemian style beer. Unless you weren’t sure: yes Bohemia is not part of Ireland. It’s a clean beer, crisp. But tastes more Bavarian than Bohemian to me. It has a weird fruitiness. Is that a banana? Huh.
Kells, being the largest Irish pub in the city, is a huge purveyor of Guinness. When they opened a brewery, it was both inevitable they would make an Irish stout, and understandable that they wouldn’t want to undercut their best selling product. Kells Irish Stout isn’t an exact clone, but it could make a Dubliner do a double take. It’s got that roasted, vegetative flavor you expect. And that nitrogen infused creaminess.
The other beers on offer got mixed reviews from my tablemates. But the beer was never the reason to come. Kells is comfortable. It feels more inviting than lots of Portland’s more famous breweries. It’s not a plastic facsimile of a pub. It is a pub. A very clean pub, but a pub nonetheless. And they’ll host a fundraiser for your dad’s nonprofit.