Black Isle Brewery

on Oct 21 in Breweries, JOGLE 2010 by Sam

A funny wee Brewery this one, located just north of Inverness.  We had tried a few of the beers on cask a couple of nights prior to visiting this brewery during an unplanned night in Inverness (due to Tandem train problems) and we enjoyed them, so we were looking forward to this brewery which was also our first brewery stop!

 The brewery do a range of top quality organic beers packaged in recycled materials and although when we went no brewing was actually taking place we got a quick tour of the brewery.  It is very old school, basically a shed with some brewing equipment inside and a little section round the back for bottling and labelling, which is all done by hand.  However, the brewery is moving up the road to a larger site due to ever increasing demand for the beers (the current brewery will be brewing a alcoholic ginger beer in the future).  We didn’t really get to try much of the beer during this visit but we stocked up on some of the beers to try in the evening.  It is clear to see why this breweries beer is in high demand, the beers we tried (Heather Honey – Good with Porridge, Red Kite – citrusy and malty and Yellowhammer) were all lovely.  We actually drank these beers a the evening after we bought them once we had completed a day of over 100 miles cycling.  Cracking open a bottle of yellowhammer and experiencing such a wonderfully refreshing, hoppy, grapefruity taste in the mouth was so satisfying (the beer won the Pedalling for Pints Most Satisfying Award) after such a enduringly hard day.  The others went down a treat too that evening!

 We will be on the lookout for Yellowhammer and other Black Isle beers in London, though I’m not sure that it will ever migrate so far south, but let’s hope in the future as the brewery expands.

 Thanks Black Isle