The social drinker

Kilkenny is perhaps the most convivial place in Ireland. The city suffers from the cringe-inducing excesses of stags and hens on a Friday or Saturday night but Kilkenny on a weekday evening is a mellow, friendly place with an bewildering number of charming bars that probably could not survive without those weekend stags.

Some of these bars such as the Bridge House or Cleere’s have been around for ages while others, such as the Blue Bar, have opened in the past few years and immediately become part of the furniture.

The latest addition to Kilkenny’s prodigious list of interesting places to drink is a microbrewery which involves the former head brewer at the now closed Smithwick’s Brewery and members of the Smithwick family, who sold their eponymous brewery to Diageo back in the 1960s.

The new brewery is called Sullivan’s, which was the name of a Kilkenny brewery that became part of Smithwick’s during its long history. The site is a former garden centre in the city centre, next to the Wine Centre which is one of the best off-licences in the country.

I’m afraid there is the usual codology about ancient roots stretching back to the 1700s, but the reality is that Sullivan’s is an exciting new venture that brews a fine beer that builds on Kilkenny’s brewing tradition. It is also a reminder that even the closure of an ancient brewery such as Smithwick’s comes with a silver lining. There is a renaissance going on in Irish brewing and this is another example in our smallest and most charming city. A