Half Hung

We thought as the nights draw in we would hit the market with a ghost story and a beer to warm you up! Half Hung is our new beer, a 6.2% Rye IPA. It has originated from a co- owners home brewing recipe that we edited a wee bit for the brewery. We love working with malts as much as we do with hops. Rye is an interesting malt – a little goes a long way. We talked a fair bit with other brewers at the ABV Festival in Belfast about rye before we went ahead on our brewery plant.

The finished beer came out a beautiful copper colour so that is where we have tied the label colour in with that. As with most rye beers you get a slight powdery mouthfeel at first and then the classic peppery spiciness of rye malt. The hops used give aromas of vanilla and citrus, with some fruit and pine.
 
‘Where’s the ghost!?’ they all cry (er...behind you). John MacNaughton was at one time the tax farmer for the Coleraine area. He botched the kidnapping of his lover (they used to do this sort of thing, back aways in the late 18 th century) and shot her dead by mistake. However, when they hung him it didn't work. The crowd were rather on his side and perhaps he could have made good his escape but he dithered. Presumably they got someone else to tie a proper noose and they hung him successfully the second time.

Up until the 1990s there would be salmon fishermen operating each season out of Portmoon, staying overnight in the bothy. If one of them happened to fall out of a hammock they used to blame the ghost of Half Hung MacNaughten. Nowadays, the bothy is restored and is used by kayakers etc. We haven’t heard any tales of Half Hung messing with this new population but then maybe they don’t know about his ghost?