David Walsh-Kemmis of Ballykilcavan Farm and Brewery joined us this week for another installment of the LaoisToday LoveLaois Podcast.
David began by telling us how he came to run the company, which can be found just outside Stradbally.
“It’s my family farm, so that’s really where it started,” he said.
“I did a computer science degree. I met my wife over in Scotland – brought her back over here. I worked in IT for about 3 or 4 years.
“And then, my Dad was retiring from the farm. So, we all sat down as a family and we worked out that I’d come back and take over the farm. A complete change of career.”
That was in 2004. David said the main reason he made the life-altering decision was for the family history and tradition with the farm.
“It (the farm) had been in the family since literally the 1630’s. He (David’s father) was the 12th generation – I didn’t want him to be the 12th and last generation. I wanted to try and keep it alive as much as possible,” David said.
“I farmed it for about 11 or 12 years. It was mainly a malting barley farm; it was a tilling farm with some forestry as well. And it was just a case of working out that ‘I’m not making enough money, just out of farming, to make this place survive.’
“We needed to diversify. We came up with the decision to have the brewery there because we grew the malting barley; we have these old buildings at the back of the farmyard that would suit some sort of enterprise, and the brewery would fit in there quite nicely.
“It was something I was interested in. I had been doing a lot of home brewing.”
Brewing began in 2017 off site, and in 2018, the first brewery was opened on the farm.
The farm grows two distinct batches of malting barley. One is brewing barley that directly feeds the on-site brewery; the other is distilling barley, grown for whiskey producers, Waterford Distillery.
A lot of the old stone buildings David mentioned have now been fully converted. The 1780’s grain storage building in now the fully-operational brewery. The old mill building beside that has become the Ballykilcavan Farm and Brewery visitor centre.
The range of Ballykilvan beers are available in bars, restaurants, off-licences and supermarkets in Laois and another six counties, including Dublin.
As well as being on sale locally, the beers are gaining in popularity across Europe, and can be found predominantly in France and Italy, in the likes of Paris, La Rochelle, Milan and much more.
“It’s a very competitive marketplace,” David says. “There’s the really big breweries, who are actually our main competition, and then there’s something like 130 brands of different craft beers around the Republic and then another 30 or 40 (in Northern Ireland).
“You have to differentiate yourself. We think that our beers are very good quality. We’ve won a few medals in Ireland; we’ve won a few medals now in France as well.
“But quality alone is not enough of a differentiation, because a lot of people make really good beers. So, we are trying to make our differentiation in terms of the story of the family, of the farm, and our ingredient provenance.
“It’s all our own water; we’re using our own barley; we have some hops as well – so we do this one beer that’s literally 100% ingredients coming from the farm.”
This has become a major selling point abroad and may explain the company’s popularity in France. The French ‘terroirs’ concept says that environmental factors such as farming practices and a crop’s growth habitat dictate the character and taste of a product.
This concept is something David is hoping to use to attract tourists to visit Ballykilcavan Brewery as he tries to build tourism events at the farm.
Tours of the farm are continuing to grow in popularity and are fast becoming an important aspect of the company.
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