Maurice Deasy was six years old when his father took him to West Dublin for an experience that would shape his attitude to life.
Twelve farmers faced off against twelve maltsters in the large boardroom of the Irish Farm Centre on February 22, 1995. The farmers, each of whom had traveled from a different part of Ireland, wanted a fair price for their malting barley. The maltsters, wearing suits and ties, wanted to remain competitive for their major client, Guinness, owned by Diageo. They argued that malting barley was of the same quality, but much cheaper to buy, from countries in Eastern Europe. With Maurice’s mother Marie visiting family in Belgium, the last-minute nature of the meeting meant that his father—Ruaidhrí Deasy, the Chair of the Irish Farm Association’s National Grain Committee—had no choice but to bring him along. Malting barley made up 90% of tillage on the Deasy farm, and this negotiation had stakes.
At one point, the farmers retreated to a tiny, claustrophobic room—“farmers aren’t small men,” says Maurice—cramped amidst papers and files, smothered by a pressure to compromise. When they returned to the boardroom, Maurice remembers the maltsters who represented Greencore, the owner of Ireland’s oldest malt producer, Minch Malt, leaning back in their chairs. They refused to budge on price, and the negotiations ended abruptly. Protests by farmers followed in the weeks after the meeting.
Over the next decade, the Deasy family would be forced to gradually abandon the growing of malting barley in place of grain for animal feed, which was even less lucrative but at least reliable. In 2005, in order to maximize efficiency and reduce costs, Greencore closed Banagher Maltings, devastating the livelihoods of more than 300 malting barley growers in the region around North Tipperary where the Deasys lived. By then, Maurice Deasy was 16 years old, and sick of malting barley, sick of maltsters, and sick of breweries. He would never get involved with the beer industry. He had seen how Irish farmers had been treated, and he never wanted to rely on anyone for anything again.
Now a curly-haired farmer in his 30s, Maurice Deasy had spent the intervening years improving the operations of his father’s farm.
With its rich soil and mild climate, Ireland is perfect for farming. Agricultural land covers 71.6% of the country, with forest making up another 11%. But Irish farmers today face challenges their ancestors did not, including climate change, rising energy costs, food insecurity, rural decline, as well as uncertainty surrounding Brexit. 68% of Irish farms were classified by the most recent Teagasc National Farm Survey as either only “sustainable” or worse, “economically vulnerable.” One route to self-sufficiency has been the recent revival of the farmhouse brewery in Ireland, aided by the generational experience in producing malting barley. The success of these enterprises is based on whether, as brewers, individuals can be true to their own soil, and whether, as farmers, they can look up from it.
With his brother Hugo Deasy, a forester and conservationist, Maurice used biomass from trees to create energy on the Deasy family farm, employing clearing techniques that allowed for regeneration of the forest. He worked with his brother Andrew Deasy, an engineer, to install an Archimedean screw hydro turbine—essentially a large generator—which turned water from the flowing Kisdoon River into electricity. Soon, the farm was generating more electricity than it was using, and the Deasys were contributing energy to Ireland’s national grid.
The North Tipperary landscape is one of fertile plains edged by high uplands and lakeshores, ancient pastures rich in monuments and wilderness. The closest settlement to the Deasy farm is Aglish, a village a little over a mile away, with a population of 289 people. At one time, Aglish’s residents had enjoyed the choice of three different pubs, but for the last 12 years frequented the only one that was still open. The Village Inn is a classic public house with wooden stools, hanging lamps, and tiled floors owned by Brendan Hough, whose son, Bertie, had been a year ahead of Maurice in school, and who now assisted the Deasys as a mechanic, repairing farm machinery and vehicles.
Marie and Ruaidhrí had prioritized education for their children, and there were always books on the farm. In particular, there were books of poetry, and another of Maurice’s brothers, Michael Ruaidhrí Deasy, became obsessed with poets who combined a love of nature and country crafts with the harsh realities of rural life. One of his favorite poems was “The Forge,” from a collection by Seamus Heaney called “The Door Into The Dark,” in which a blacksmith is completely consumed with activity inside his workshop. The anvil at its center, “set there immoveable: an altar.”
