While touring Scotland in a campervan, we headed over towards Inverness, and on to a place we’ve always wanted to visit. In a small unspoiled area of Scotland lies the Black Isle. Here you’ll find the producer of some of the finest beers known to man. The Black Isle Brewery is a small farm-based organic brewery near the village of Munlochy in the Highlands. Here the beer is truly handcrafted and loved before it is sent out to for you to enjoy. All of the beer is organic. And they do not use isinglass finings to clear the beer, preferring to let it settle naturally. The brewery grows its own barley. They sources hops from an organic source in Europe. To taste these beers is to know the quality of excellent ale.
Entrance to the Black Isle Brewery
Our visit
On a lovely warm Scottish day in February – yes, it was sunny for our whole trip – we visited the brewery. We saw all of the brewing area, the bottling machine and the dispatch area.
Maturing the beer in whisky casks
It is a small brewery, but it has a lovely shop where you can buy bottled beer and hoodies, t-shirts, glasses and much more.
Brewering Vats
The one thing that struck me was the friendliness of the people at the brewery. They even let us fill up our camper van water tank. And they like dogs. If you like beer, you’ll love Black Isle beers.
A brilliant range of beers
Packed and ready to go …
The brewery makes a fabulous variety of beers including:
- Yellowhammer, an Indian Pale Ale
- Red Kite Ale, a true Scottish Ale
- Goldfinch Porter, a gluten free IPA
- Scotch Ale
- Hibernator, an oatmeal stout
- Goldeneye West Coast IPA
- Blonde Premium Craft Lager
- Porter
There are also some seasonal beers, and some beers matured in flavoured casks such as the ever-popular Black Islay, an 8.1% Bruichladdich Organic whisky aged Imperial stout.
Later in 2019 there will be a few more new beers including:
- Marmalat, a Seville orange flavoured beer
- Rhuby Tuesday, a beer with rhubarb and elderflower sour
- Altstadt, Munich lager
- Crumble, a blackberry and oatmeal stout
- Springboard an 8% IPA
We bought a small selection of beers to try. The plan was to take them home, but instead we tried them once we parked the campervan for the evening 🙂
Black Isle Brewery beers
And there’s more …
The brewery also has its own pub in Inverness, the best place to go to try the range. They grow organic vegetables for sale. And they hire out ‘The Shepherd’s Hut’ as a very compact holiday cottage on the farm itself.
They also have a walker’s hostel in Inverness and the farmhouse hires out rooms through Airbnb. Every year the farm hosts a team of international visitors known as WWoofers, who stay to learn about organic farms. They stay in the farm bothy, and help to support the farm and gardens.
What an interesting place to visit. Never been anywhere like here.
This looks like such a fab place to visit, I’ve never been to a brewery before.
Oh I’ve never been here but looks like you had a wicked time! 🙂