Cairngorm Brewery

My Scottish road trip had taken me up the country to the northern shores, then back down again, as I rolled into the Cairngorms.

The route looked a little bit like this...

I was over-the-moon at having made it on to the Orkney Isles (albeit, not for long enough...)
I'd sat contentedly with a pint of Swannay 'Scarpa Special' in the Ferry Inn, Stromness...

Top Joe's in Thurso had also been an interesting spot - the sole cask ale outlet for the town, lively and entertaining on the evening of the Scottish Cup final.

Traveling back southbound, my first stopping point was at Carrbridge, just north of Aviemore, where I stayed in the Cairn Hotel (Main Road, Carrbridge, PH23 3AS, top picture). 
The hotel-part was attached to a comfortable, country pub bar, serving up three real ales from a Scottish trio of Cromarty, Orkney and Cairngorm breweries.

I explored a handful of gentle trails and took the obligatory photo of the bridge that the village is named after - still standing but you wouldn't want to clamber onto the middle of it and jump up and down.

As we were just seven miles from the Cairngorm Brewery, I thought it was only right to make a visit.

Cairngorm Brewery (Unit 12, Dalfaber Industrial Estate, Aviemore, PH22 1ST)
The Aviemore Brewery was started in 1997, before being expanded and renamed in 2001 to reflect the beautiful region (now national park) that it lies within. They have a 20 barrel plant, capable of producing 6,500 litres of beer a day.

Two brewery tours are run each day at 11:30 and 14:30 for the price of £5.
I'm hesitant to say 'tour', as this just comprises an introductory talk, then a stroll into a room with six fermentation tanks in it, from where you can see the copper through a glass screen. Not much of an access-all-areas, but I understand it's a small working brewery that isn't designed for members of the public to wander around. There's a generous tasting session next, working the way through the range of bottled beers that Cairngorm brew.

                                 
Their beer seems to make it to Wetherspoon's outlets quite frequently, so I'd tried a couple before, but there were plenty of new beers for me here. The guide explained how their Sheepshaggers Gold was a big seller in Australia and t-shirts did a roaring trade, whilst the beer had to be badged as Cairngorm Gold so as not to offend UK supermarkets it was sold in. This was met by a blank look from my fellow tour participant from the Netherlands, who asked "what is sheep shagger?" Our guide was prepped with all the answers about the brewing process, but he was stopped in his tracks trying to find a way to politely answer that one!

I think the Highland IPA (5.1%) was my favourite (I'm so predictable with loving my IPAs....), with the Black Gold (a 4.4% easy-drinking stout) being very good as well.



That's it for the time-being for my Scottish beer exploration - I will be back to explore the Western isles another time, and perhaps be looking out for another beer festival up this way. For now, it's homeward-bound...

Aberdeen and North East Beer Festival

Early doors at the Aberdeen Beer Festival

My Scottish travels took me, via an overnight stop in Stirling, up to the north-east coast and to the metropolis that is Aberdeen.
Yes!  By the seaside.  Glad I packed my shorts....oh...

With rotten weather there would be no guilt about spending the afternoon indoors working through the beer list at the 30th Aberdeen beer festival.
This was located at Pittodrie, home of Aberdeen FC.  The Richard Donald stand, even being the football-ground geek I am, is a towering 1990s monstrosity of red brick and dullness on the outside. It's huge size (it seats 6,000, looming over the smaller stands to the either side of it) means that the ground floor concourse is big enough to host this annual beer festival.  

The first time it was held here in 2007 was in November when snow and bad weather made far too cold for the beer or visitors, prompting a move to May.  Today, it feels pretty much to me like it could be November. The mist is hanging over the town, with a chilling rain coming down and, despite it being May, I kinda wish I had my gloves with me. 

The beer selection is superb - travelling some distance from home means that I'm seeing lots of beers that often don't make it down south.  Ratebeer lists 132 breweries in Scotland, some 28 of which are represented on this beer list. 

🏢 Venue
Football stadia concourses are designed for quaffing lager far too quickly from a plastic cup, not really for beer festivals.

🍴   Food 
For us weird vegetarian folks: veggie haggis, neets and tatties for £3.50 which really hit the spot and beats the food I've had at many festivals.  The ton of spices in the haggis were nicely offset by a super-hoppy 6.2% IPA by WooHa Brewery. 

🍺  Beer
Great list - black IPAs, smoked beers, hazy IPAs...
My scribbled notes on the beer list insist that 'Island Bere' from Shetland brewer Valhalla was my favourite of the day.

Being as I was heading northwards towards Thurso, which I'd heard was something of a real-ale desert, I decided to make the most of the beer fest and pay it a second visit on the Friday afternoon.

I did also get to a handful of bars in the city...

Ma Cameron's (6-8 Little Belmont Street, Aberdeen, AB10 1JG)
There's a lovely little snug to the right of the entrance.
The pub is deceptively big, stretching into further rooms at the back. 
My pick on the bar was the Inveralmund 'Ossian', a 4.1% bitter.

