Why Smithwick’s Has Been Brewed Since 1710 (And Why It Matters)

Smithwick’s was being brewed in Kilkenny in 1710. To put that in context: the United States didn’t exist yet. Neither did Guinness. The brewery on Parliament Street had been turning out beer for almost fifty years before Arthur Guinness signed his famous 9,000-year lease at St James’s Gate.

Most things that old don’t survive. Smithwick’s did.

The Kilkenny Origins

The brewery was built on the site of a 13th-century Franciscan abbey, which is exactly the kind of detail that sounds invented but isn’t. The monks had been brewing there for hundreds of years before John Smithwick took over the operation in 1710 and gave the beer his family name. The ruins of St Francis Abbey are still on the brewery grounds.

For the next three hundred years, Smithwick’s stayed in the same family, in the same town, brewed to roughly the same recipe.

Surviving Three Centuries of Irish History

The brewery survived the Penal Laws, the Great Famine, the War of Independence, two World Wars, and the rise and fall of every Irish brewing competitor except Guinness. It was eventually bought by Guinness in 1965, which is how Smithwick’s ended up under the same ownership umbrella as the brand it had outlasted by half a century.

The Kilkenny brewery itself was closed in 2013 and production moved to Dublin. The buildings are now a visitor centre.

Why Smithwick’s Memorabilia Is Worth Collecting Today

Anything bearing the Smithwick’s name from before 2013 came out of the original Kilkenny brewery — a building that had been making beer continuously since the early 1700s. The pendulum clocks, the illuminated signs, the tap badges, the glassware: all of it was made for or by an institution that had been part of Irish life for three centuries.

That’s not marketing. That’s just what the date on the bottle means.

We sell a small number of original Smithwick’s pieces sourced from Irish pub clearances. They sell quickly. There’s a reason for that.