Tully's celebrates 10 years of championing Waterford beer
Left to right: Seamus O'Hara (Owner O'Hara's Brewing), Eoin O'Neill (Tully's Bar Manager), Ed Cahill (Owner Tully's Bar), Tim Barber and Gráinne Walsh (Co-Owners Metalman Brewing Company). Photo: Radka Koprivnakova
Tully’s might be the only place in Waterford where you can enjoy a scone, a craft beer and a vinyl DJ set all before 6 pm.
Although it tends to attract local artists, writers and musicians, it also caters to sports lovers, quiz-goers and tea drinkers.
Ed Cahill is a third-generation publican and was “raised behind the counter.” He said he “tried to get out of it, but couldn’t. So I’m pretty much in it for life now.”
Ed has a Master's in International Development. He worked for the United Nations in Washington DC. He said, “I suppose for a little while I was trying to save the world.” He found himself becoming disillusioned in DC, saying, “It was an odd place to be at an odd time.”
When he returned to Ireland, he “fell back into working in a bar.” But when he kept trying to introduce IPAs to the family pub in Carlow, his mother suggested he try open his own place.
Ed has a comprehensive ideology about what a pub should and should not be.
It need not serve food: “Irish tapas are all you need in a bar.”
Another edict: “Bars should be open as early in the morning as possible. Not necessarily for drinking, but as a space to use. Teas, coffees, chats, it’s a community space that works really well.” Ed points out that this also allows staff to work during the day and have some of their nights free.
Instead of a tokenistic nod to get the ‘cool kids’ to drink in his pub, Ed has a passion for craft beer. When you walk into Tully’s, there are twelve gleaming taps of independent Irish beers. A little blackboard sits merrily at eye level, informing you that you can get an O’Hara stout or lager for €5.
If you do want a Guinness or Heineken, you have to go looking for it, and it will cost you more than the independent stuff.
As a tenth birthday present, Ed asked O’Hara’s Brewery and Metelman Brewery to collaborate on a special beer just for Tully’s.
Metalman Brewery has been on a hiatus since 2011, so getting founders Gráinne and Tim to come out of retirement was an impressive feat to achieve.
15 kegs of what might be the last Metalman beer ever made was delivered to Tully’s on their birthday. At the time of writing this, there are 3 kegs left but Ed reckons the last of it will be gone in the first week of January.
Rather than a social media-fuelled marketing campaign, news of the birthday beer travelled via word of mouth. Ed played no part in its creation; in fact, he hadn’t even seen the artwork for the badge until it was unveiled on the night “We knew we wouldn’t be let down by brewers of that calibre.”
Creating new beer just for fun, surprising pub goers with something quirky, collaborating with other small breweries: these are the advantages of independent breweries.
However, the beer has also been complained about; customers told Ed that at 6.6%, the beer is “too tasty” for such a high alcohol content.
To survive as a small brewery in Ireland, “you need so much goodwill and so much support", according to Ed.
“But that is the one thing I know Waterford has. The loyalty to a local brand is huge here in Waterford. There is absolutely scope for a local brewery here.”
Ed told me about when he first opened Tully’s Waterford; he only bought 24 bottles of Guinness. “It wasn’t a product that did not sell in Carlow at all, it was the kind of thing that would sit on the shelf gathering dust.” Ed thought 24 bottles would get him through at least six months…they were sold out within hours.
He couldn’t understand why bottled Guinness was so popular in Waterford until someone told him that the Guinness bottling plant used to be in Waterford, so people purposefully bought bottled Guinness to make sure that local people kept their jobs.
Ed does not live in Waterford, he told me he “lives on the motorway pretty much.” But its clear he has fallen in love with the county. He said, “I love that the city is fifteen minutes from the sea.”
“I bang the drum for Waterford. It’s not really a hidden gem anymore because it's hard to hide something that’s this good.”
He likened Waterford to Galway in the 1970s and 80s. “It was not a particularly swish or cool place back then.”
Ed is sure that the price of pints is going to go up in 2026. He attributes this to the increased cost of doing business but makes no apologies for it either. He told me, “People rightly need living wages and pensions. But we have to pay for that somehow.” Ed also pointed out that when you buy a pint in a pub, that’s not the only thing you’re getting. Tully’s has free live music at least four nights per week.
“Built into the price of your pint is an awful lot of cost you might not realise.”
Partly due to cost and partly due to changing social norms, people aren’t drinking as much as they used to. Ed thinks this is “brilliant.” Tully’s has Guinness 00 and Estralla 00 on draft and Ed says they’re becoming a “bigger and bigger part of their sales.”
From a business point of view, it's great for publicans, according to Ed, because if people can drive home and feel 100% going to work the next day, they are more likely to go to the pub during the week.
But it's not all about business for Ed, “I probably do a bit too much socialising in my line of work so I’ve become a real fan of what they call ‘zebra striping’ where you have a pint, a 00, a pint and so on.
Tully’s has been a starting point for many well-known bands in Waterford, including the Kalimbas (“who I adore”, Ed adds), Conor Clancy, and Toucan, who played at Ed's wedding. There’s jazz every other Thursday, and trad sessions every other Wednesday.
Ed takes great satisfaction in having little-known bands and musicians perform in Tully’s and then watches them dominate the summer in the city stages and beyond.
He said, “It’s a beautiful thing to be able to be a part of.”