At one point in “The Forge,” the central blacksmith character leans out of his workshop to confront the clatter and traffic of the outside world, cars and tractors whizzing by, “flashing in rows.” He grunts and goes back into his workshop to continue “with a slam and flick / to beat real iron out, to work the bellows.” The poem can be read as an elegy to the past, a lament to the lost rural tradition of the blacksmith, a celebration of the internal. The blacksmith is creative, obsessive, and self-sufficient.
Two brothers who had gone to the same school as Michael Ruaidhrí and Maurice—Dave Twohig and Mark “Twig” Twohig—were frequent guests at the farm. Having studied a course in brewing, Twig in particular started showing up in Aglish with beers he had brought back from his travels in Europe. Maurice stopped drinking Smithwick’s and Guinness and started drinking SpontanBasil from Lindemans and Mikkeller, and Green Walnut from Oud Beersel: spontaneously fermented beers that tasted of herbs and nuts and wood and hay. He picked up a copy of “A Textbook of Brewing,” published first in 1948 by Jean De Clerck, a Belgian scientist and scholar who had helped create Chimay Blue and Duvel with their respective producers in Belgium. De Clerck’s grandson had married Maurice’s cousin on his mother’s side and a family connection to brewing started to emerge.
“Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose / He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter / Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows; / Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick / To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.”
When Ruaidhrí, now retired from farming politics, heard of his sons’ newfound interest in beer, he produced a historical flyer, uncovered during research into family history, which showcased a logo for “Deasy & Co Ltd.” It included illustrated depictions of a building with tall brewery chimneys, and a room full of barrels. At the top of the picture was the Deasy family coat of arms—comprising two towers and a sword—and around the logo were scattered sheaves of barley and hop flower bells.
The old Deasy brewery, now defunct, had opened in 1798 in Emmet Square in Clonakilty, County Cork, 120 miles from the present-day location of the Deasy farm in Aglish. It famously produced a Porter known as the “The Wrestler,” sometimes spelled as it would have been pronounced in West Cork, “The Wrastler,” or “The Wrassler.”
The discovery of wild beer with terroir, the uncovering of technical gems in the Jean De Clerck book, and the revelation about the old Deasy brewery in Clonakilty all led to conversations among the Deasy and Twohig brothers about setting up their own commercial brewery. The four men—Maurice and Michael Ruaidhrí, Twig and Dave—agreed that they would focus on sustainability, and talked about what it might be like to one day stage their own farmhouse beer festival, celebrating Irish breweries that used their own barley, hops, and water in production, and fermented with indigenous cultures.
Eventually they settled on the Old Coachhouse as a location for their brewery. The long, white, pebbled building had previously housed horses; now unused, it was located right behind the family home where Maurice had grown up. Next, they needed a brewery system.
In 2011, Maurice had chosen to study for a PhD at Trinity College Dublin in the department of mechanical and manufacturing engineering; his project aimed to tackle the energy-access crisis in developing countries. With his supervising professors, he set up a small workshop in a tiny, flat-pack garden shed in the university’s parking lot, and began developing a thermo-electric generator. For four years, he lived between Dublin, the farm in Aglish, and three townships in Malawi—Balaka, Ntcheu, and Thyolo—where he worked with locals to attach his small device to their mud stoves so that they could convert heat to electricity for charging mobile phones, creating light and powering radios.
When he returned to Aglish in January 2016 after his last trip to Malawi, Maurice saw an online advertisement for a “microbrewery” which could be collected from a seller in a fishing trawler just outside Cork City. The seller didn’t know what the contraption was and wouldn’t say where he had come across it, but Maurice saw in the advertised pictures that it consisted of several small, stainless steel tanks, a heat exchanger, and a control panel featuring the logo of the “Siebel Institute of Technology.” Maurice recognized the name from his Jean De Clerck book as one of the world’s most respected brewing schools and analytical laboratories, based in Chicago. The system had to be good. He drove down to Cork and loaded it into the back of his trailer, along with a bucket of tri-clamps and a pump—a cash deal with no guarantees or warranties.
