Irelands environmental scorecard
on Nov 5, 2009 in About Environment Charges environment Ireland OECD Water Overall, the OECD’s recent report on Ireland’s environmental performance, part of their Economic Survey of Ireland 2009 which was published yesterday (available online as a pdf here), presents a reasonably positive review of the achievements here...

Tara Symposium
on Oct 22, 2009 in About Archaeology Via the IAI: Tara – From the Past to the Future hosted by the UCD School of Archaeology will take place this weekend in the John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies. Featuring forty papers by an international group of scholars, the symposiu...

Dining and Dwelling Part 4
on Sep 20, 2009 in About Archaeology About the Beer Fulacht fiadh ancient beer Dining and dwelling National Roads Authority NRA Part four of Dining and Dwelling publication (Part one here,  part two here and part three here) CONCLUSION So, what is the evidence for brewing? First, the experiment worked. Fermentation caused by wind-blown yeast even occurred in the leftover mas...

Dining and Dwelling Part 3
on Sep 18, 2009 in About Archaeology About the Beer Fulacht fiadh ancient beer Dining and dwelling National Roads Authority NRA Part three of Dining and Dwelling publication (Part one here, and part two here) Our first brewing experiment was carried out at Billy’s home in Headford, Co. Galway, in August 2007. In an effort to make the experiment authentic the equipment had t...

Dining and Dwelling part 2
on Sep 16, 2009 in About Archaeology About the Beer Fulacht fiadh ancient beer Dining and dwelling National Roads Authority NRA Part two of Dining and Dwelling publication (Part one here) THE GREAT MYSTERY OF PREHISTORIC BREWING. In prehistoric times until the late Iron Age, metallurgy was limited to small hand tools and high-status items. Throughout prehistoric Europe one o...

Dining & Dwelling
on Sep 14, 2009 in About Archaeology About the Beer Fulacht fiadh ancient beer Dining and dwelling National Roads Authority NRA Last year Billy and Declan gave a presentation at the National Roads Authority’s annual archaeology seminar about the fulacht beer theory. You can see a video of the presentation here. The resultant  monograph Dining and Dwelling has just bee...

Comments on the beer at YouTube
on Aug 25, 2009 in About the Beer Fulacht fiadh ancient brewing archaeological consultants galway Beer To date there have been 10, 650 views of the fulacht video on YouTube (produced by BigYes). Later this week we’ll be attending the launch of ‘Dining and Dwelling’ – the 6th monograph in the NRA monograph series, which will see...

My Summer Holidays by Billy Quinn aged 41 and a half.
on Aug 18, 2009 in About Archaeology The Irish at War Following a recent excursion to Belgium to investigate German trench positions in the vicinity of the the village of Messines, Declan asked if I would post an entry describing my experiences …here it is. The excavations were directed by Martin Brow...

Moore on Beer
on Jul 23, 2009 in About Archaeology About the Beer Fulacht fiadh ancient beer archaeological consultants galway Archaeology of Beer Billy Quinn Declan Moore environmental consultants galway NRA Okay: It’s not exactly TED. But anyway, here’s our (Billy & Dec’s) presentation at the 2008 NRA Seminar (Dining and Dwelling) which is due for publication next month. Entitled: ‘Fulachta fiadh and the beer e...

Ancient Egyptian Barley
on Jul 21, 2009 in About Archaeology About the Beer ancient beer Archaeological Consultant Galway Beer Egypt PLoS One Qasr Ibrim two-row barley Upper Nile Via our daily Google Alert email we learned of some interesting research into ancient barley at the University of Warwick, where ‘boffins’ have recovered significant DNA information ‘from a lost form of ancient barley that triumphed for over 30...