In the early days it was small batch runs of Irish Poitin, similar to US style moonshine, that was going through the still. We then moved into the gin market, with Maudeline dedicating many hours in our R&D lab perfecting our bold flavoursome Irish Gin.
Are you really an Irish distillery if you don’t produce whiskey?! Starting out we were too young to produce a whiskey which was distilled and matured on-site, and so we sourced aged whiskey which we finished in the distillery, giving it our own unique twist.
With rum being Sam’s favourite spirit, it was only a matter of time before we focused our attention on this golden and spiced treasure. In 2018 we launched our Spiced Rum, followed by our award-winning Golden Rum. This positioned us in the history books once more, as the first Irish distillery to produce rum which was crafted from start to finish on the island of Ireland.
Our Stills
In 2020, we invested further in the distillery and whiskey, with the purchase of two copper pot stills. Our shiny copper pot stills, Bonny and Morrigan, travelled over 2000km from Italy to take pride of place in Kinsale. They were crafted by experts Frilli Impianti, who have a long standing heritage of producing the finest stills.
Bonny, the larger of our two stills, has a capacity of 2800L and Morrigan a capacity of 1600L. Currently in the brewhouse we carry out a daily double shift brew to create a wash
of 8% ABV for the distillation process. The wash is where we thrive, being produced to an extremely high quality, as we are utilise our expertise in world-class brewing, that our team have perfected over the years while creating our award-winning range of craft beers. Once the wash has been created in our brewery It is then back over to the distillery for Bonny and Morrigan to do their job, which at the moment results in 21 bourbon sized barrels (225L) per week of whiskey being filled out of the distillery.
We are currently producing two styles of whiskey on site:
- Single Malt Whiskey – made with 100% malted Irish barley
- Pot Still – made with a both a malted and unmalted barley, as well as wheat, oats and rye
In the coming year Bonny & Morrigan will also be tasked with taking over the rum distillation process from our smaller still, as our rum demand continues to increase.
