Drams & Donuts with Killowen | Belfast Whiskey Week 2021

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

Filed: 29 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/21/188

Some ideas are so simple they feel inevitable. Pair exceptional whiskey with freshly made doughnuts, send the whole lot out across Ireland, and let people taste their way through a Saturday afternoon in July. That was Session 39 of Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 — Drams & Donuts — and it landed exactly as well as you'd hope. Six 50ml samples, six doughnuts, and a lineup that covered more ground than most festivals manage in a full day.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples and will take place on the 29th @ 16:00.

Please note that this session includes Doughnuts which we are unable to deliver overseas so this pack is only available for delivery within Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

This tasting will have delicious doughnuts paired with:

1792 Small Batch - 46.85%
Timorous Beastie - Small Batch Release - Global Traveller - 48%
Killowen Rum & Raisin 5 Year Old Single Malt - 55%
Friend at Hand - Cask Strength 55%
Hinch - Craft & Casks - Imperial Stout Finish - 43%
Cadenhead's Bunnahabhain 9 year old Madeira Cask - 57.8%

Tasting packs will be posted out to you, but may not arrive in time for the tastings. If you wish to collect the pack in Belfast to ensure you have it in time, please contact grace@belfastwhiskeyweek.com after you order.

Looking Back

The session took place on 29th July 2021 at 16:00, part of a festival year that had leaned hard into the at-home format and, to its credit, made it feel less like a compromise and more like a genuine alternative. Tasting packs were posted out across Northern Ireland and the Republic — the doughnuts, as anyone who tried to bend the rules would have discovered, were strictly an island-of-Ireland affair. Perishables don't post well to Berlin. What arrived through letterboxes and onto kitchen tables was a considered, generous lineup with real range to it.

The six whiskies were a confident mix of the familiar and the quietly extraordinary. 1792 Small Batch from Buffalo Trace opened things up with that easy, corn-sweet Kentucky warmth, while Timorous Beastie Small Batch — Global Traveller brought the Highland blended malt character that Douglas Laing does so reliably well. Then came the moment many attendees had circled on the card: Killowen Rum & Raisin 5 Year Old Single Malt at a full 55%. Killowen Distillery is up in the Mournes making craft Irish single pot still whiskey that the whole whiskey Ireland community has been quietly tracking — and this expression, with its rum cask influence and ripe fruit depth, is exactly why. At cask strength, it demanded attention and rewarded it.

The back half of the lineup held firm. Friend at Hand Cask Strength at 55% carried that punchy, uncut character that suits a festival dram well, while Hinch Craft & Casks Imperial Stout Finish at 43% showed what good finishing can do — roasted grain, dark chocolate, a gentle sweetness that felt tailor-made for the doughnut pairing. Rounding it all off was Cadenhead's Bunnahabhain 9 Year Old Madeira Cask at 57.8%, an independent bottling that brought Islay peat softened beautifully by Madeira's dried fruit warmth. By the time that last dram was poured, the doughnut was gone and nobody was apologising for it.

The food pairing concept could easily have felt gimmicky, but it didn't — the richness of a good doughnut glaze actually has real work to do alongside high-ABV expressions, cutting through and resetting the palate in a way that a plain water cracker simply doesn't. It was the kind of sensory discovery that Belfast Whiskey Week does well: ideas that sound playful until you actually try them, at which point they feel obvious. For those who wanted to go deeper into the broader 2021 programme, sessions like the Sexton Deconstruction or the deep-dive Bushmills History MasterClass offered a different kind of satisfaction — more structured, more archival, but equally rooted in the festival's core commitment to making whiskey genuinely accessible.

Drams & Donuts was, in the end, exactly what a good festival showcase should be: broad enough to educate, specific enough to surprise, and relaxed enough to enjoy. Sláinte mhaith to everyone who raised a glass — and to whoever paired the Bunnahabhain with a salted caramel ring. You knew what you were doing.