One of the Smithwick family says they’ll be brewing in Kilkenny city centre by next year.
A planning application’s been submitted for a brewhouse on John Street by the owners of the Sullivan’s Taproom.
It comes after the widespread disappointment over the news that Diageo is shutting down the Smithwicks Experience Centre. (More on that here and here).
Dan Smithwick was a guest on our The History Fix programme last evening when he told presenter MaryAnn Vaughan that now that the application’s gone in he’s determined to bring brewing back to the city, telling KCLR News “We’ve actually just lodged planning permission for a brewhouse to go into John Street in Kilkenny, so it’s an investment in our fantastic taproom, if you’ll allow me to say that, which reopens in early June and we just cannot wait for that to happen, this is very much the next step in the Sullivan story; bringing brewing back to Kilkenny is what we’re doing, is our mission”.
He adds “Hopefully we’ll be in a position to start bringing in brewing equipment towards the end of this year that would really be the dream and so when the tourists return for early next year we’ll be up and dressed, that’s very much the expectation and hope for it, you never really know how the planning journey will go, we know where we’re going to get this equipment, we know how we’re going to do it, we know how we’re going to package it and everything so we just have to navigate through it”.
And Mr Smithwick a visitor centre is very much in his company’s pipeline, noting “So we have detailed creative design works done up for our visitor centre, we also have planning granted on John Street for that visitor centre, we’ve made the decision because we’re a young company we have to focus on the coming 12 months and what we can do immediately, we decided to prioritise brewing first and visitor centre later”.