When he got the kit back to the Old Coachhouse and tried to install it, he couldn’t work out how it was powered. Inside the control panel, he found a business card belonging to one Michael O’Brien, along with an email address. O’Brien, a brewing engineer based in Ypsilanti, Michigan, had designed the system for a client named “Siebel” and was surprised to receive an email telling him that it had ended up on a farm in Ireland. O’Brien proceeded to email Maurice the entire history of the system’s production, including a major mix-up.
“There’s the weight of the world on [Maurice’s] shoulders. He’s taken over his family’s farm with all the history of the Deasy farmers and brewers before him.”
When O’Brien had presented the brewing system in 1988 to the company that had commissioned it, Siebel, they were confused by the inclusion of the brewing school logo. O’Brien told them it was because they were Siebel and they had commissioned it. They were indeed Siebel, they replied, but not the brewing school in Chicago. They were a brewing ingredients and malt flavoring company called J.E. Siebel Sons' Co.
O’Brien informed Maurice by email that the system ran on steam, and promised to try to visit if he ever made it to Ireland. Deasy didn’t have a steam generator but decided he would still use the brewing system in any case, racking it up against the wall in the Old Coachhouse and using the tanks to dose priming sugar and the pumps to move wort and beer around the brewery.
The Deasys and Twohigs still needed to find a way to boil their wort. Having just returned from Malawi and witnessing first-hand how their wood-fired stoves had been an efficient and sustainable use of energy, Maurice didn’t want to use non-renewables, such as gas or oil, to heat their wort. “I worked in sustainability,” he says. “I’ve been studying stoves for five years. My brother is a forester. Why don’t we just make a biomass boiling kettle?”
Maurice’s pitch to the others was that they could burn wood for energy, but offset the release of carbon by managing the forest, keeping the cover, ensuring the soil was alive, and replanting. There were no transport considerations: the trees were right there on their farm.
To his surprise, the others agreed. Maurice used steel panels he found on the farm to build the outer walls of the stove, inserting half of a dished 300-liter fermenter on the top and fashioning a small shelf on which to burn wood at the bottom. Two steel chimneys poked out defiantly from the top.
Watching his brother shape the metalwork, Michael Ruaidhrí saw in Maurice a vision of life that was shared with Heaney’s blacksmith character in “The Forge.” Almost immediately upon testing, the outer metal began to rust, giving the wood burning stove a reddish, beat-up, almost dystopian appearance. The others joked that it looked like something from an early Mel Gibson film, and the kettle immediately had its name: “Mad Max.”
James Hayes, a chartered architect and artist who had gone to the same school as the Deasys and Twohigs, soon heard about the brewery project and visited Aglish. Maurice took Hayes to the new hop field he had planted, right beside a disused cottage on the other side of their land, with its thick stone walls and thatched roof. Hayes took photographs of Maurice in the cottage with his two springer spaniels, Milly and Pip, and listened to him talk passionately about farming and sustainability and poetry. Maurice felt that the brewery project should be a canvas for local artists, so, by the end of the visit, it was agreed that Hayes would design a label for the first beer they hoped to brew commercially: a Porter inspired by Deasy’s Wrassler.
They had the steam-powered system and the Mad Max kettle; they had a recipe and a label was on its way. Now all they needed was for their new brewery—lacking sophistication and thrown-together on a tight budget, but as sustainable as they could make it—to be approved by the Revenue Commissioners, the government body in Ireland responsible for customs, excise and taxation, and, crucially, for licensing brewing activity.
The two Revenue Officers arrived at the Deasy farm in Aglish in early 2018 to inspect the brewery. Maurice took them on a tour of the property beforehand, showing them where he was malting his own barley, growing grain on-site, and how he had started drying his own hops—he had cultivated the bines beside the old stone cottage at the other side of the fields.
Maurice and Twig then took the Revenue Officers into the Old Coachhouse, and pointed out the fermenters: used stainless steel storage tanks they had sourced from a Coca Cola factory in Drogheda, 100 miles to the north. Maurice then showed them his conditioning tanks—more Coca Cola storage tanks, 300 liters in capacity, each with a McDonald’s tag still on display. One tank would have been for syrup, another for water, dispensed together with CO2 from a soft drink gun nozzle. The fermenters had wheels on them, useful for moving them around the factory, and in and out of McDonald’s stores.
