Tasmanian Whisky & BBQ at Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

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

Filed: 23 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/012

There are whiskey events, and then there are the ones you're still talking about months later over a dram. Session 46 of Belfast Whiskey Week 2024 — the Tassie BBQ: Urban Scullery Takeover — landed somewhere firmly in the second category. On 23rd July, the Angel & 2 Bibles played host to a sun-kissed collision of Tasmanian whisky and open-fire cooking, with former MasterChef contestant Jonny Stevenson behind the grill and a lineup of southern hemisphere drams that had absolutely no business being this good.

About This Event

It's the Summer, it's BBQ weather - but even if it's raining, we've got you covered! Take the opportunity to join our guests from Tasmania, as former Masterchef Jonny Stevenson creates a Tassie BBQ for us in the adorable Angel & 2 Bibles

Looking Back

The Angel & 2 Bibles is one of those Belfast rooms that does half the work for you. Tucked away with the character of a place that's earned its charm rather than designed it, it carries the kind of duchas — that inherited sense of belonging — that makes a gathered crowd feel immediately at ease. For an event pairing fire-cooked food with whisky from the other side of the world, the intimacy of the venue was exactly right. You weren't just attending a tasting; you were a guest at something.

Jonny Stevenson, who carries his MasterChef credentials lightly but wears his passion for food plainly, crafted a BBQ menu that drew on Tasmanian produce and technique without ever tipping into novelty. Each dish was built with the whiskies in mind — and that's harder to pull off than it sounds. The smoky, fat-rich notes of properly rested meat found their mirror in the rich, often peated character that Tasmania's distillers have made their own. It wasn't a case of whisky poured alongside dinner; it was whisky and food in genuine conversation, each course drawing something new from the dram beside it.

Tasmanian whisky has earned its place at the world's table and then some. Distilleries like Lark and Sullivans Cove have spent decades proving that the island's cool maritime climate, clean water, and unhurried approach to maturation can produce spirit of remarkable depth and complexity. Poured in Belfast — a city with its own fierce pride in uisce beatha — these whiskies found an appreciative audience. There was real seanchas in the room that evening: the kind of stories and knowledge that pass between people who care about what's in the glass.

At £55, Session 46 sat at a price point that reflected genuine quality without tipping into exclusivity. For a full BBQ experience with matched Tasmanian whiskies and the kind of setting and company Belfast Whiskey Week does best, it represented excellent value. Those who've explored our broader programme will know that food and whisky pairing threads through the festival in different forms — from fine dining to more casual showcase sessions — and this one held its own proudly in that company. If Tasmanian whisky is new territory for you, our Whiskey Map is a good place to start finding your bearings across the world's whisky regions.

If Session 46 left you wanting to explore more of what Belfast Whiskey Week does with Irish whiskey closer to home, it's worth browsing some of the sessions that anchor the festival's Ulster identity — including the deep-dive Bushmills History MasterClass or the always-popular Bushmills Causeway Collection MasterClass. But for one evening in July 2024, Tasmania came to Belfast, Jonny Stevenson cooked something brilliant, and the Angel & 2 Bibles earned its place in festival folklore. Sláinte mhaith.