Murphy's Brewery Murphy’s Irish Stout

Every Irish stout is measured against one brewery in Dublin. Murphy's has spent its entire life declining to compete on those terms. James J. Murphy opened the Lady's Well Brewery in Cork in 1856, and the stout that came out of it was built on restraint — deliberately less bitter and less heavy than the one everyone can name. That is not a softened copy of the style. It is a quiet argument about it: that a stout can be dark without being severe, and that roast belongs there to give depth, not to prove a point.

Cork made it and Heineken has owned it since 1983, which is how a city stout reached taps far outside Ireland without ever becoming the famous one. It is the stout you order once you know what the other one tastes like.