Belfast Hidden Whiskey Tours | Walking Tour | Belfast Whiskey Week 2025

Name: Belfast Whiskey Week 2026
Start: 2026-07-24
End: 2026-08-01
Location: Belfast

Filed: 15 Jul 2025
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 4 min
Ref: BWW/25/204

There are ways to see a city, and then there are ways to taste it. The Belfast Hidden Whiskey Tour, led by the irrepressible Conor Owens, offered something altogether more nourishing than a standard stroll — a dander through Belfast's storied streets, laneways, and landmark pubs, punctuated by local drams and whiskey-infused bites that made the city's uisce beatha heritage feel utterly alive. Running daily from the 18th to the 26th of July 2025, this was one of Belfast Whiskey Week's most joyfully accessible events, and one that proved you don't need to be a seasoned whiskey enthusiast to fall hard for it.

About This Event

It’s not often you get the chance to taste your way through the history of a city.

Join Conor Owens on an inspirational walking tour of Belfast, where you will get to sip local whiskies and savour our whiskey infused food offerings. Conor is known for showing Belfast’s Hidden gems, and has designed our whiskey walking tour to do just that. You’ll be treated to at least 4 sips at 4 locations and a combination of Ice-pops, Donuts, Chocolates, Burgers or Chips on your tour.

To get a real understanding of Belfast’s colourful history, and Whiskey Heritage and current resurgence of the whiskey industry, you’ll dander through the streets, lanes, and through the doors of our historical pubs and venues.

You don’t have to be a whiskey lover, to love this whiskey and food walking tour; you’ll quickly garner a thirst and build up and appetite as you explore.

Meeting Point to Start: Inside Our Hotel Partner; Room2 Hotel, Queen Street, Belfast BT1 6EE at 12pm each day Friday 18th to Saturday 26th July

Looking Back

Gathering each noon inside the welcoming lobby of the Room2 Hotel on Queen Street, groups of curious visitors and seasoned whiskey pilgrims alike were met by Conor Owens — a guide who wears his knowledge of Belfast the way the city wears its murals: openly, proudly, and with real craft. Conor is the mind behind Belfast Hidden Tours, a venture built on the conviction that the best stories about any place are tucked away down side streets and behind unremarkable doors. His whiskey tour, specially designed for Belfast Whiskey Week 2025, was no different. From the very first step out onto Queen Street, it was clear this was going to be something worth savouring slowly.

Over the course of the tour, participants collected at least four sips of local whiskey across four distinct locations, each chosen to illuminate a different facet of Belfast's relationship with the spirit. The seanchas — the living oral tradition — flowed as freely as the drams. Conor wove together threads of Victorian pub culture, the city's industrial-era distilling heritage, and the extraordinary contemporary resurgence of Irish and Ulster whiskey that has transformed the local industry in recent years. For those eager to map that resurgence geographically, the Belfast Whiskey Week Whiskey Map offers a vivid companion picture of just how richly the city's whiskey landscape has been repopulated.

What set this tour apart from a straightforward tasting trail was the food. Between pours, participants were treated to a rotating selection of whiskey-infused creations — ice-pops that captured a single malt's sweetness on a warm July afternoon, donuts glazed with something unmistakably peaty, chocolates that lingered like a long finish, and heartier fare in the form of burgers and chips to anchor the appetite as the dander continued. It was playful and inventive, and it worked: the food didn't distract from the whiskey, it reframed it, showing how deeply the spirit can embed itself in everyday pleasures when given half a chance.

The tour sat in fine company within the wider Belfast Whiskey Week walking programme. Those who made a full week of it might also have joined Belfast Hidden Tours: Walking, Whiskies & Whispers, another of Conor's explorations that delves into the more atmospheric and, shall we say, spectral corners of the city, or caught the convivial Irish Whiskey Review: Walking With Marty for a different lens on the island's whiskey story. Each tour rewarded in its own way, but the Hidden Whiskey Tour occupied a particular tír of its own — grounded in place, generous in spirit, and genuinely fun.

At £30 a head, this was Belfast Whiskey Week at its most democratic: a morning-into-afternoon adventure that asked nothing more of you than comfortable shoes, an open palate, and a willingness to let the city surprise you. Sláinte to Conor Owens and everyone who laced up and joined the dander. If this tour returns — and we'd be surprised if it doesn't — put it near the top of your list.