The Revenue Officers did a double-take when they saw the tanks on wheels. Vessels in which alcohol was created needed to be stationary so there was no way a producer could wheel excisable liquid out the door. They made it clear to Maurice that this was “unsettling” and he promised them that he would lock them into position. Maurice took them out to the back of the Old Coachhouse and pointed to Mad Max. It had wheels on it, too, so he could move it around the farmyard. The Revenue Officers frowned and instructed him to make changes. Scribbling notes in their folders, they left the Deasy farm, informing Maurice and Twig that a letter with the outcome would be sent by post.
Six months after his visit, James Hayes sent through artwork for what would be the first Canvas beer label. The image depicted a man sitting on a bench in a room with no roof. A tree grew from his head with leaves filling out branches on one side and birds flying around him on the other. A network of roots stretched out beneath him, under the ground. The central figure held a bottle of beer and sat cross-legged, staring out from a door into the light.
The image—per its creator, an exploration of a sense of place, and of unfulfilled dreams—was based on one of the photographs of Maurice that James Hayes had taken in the old stone cottage during his visit. Michael Ruaidhrí understood the leaves to be “thoughts” and the birds “flights of fancy,” while Twig felt they represented Maurice’s hopes, but also his worries and fears. “There’s the weight of the world on his shoulders,” says Twig. “He’s taken over his family’s farm with all the history of the Deasy farmers and brewers before him.”
“So as not to have his creativity stifled, or stamped on, or extinguished, he can’t just act in the footsteps of our father,” says his brother Michael Ruaidhrí. “Maurice has to do something more with the farm.”
The letter from the Revenue Commissioners arrived on February 9, 2018. Their application for a producer’s licence had been approved. Their brewery was legal and they could officially begin brewing commercially. They would call themselves “Canvas.”
If the brewery’s labels were to be a “canvas” on which artists could showcase work, then the two sets of brothers needed to match that intent, and come up with a range of beer that was as creative and diverse as possible. The Abbey of Lorrha, named after the nearby, 6th-century St. Ruadhan’s Abbey, would be what they described as an “Aulde Dearg,” meaning “Old Red” and inspired by the mixed-fermentation beers of southwest Flanders. Hunter Saison was to be produced with barley grown by farmers Maurice knew personally and malted at a new micro-maltings in Newry, Northern Ireland, called Craftsman Malt Co. Sunday Cuddle was to be a Strong Ale showcasing Belgian malts, such as Château Arôme, CaraBelge, and Special B. After watching a “Chef’s Table” episode on Netflix about Francis Mallmann, the Argentine chef famous for cooking over open, wood-fueled fires, they decided to brew a smoked beer they would call Mallmann. They would brew Session IPAs fermented with kveik yeast and dry-hopped with Simcoe; Vienna Lagers dry-hopped with Vic Secret; and would add fruit to certain beers, like their Raspberella.
Brewing at the Deasy farm was primitive, and the Canvas team made a lot of mistakes. There was no temperature control on fermentation or conditioning, so beers expressed a seasonality in their flavor profiles. There was an unknown quality to many of the ingredients being used, whether it was a barley cultivated on the farm and malted in the barn or hops grown beside the old stone cottage and dried on site. Some of the beers took on unexpected fermentation characteristics. Those that spent time in barrels did not often evolve as expected, and there was an edgy, unrefined nature to many of their early attempts. Twig refers to the beers as having an indescribable “echo.”
“So as not to have his creativity stifled, or stamped on, or extinguished, he can’t just act in the footsteps of our father. Maurice has to do something more with the farm.”
One beer they were most keen to master, and one of the first they brewed, was their interpretation of the Deasy Clonakilty Wrassler, a beer which fell somewhere between a Foreign Export Stout and what they describe as a “West Cork Porter.” The beer had a chocolate malt sweetness and coffee roast, with a subtle ester background. They also found that Mad Max imparted flavor to the beer: the process of boiling over an open biomass stove created a Maillard caramelization, and perhaps even a hint of smoke. As a romantic gesture towards the old Deasy brewery in Clonakilty, the plan was to call it “The Wrassler,” but they discovered that the name had already been trademarked by the owners of the Porterhouse Brewery in Dublin.
