Method and Madness Showcase | Belfast Whiskey Week 2021

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

Filed: 28 Jul 2021
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Format: Online Tasting
Ref: BWW/21/468

Some drams arrive politely. The ones poured under the Method and Madness banner tend to arrive with a raised eyebrow and a question you hadn't thought to ask. Session 32 of Belfast Whiskey Week 2021 was a Showcase tasting built around exactly that spirit of productive disruption — six 50ml samples drawn from Irish Distillers' Midleton micro-distillery, assembled for a midday session on the 28th of July that rewarded the curious and unsettled the complacent in equal measure.

About This Event

This tasting includes 6 x 50ml Samples and will take place on the 28th @ 12:00.

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

Method and Madness is the experimental arm of Irish Distillers, born out of the Midleton micro-distillery in County Cork and given a remit that most distilleries would find alarming: try the things that shouldn't work. Cask finishes drawn from wood combinations most producers wouldn't entertain, grain and single pot still expressions pushed into unexpected territory — the range has always carried an honest restlessness about it. Bringing that energy to Belfast Whiskey Week felt entirely right, and Session 32 delivered on the brand's reputation without once tipping into novelty for novelty's sake.

Six samples, each 50ml, arrived with the kind of lineup that rewarded attention. The format — a mid-morning Showcase sitting — suited the material well. This wasn't an evening dramming session designed to be convivial and loose; it was a structured tasting that asked participants to engage, compare, and reconsider assumptions about what Irish whiskey can be. That said, there was nothing austere about it. Method and Madness makes its arguments through flavour, and the glasses did the talking. Attendees working through the flight found themselves moving between the familiar warmth of Irish grain and pot still character and something genuinely stranger — finishes that pushed the spirit into territory that felt more like dialogue than decoration.

The 2021 festival ran in a hybrid format, and for those outside Belfast the tasting packs were posted directly to participants, with a collection option in Belfast available for those who wanted to guarantee the samples were in hand before the session began. That practical detail — the care taken to make sure the liquid arrived where it was supposed to — was characteristic of how BWW 2021 handled the logistical realities of the time. It wasn't a seamless experience for everyone, but the intention was clear and the payoff, for most, was worth the coordination. If you're curious about the full Method and Madness range, the breadth of expression the brand offers makes considerably more sense after a session like this one.

It's worth noting the company Session 32 kept. The 2021 programme was rich with Irish whiskey deep-dives, from the historical sweep of Session 83's Bushmills History MasterClass to the more technically focused Session 23 on Bushmills Cask Strength. Method and Madness sat within that landscape as a counterpoint — not a rejection of tradition, but a rigorous interrogation of it. Where Bushmills grounds itself in centuries of Ulster duchas, Method and Madness operates from a different kind of authority: the confidence to treat every cask as a question worth asking.

Looking back, Session 32 stands as one of the more quietly radical tastings in the BWW 2021 programme. Radical in the sense that it asked participants to meet a brand where the brand actually lives — out past the comfortable consensus about what Irish whiskey is supposed to taste like. For those who showed up curious and left with six empty sample bottles and a longer list of questions than they arrived with, that felt like exactly the right result. Sláinte mhaith.