Echlinville & Old Comber Boilermaker Session | Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 20 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/540

There are few better ways to ease into a festival afternoon than with a dram in one hand and a beer in the other, and Session 15 of Belfast Whiskey Week 2024 made that case with quiet conviction. Held on Saturday 20th July at the Ulster Sports Club, this exclusive Boilermaker session brought together the whiskies of Echlinville Distillery and Old Comber alongside the craft pours of Out of Office — a pairing that felt less like a novelty and more like a statement of intent about where Ulster whiskey is going.

About This Event

Join us with A very exclusive Boiler Maker session with whiskies from Echlinville, Old Comber and beers from Out of Office. Great way to start your afternoon in Belfast during the opening weekend of the festival.

Looking Back

The Boilermaker format — whiskey and beer, chosen to complement and challenge each other in the glass — has its roots in working-class drinking culture, the kind of unpretentious ritual that belongs to sheughs and shipyards as much as to cocktail bars. Session 15 honoured that duchas while dressing it in something rather more considered. Out of Office's beers were selected not to overwhelm but to converse with the whiskies on the table, and the results were, by all accounts, a genuine dialogue rather than a shouting match.

Echlinville Distillery sits at the heart of this story. When it received its distilling licence, it became the first new distillery to open in Northern Ireland in over 125 years — a fact that carries weight when you understand just how long that silence lasted. Rooted in the tír of the Ards Peninsula, Echlinville grows its own barley on the estate, which gives the spirit a sense of place that is increasingly rare in an industry that can sometimes feel detached from the land. That connection to soil and season was palpable in the whiskies poured on the afternoon.

Old Comber lent the session a thread of seanchas all its own. The name evokes one of Ulster's most storied lost distilleries — the original Old Comber ceased production in 1953 — and its revival carries with it both pride and responsibility. Tasting the two alongside each other, guests were in effect holding a conversation between eras: the new distillery and the resurrected name, both asking what it means to make whiskey in this corner of Ireland now. It was the kind of moment Belfast Whiskey Week does particularly well — creating context without lecturing, letting the uisce beatha do the talking.

At £35, Session 15 sat comfortably as an accessible entry point to the opening weekend, and the Ulster Sports Club provided the kind of relaxed, convivial setting that suits a Saturday afternoon among friends and fellow enthusiasts. Whether you were a seasoned whiskey devotee or simply curious about what Northern Ireland's distilling revival tastes like, this was a generous and genuinely enjoyable introduction. If Echlinville's broader festival presence — from their Distillery Days to Showcase events — shows the depth of what they bring to Belfast Whiskey Week, then sessions like this one show the warmth. For those wanting to explore the full geography of Irish whiskey, our Whiskey Map is a fine place to begin.

Sláinte to everyone who raised a glass that afternoon. The opening weekend was all the better for it.