Maurice took early samples of several beers to The Village Inn to show Brendan Hough, Aglish’s brusk but good-natured publican. The appearance, flavor and aromas of the beers were far removed from those that Hough sold in volume, Heineken and Guinness in particular. “People living away from home might be more accustomed to those sorts of beers,” says Hough of the Canvas products. “But locals are more accustomed to their pint of Guinness.”
While Maurice was engaging the locals, Twig took samples of the early versions to brewers he respected, including Alex Lawes of Whiplash Beer, Matt Dick of Boundary Brewing, Tom Delaney of Galway Bay Brewery, and Declan Nixon of YellowBelly Beer. Sometimes they weren’t sure what they were tasting, and they were honest about the flaws they perceived in the beer. But they all offered positive feedback and encouraged Canvas to keep going in search of improvement. “They knew we weren’t trying to make a quick buck,” said Twig. “They supported our ethos.”
As had been their early dream, the Canvas team decided to host their own festival. It wouldn’t just be for revelry’s sake: they believed the event would be crucial in communicating to a potential audience what they were doing. They wanted to show off the farm and the brewery, explain their ethos as it related to energy and sustainability, and invite people to drink their first Canvas beers at the source.
They scheduled the Canvas Irish Farmhouse Beer Festival to take place on August 11, 2018, inviting other farmhouse breweries in Ireland to join, and creating artwork to advertise the event. Within just a few days, large numbers of people had committed to coming.
The Revenue Officers learned of the event and contacted Maurice to inform him that Canvas wouldn’t be able to host the festival without a specific license to serve alcohol. It was illegal for breweries in Ireland to serve their beer to visitors, a law tightly guarded by publicans who feared a loss in trade. A license involving an application in the name of Canvas from scratch could cost tens of thousands of euros.
Maurice, Twig, Dave, and Michael Ruaidhrí had by then invested a significant amount of time in preparing the farm for festival goers, and in promoting the event. Worst of all, if it didn’t go ahead, they wouldn’t have the opportunity to share their beers, or their ideas. If people couldn’t come to the farm to see how Canvas was doing things differently, the project might not survive.
“People living away from home might be more accustomed to those sorts of beers. But locals are more accustomed to their pint of Guinness.”
As he had done during artist James Hayes’ visit, Maurice sat down in the disused stone cottage beside the hop plants, his two springer spaniels nuzzling up against him, the small door allowing only minimal light inside.
He tried to figure out how he would solve the problem of legally offering beer at their event, now only a few weeks away, without having to cancel. Promises came to mind, like those that he had made to his father about how the brewery would diversify the income on the farm. The figures of the Deasys before him came to mind, too: the men and women who had brewed successfully for years in Clonakilty. As the opportunity to invite drinkers directly to the farm seemed to be slipping away, Maurice realized a deeper truth: that he could never be happy ignoring the outside world in pursuit of self-sufficiency.
Peering out from the cottage, he remembered stories Brendan Hough had told him in his pub about farmhands in North Tipperary who opened casks in the field when farming together, letting over-carbonated beer settle in multi-step pours before quenching their thirst in solidarity.
And then, an idea. In Aglish, there was just one publican’s license to sell alcohol. Maurice bounded out of the cottage door and across the farm. He needed to get to The Village Inn. There was a chance that Brendan Hough could help save the day.
With only one week until festival goers were due to arrive at the Canvas Farmhouse Beer Festival, Brendan Hough drove to Nenagh in County Limerick, half an hour from Aglish. Maurice had asked him if The Village Inn’s license could be transferred temporarily to Canvas Brewery for the day of their festival, offering to complete all the necessary paperwork with the courts. Hough agreed, and was asked by the superintendent in Nenagh to present himself at the local station of An Garda Síochána, Ireland’s national police service. The Garda on duty took the signed papers from Hough and told him he would pass them on.
