King James I granted a licence to distil aqua vitae in this part of the north Antrim coast in 1608. The Old Bushmills Distillery, which built its identity on that grant, claims status as the world's oldest licensed distillery. Whether 1608 is the oldest depends on how you read the documents and what counts as continuity - the licence covered a region, not the specific buildings now standing - but the date is real and the brand has owned it for centuries. To mark four hundred years, the distillery released a single whiskey called "1608" that contained crystal malt. Bushmills draws its water not from the River Bush itself but from a tributary called Saint Columbs Rill, named for the Irish saint who is said to have crossed this coast on his way between Ulster and Iona. The distillery makes Bushmills Original and Black Bush blends, along with ten-, twelve-, sixteen-, and twenty-one-year-old single malts. The bottles are part of the village's economy. The smell on certain mornings is part of its weather.

Bushmills was once the middle stop of one of the great engineering oddities of the Victorian world. The Giant's Causeway, Portrush and Bush Valley Railway and Tramway, which opened to Bushmills on 29 January 1883, was a narrow-gauge electric line - one of the first long electric tramways anywhere - that ran from Portrush past the village to within walking distance of the Causeway. Hydroelectric power from the River Bush supplied an elevated third rail, with overhead wires arriving in 1899. The line closed at the end of the 1949 season. Half a century later, volunteers rebuilt a two-mile section between Bushmills and the Causeway as the Giant's Causeway and Bushmills Railway, opening at Easter 2002. A summer steam train now runs the route again, on three-foot-gauge track, the same width as the original.

Bushmills had 1,247 people in the 2021 census, classified as a village by Northern Ireland's statistical agency. The community is overwhelmingly Protestant - about 89 percent from a Protestant or other Christian background, 2.7 percent from a Catholic background. Three quarters identify as British, a third as Northern Irish, a small fraction as Irish (and many people gave more than one answer, because identity on this coast is often layered rather than singular). The churches on Priestland Road and Main Street - Presbyterian, Free Presbyterian, Church of Ireland, Catholic, Gospel Hall - mark out a religious geography that has shaped the village for centuries. Bushmills Presbyterian was founded in 1646. St John the Baptist Church of Ireland opened in 1821. Bushmills is twinned with Louisville, Kentucky, on the strength of a shared interest in fine spirits.

The most beautiful way to leave Bushmills is on foot. A seven-mile coastal walk runs from Portrush, past the ruins of Dunluce Castle perched on its sea stack, along the Causeway and Bushmills Railway line, and on to the Causeway itself. The Belfast-Derry railway connects the area through Coleraine and the branch line to Portrush, with Ulsterbus filling in the gaps. The village punches well above its weight for visitors - some come for the distillery, some for the rocks, some for the walk between the two. Notable Bushmills natives include Norman Parke, a UFC mixed martial artist, and Caroline McElnay, who served as Director of Public Health for New Zealand during the early years of COVID-19. In the years after the Second World War, Bushmills was also home to one of five Consol navigation system transmitters that helped guide ships and aircraft across the North Atlantic - a quiet piece of Cold War infrastructure on the same coast as the distillery and the tram.