Sudden Shortage of Humble Pie on Arran!

A catastrophic shortage of humble pie has caused an unprecedented increase in the size of our Head Brewers head!

We were very happy earlier in the year to win a Bronze for our classic Arran Blonde in the Indie Beer Awards national finals at BeerX. Despite that lovely award removing some of our stress by extending our 26 year long streak, a Brewer's duty is never done.

Last week was the regional competition for Scotland held near Edinburgh and as it's a mostly volunteer run event we sent Gerald over to help out, and as you can see above he was a very happy man! Not only did he have an excuse to spend all day talking and drinking beer but he came back with an armful of certificates!

Arran Dark Triumphant!

Our absolute star this year is the old classic Arran Dark, essentially unchanged for the last 26 years this gorgeous Scottish Heavy walked away with a whopping three awards!

GOLD - Bottle / Can Session Dark Beer

Arran Dark winning this category is a great sign for us at Arran Brewery, the Session Dark Beer Category is a very competitive one and as most of our beer ends up in bottles it's good to know we can still roll with the best of them!

The next batch of bottled Arran Dark will be available soon!

GOLD - Cask Session Dark Beer

We're particularly proud of this award as we're fervent believers that cask draught beer is the best way to enjoy a proper real ale.

We've had a lot of good feeback from our lovely visitors enjoying Arran Dark at our neighbour the Wineport so it's good to know it's not just the magic of being on beautiful Arran getting to everyone's heads!

Overall Champion Bottle / Can - Third

While not as flashy as a "Gold" this award is arguably the most prestigious of the three. Being considered the third best bottled beer in Scotland is no small feat and means that we've got a great chance in the National Finals at next year's BeerX!

"Arran Id" (soon to be Bjorn to Brew) romps to victory with a revamped recipe!

GOLD - Bottle / Can Specialty IPA - "Id"

Yorick has been going on and on about this beer saying "This is the best beer ever brewed on Arran" so you can imagine our annoyance when it bloody well went and won an Award....

In all seriousness this is quite an accomplishment for our Brewery, as a more traditional brewery this is our first real attempt at brewing an IPA with modern methods (modern by our standards anyway) and to see it flourish on this first attempt is a really good sign for the future.

A Pair of Bronzes for both Sunset and Fireside!

BRONZE - Bottle / Can British Bitter - Sunset

Another big thumbs up for one of our oldest beers. We often recommend Sunset as the first beer to try after Arran Blonde so it's good to see that remains a good suggestion!

It's also Yorick's favourite of the Pales Ales!

BRONZE - Bottle / Can Specialty & Flavoured Beer - Fireside

The Fireside is one of our classic winter beers and has always had a hardcore following.

After this brew was put on hiatus for a few years we decided to bring it back as a beer you can also enjoy in the summer and with the amount of support and good feedback we've had on Arran this year we have not regretted that decision!

What a haul! Now we just need to figure out how we are going to deflate Yorick's massive Ego. Maybe we'll put him to work digging out a new access road....

That's all for now!

That's everything in this weeks update but after a conclusive victory in our recent poll we can give you a sneak peak at Bjorn's new beer design....

Coming soon....

Wee bit of extra fun.....

As some of you may already know, Gerald has been slowly handing the reigns over to the next generation so he can enjoy his retirement with his lovely wife in spain.

As you can imagine it's quite difficult to hand over your project of nearly 20 years and we were worried he might regret letting Yorick and Veronica run things, but after winning so many awards this time round we don't think we've ever seen a person look so bloody happy....