But he didn’t pass them on. The Garda on duty had placed the files somewhere without telling anyone and was now on several days of leave. On the morning of the hearing, the superintendent rang Brendan Hough who was tending to his horses. Hough explained he had attended at Nenagh Garda station the previous evening to hand in the required papers. The superintendent made himself clear. Unless both Maurice Deasy and Brendan Hough presented themselves to the court within the next three hours, he wouldn’t support their application in front of the judge.
After a plea on the phone from Maurice, Hough jumped in his car, still dressed in his farming gear, and drove immediately to Nenagh District Court. As he entered the courtroom, the smell of the horse feces on his Wellington boots wafted across the courtroom. Maurice greeted him, thanked him again for coming, and the pair approached the superintendent, who explained what would happen when the judge called their names.
The hearing itself lasted only a matter of minutes. The judge asked them to clarify certain details, and requested that Brendan Hough confirm he would take responsibility for any issues that might arise. He asked Maurice how he would use the license. Maurice stood up in a courtroom for the first time in his life and explained that he wanted to host a festival that would celebrate beers produced by working farms in Ireland. He wanted to share his passion with the outside world.
A few minutes later, the temporary transfer of the license was approved. Before leaving the courtroom, Maurice invited Brendan Hough to North Tipperary’s first-ever farmhouse beer festival.
Despite the hurdles, the festival went ahead, and showcased Ireland’s newest generation of farmhouse brewers. 12 Acres Brewing Company sent beer from Killeshin in County Laois. David Walsh-Kemmis and Joe O’Driscoll traveled from Ballykilcavan Farm and Brewery in Stradbally, and took part in a panel discussion in front of a packed barrel room about the challenges faced by farmers and farm breweries. Mal McCay and his wife Suzanne sent beer from Heaney Farmhouse Brewery in Bellaghy, County Derry. Suzanne’s uncle was Seamus Heaney, and the farm and brewhouse were located on the old Heaney farm where the poet’s father, Patrick Heaney, had started farming in 1960.
There were several other visitors of note around the time of the festival. Mike O’Brien—the American engineer who had built the brewing system—stopped by the Deasy farm in Aglish a few weeks beforehand with his daughter Bridget and son-in-law Charlie, who had just been married in Ireland. The Tánaiste, Simon Coveney—the deputy head of the Irish government—came to visit the farm a few weeks after the festival, and listened to Maurice talk about biomass fuel and Mad Max, and about the need for Ireland to move away from clearfell forestry. Later that day, Coveney tweeted: “Maurice Deasy is producing quality craft beer with his own barley and energy sources - impressive sustainable business.”
Other high-profile personalities came to know Maurice. The following spring, he would meet Mary Robinson, a former President of Ireland. President Robinson had been impressed with Maurice’s project in Malawi and shared stories with him about her time working in development as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She even posed for photographs with him at his PhD graduation ceremony.
At the festival, Twig and Dave poured Canvas’ “West Cork Porter.” They had opted to call it Road Not Taken, and it featured the artwork Hayes had created. Alongside the beer, they served burritos to a curious mix of locals and beer tourists. Maurice hosted tours of the farm all day and explained Canvas’ mission to create “single-origin beers” using barley grown and malted on the farm, hops cultivated beside the old stone cottage, water from the farm well, firewood from the bog on their land, electricity from their Archimedes turbine, and the wild yeast and bacteria of North Tipperary.
At the festival, Michael Ruaidhrí Deasy hosted poetry readings. One of the poems he recited was “The Forge” by Seamus Heaney. A receptive crowd listened to words that celebrated a dying country trade and the inward focus of a passionate craftsman.
Drawing on his experiences with Canvas, Michael Ruaidhrí then offered a deeper interpretation. He suggested that the central character of the blacksmith is tragically flawed, making a massive error in his dismissal of the outside world. “It may be a celebration of a dying craft,” he said, “But it also explains why it’s dying in the first place.”
The interpretation mapped neatly onto Canvas, highlighting the tension between farm brewery traditions and modern technology. The blacksmith might feel compelled to shut out the world, to exist internally, to favor self-sufficiency. But in fact, he needed the farms and the people around him to stay alive. For his work to be valued and have meaning, it had to be shared with and enjoyed by others. It isn’t enough just to beat real iron out, to only work the bellows.
Words + Photos Breandán Kearney Language
