Ballykeefe

Location and contact details

Location" Location: Kyle, Ballykeefe, Cuffsgrange, County Kilkenny, R95 NR50, Ireland
Visitor Visit Type: Vistor Centre, but booking recommended
Co-ordinates" Co-ordinates: 52.596916, -7.321223
Telephone" Telephone: +353 (0)87 700 4538
Email" Email: info@ballykeefedistillery.ie
Web" Web: http://www.ballykeefedistillery.ie/the-tour/
Twitter" Twitter: BallykeefeDistillery (@BallykeefeD)

Facts and figures

LocationCo. Kilkenny
FounderMorgan Ging

Opening Hours

Visitor center and tasting rooms are open for tours Monday to Saturday at 2pm and 4pm.

Tours

The Distillery Tour

€25

You will visit each stage of the brewing and distilling process, from the mill house, to the brewhouse, to the breath taking copper pot stills to the warehouse and on site bottling plant. You will see up close every step in the process and also enjoy and have explained the many different aromas and smells at each stage of the brewing and distilling process.

Review: The Distillery Tour (16:00 on 13/09/2018)

Price: €25

This was my last tour of the day after being at Walsh Whiskey Distillery in the morning. Ballykeefe Distillery is located on a farm in rural County Kilkenny. It's a pleasant drive to get their on narrow roads, but fortunately very ittle traffic. There is plenty of parking onsite.

This distillery is a farm based one which very big on bio-dynamics and is a zero waste enterprise with full sustainability the key aim. The distillery feeds the draff and pot ale to the cows and pigs respectively.

I'd mentioned I would be visiting on Twitter a few weeks before I went to Ireland. Morgan, the owner, popped out for a quick chat before the tour (I think he suspects I am actually connected to the whisky industry in some way; for the record, I am not. I just really like visiting distilleries) which was a nice touch.

There was eight of us on the tour; a group of four Americans and a group of three Americans and I. As we were being introduced to the dsistillery, we got to try two of the Ballykeefe spirits; one was the vodka and I think the second was poitin.

The tour was a good detailed one which covered the whiskey making process along with some of the sustainability features of the distillery, before moving onto covering the making of other spirits (poitin, vodka and gin).

At the end of thr tour we returned to the bar area where we got to try the spiced poitin and a gin and tonic. I'm not a gin drinker, so can't comment on the G&T myself, but others commented that it was good. The spirits I did try were very nice.

At the end of the tour the owner, Morgan, was aked to come through and answer some questions from thr tour group, which he did.

Photos were allowed on all parts of the tour.

[nearby type="distillery"]Information correct as of 22/05/2020

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