A story about a group of middle-aged ale enthusiasts on a train journey to Wales has won Irish author Kevin Barry a £30,000 short story prize.

Barry's entry, Beer Trip to Llandudno, triumphed over stories by authors including Room novelist Emma Donoghue to win the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank short story award this evening. Judge and novelist Hanif Kureishi said that Barry had performed "a deft bit of alchemy" in his writing, by "taking a very ordinary group of amateur ale connoisseurs and transforming them and their not instantly appealing tastes into something sweet, funny and unexpectedly moving".

As the story follows the men's train journey from Liverpool to Llandudno, Barry writes "with a sensitivity that never transgresses into sentimentality", said Kureishi, producing "a beautifully constructed piece of writing that says something fresh about how men find comfort, support and humour in each other's company. This is an astonishing story that is both daringly original and full of heart."

Kureishi's fellow judge Melvyn Bragg agreed, adding that Beer Trip to Llandudno "takes a disregarded and often scorned stratum of male pals and finds wit, pathos and great energy there".

Barry's first novel, City of Bohane, was published last year and shortlisted for the Costa first novel award. Scarlett Thomas described it in the Guardian as a debut that "marks [Barry] out as a writer of great promise". A previous short story collection, There Are Little Kingdoms, won Barry the Rooney prize for Irish Literature, and a second, Dark Lies the Island, is out next month and features his prize-winning story.

The £30,000 Sunday Times short story award has been won in the past by the American author Anthony Doerr for his story The Deep, and by New Zealander CK Stead for Last Season's Man.