Casc (7 Stirling Street, Aberdeen, AB11 6NB)
A craft beer, whiskey and cigar bar, although we only partook on the craft ales.
Somehow I managed to end up drinking a beer by West Sussex brewery Burning Sky, 579 beer miles.  That blew the plan to stick to the Scottish ales.

Brewdog (17 Gallowgate, Aberdeen, AB25 1EB)
This is the original Brewdog bar, opened in 2010, 3 years after the brewery opened in Fraserburgh.
I also made it to a second city centre venue on Union Street, which had recently been opened by Brewdog, the premises previously occupied by the Athenaeum Bar.

Bridge of Allan Brewery

Leaving the May sunshine behind, a rainy midweek afternoon found me in Stirling, doing the tourist thing and trekking around the castle, then retreating to the Brewdog bar in town.

This region of Scotland was once comparable to Burton-on-Trent south of the border for its beer production. The local water and the abundant fields of crops made for excellent ale production and barrels were shipped off around the globe in the 19th century, but alas most of these breweries are long gone.

Just a few miles north of Stirling, and 5 minutes by train, is Bridge of Allan, where I braved the rain to search out the Allanwater Brewery, tucked down a side-street behind the Queens Hotel. This is a great bar/brewpub, creating ales under the name Tinpot Brewery. It's atmospheric, dimly-lit and adorned with hundreds of old bottles on shelves around the wall and the staff are friendly, keen to talk brewing and dish out some tasters. Around the corner from the bar is the brew-kit on display, plus shelves of bottles to buy. There were 6 ales available on my visit, plus a couple of ciders. Pity that I'd just missed the Chilli Stout. Well worth that detour from Stirling for a visit.

Right....onwards north towards Aberdeen beer festival, via a shop to get a waterproof jacket (which will ensure that the weather brightens up as soon as I part with my money).

Allanwater Brewhouse, Queens Lane, Bridge of Allan, FK9 4NU, www.bridgeofallan.co.uk

Exploring the Pubs of Carlisle

An Inaugural Post

I had the best intentions of keeping a journal of my ale-travels for many a month, but somehow never got around to starting it....
I'm no good at creative writing to describe beers I drink: 'floral undertones', 'toffee malt aftertaste' and such like. So instead I'll concentrate on writing, un-creatively, about my travels, from continent-wide brewpub hunting to a trek through the fields to a local pub.I fully expect my readership to consist of one person (and she'll probably get quickly fed up reading my rambling diatribes).

When better to start than on a trip northwards, which finds me on a pleasant May evening in Carlisle.

First stop here was the Kings Head Arms (31 Fisher Street, CA3 8RF) a pleasant enough multiple winner of CAMRA's city pub of the year award, which serves up local Yates ales amongst several other Cumbrian brews. I sat in the peaceful rear of the pub with a pint of 3.9% Yates Golden Ale, thoroughly deserved after the 5 hour journey here from Oxfordshire.

For an excellent selection of the best the region has to offer though, next stop Moo Bar (5 Devonshire Street, CA3 8LG) really does the job. It's typical of modern craft beer bars, mismatched furniture (a huge wooden throne in front of a makeshift pallet crate table, for instance) and a bar with a spectacular row of hand pumps and keg taps set into a stainless steel wall at the back. The selection was probably a bit depleted with it being quiet at the start of the week, but I still could've stayed and tried the lot. I settled for a blonde ale from Fell Brewery at the southern tip of the Lakes, followed by a single-hop Summit pale ale from Northumberland's Allendale Brewery.

Next on my list for the evening was a short trek across the railway lines and river to the Milbourne Arms (150 Milbourne Street, CA2 5XB).

This pub was built in 1853 to serve nearby textile industry workers - little remains of the factories now, but the pub is owned by Linton Tweeds, the last remaining textile producer in the city. The single hand pump serves up a changing ale from Allendale again, 'Penine Pale' on this occasion, which was the best pint of the evening. And this friendly comfortable boozer had one of the best pub dogs I've ever found!

The Milbourne was one of Carlisle's state-managed pubs between 1916 and 1973. This fascinating scheme saw the Government take over brewing and selling of ale in Carlisle in order to prevent drunkenness in seedy 'drinking dens'. If visiting the region it's well worth reading up on the history of this and checking out the pubs at: www.thestatemanagementstory.org

Finally I went off on a bit of a mad one....seeing that the Carlisle Brewery had a tap at Cummersdale, I set off along the riverside paths into the outskirts of Carlisle. This route is lovely, on a nice evening, although luck rather than judgement took me off the path at the right spot for the pub. My recommendation would be to take a map and allow plenty of time if you're planning on walking from the centre of town and back.

The Spinners Arms (Cummersdale, CA2 6BD) was busy with local darts teams on this evening and stood out as a pleasant local spot with good beers on offer.

And that's where I had to leave my Carlisle pub crawl, making sure to take the footpaths back to the centre before dusk, rather than floundering in the dark, tumbling over and potentially ending in the River Eden - Ha! I do learn from past mistakes after all.