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Cocktail Competitions Masterclass | Belfast Whiskey Week 2025
On a bright July Sunday at the Library Bar, Belfast Whiskey Week 2025 made space for something a little different — not a tasting, not a tour, but a genuine education in the craft and competition of cocktail making. Hosted by the team at Liquid Minds, To Mix or Compete?: A Guide to Cocktail Competitions was exactly the kind of session that reminds you why the festival exists: to raise the bar, in every sense, right here in Belfast.
About This Event
Are you an aspiring Mixologist, a competitor, a novice shaker or dipping your toe into the world of Cocktail making or more importantly Cocktail Competitions?
If so, this session is for you. Designed by the fabulous mixologists from Liquid Minds; who have conquered the world of Cocktail making and who love to impart their passion, with demonstrations, high calibre cocktails and distinct tastes.
This is the ultimate opportunity to hone your skills, with expert knowledge and physical demonstrations to help you over come some fears, know the ins and outs, the dos and do nots, of making the complete competitive cocktails.
In a world were people are to self-obsessed, this session provides a unique opportunity to learn from the best in Belfast; so that you may progress. Belfast Whiskey Week supports a vibrant bar scene and wants the best mixologists in the World to be based right here in the City.
Looking Back
There's a certain courage required to step behind a competition bar — the kind of courage that doesn't come from ego, but from preparation, knowledge, and the quiet confidence that only comes from having done the work. That's precisely the spirit Liquid Minds brought to the Library Bar on the morning of 20th July. Whether attendees arrived as seasoned shakers or complete beginners, the room quickly levelled out into something more valuable than a masterclass: it became a genuine conversation about craft.
The session was structured around the twin pillars of demonstration and discussion. Liquid Minds walked the room through the mechanics of competitive cocktail making — the presentation standards, the timing pressures, the judging criteria that most aspiring mixologists never get to see laid out plainly. This wasn't abstract theory. High-calibre cocktails were made in front of the group, broken down step by step, with the kind of candid commentary — what works, what doesn't, and why — that you rarely get outside a professional kitchen. The McConnell's Irish Whiskey connection gave the whiskey-forward cocktails a distinctly Belfast character, grounding the session in the uisce beatha tradition even as it looked forward to the next generation of competitors.
What set this event apart was its generosity. The people behind Liquid Minds carry real competitive pedigree, and sharing the accumulated seanchas of that experience — the do's and definitive do-nots of the competition floor — felt like a genuine act of duchas, a passing on of hard-won knowledge to those who'll carry the craft forward. Belfast Whiskey Week has always stood for a thriving local bar scene, and events like this are how that ambition becomes action rather than aspiration.
It's worth noting that this session sat comfortably alongside the broader BWW2025 programme of education and welcome — if you're curious about how the festival approached community building this year, the OurWhiskey Foundation: Welcome to Belfast event offers a complementary perspective on that same spirit of inclusion. And for those who came to the Library Bar having already found their feet in Belfast's whiskey landscape, the Belfast Whiskey Map is an ideal next step for continuing that exploration beyond the festival itself.
At £15, this was one of the better-value hours of the entire week. Not because it was cheap in spirit — it wasn't — but because what was offered was genuinely useful: the kind of practical, honest, expert-led knowledge that can change the trajectory of someone's career behind the bar. Belfast Whiskey Week runs events like this because it believes the best mixologists in the world should be based right here in this city. On the strength of what Liquid Minds delivered on that Sunday morning, that ambition looks less like a boast and more like a roadmap.
More from Belfast Whiskey Week
Explore the full programme on the Belfast Whiskey Week Whiskey Map.
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