A Year in Beer 2019

2019 what a year! Our 16th year in business and a year that brought a lot of exciting new changes to the brewery. Here’s a round-up of our year in beer.

January

Fresh into the new year we announced the release of two new Project 7 beers, Voss IPA and Hedgerow Sour. Both beers went down a storm and Voss IPA went on the win UK Gold at the World Beer Awards.

In Jan we also started our new journey hosting events at the brewery. The first event Burns Night was a sell-out and spawned many, many more events as the year went on.

Our retail team were just as busy as the trade team, in Jan they completed 37 Craft Beer Kitchen Brews and hosted 70 people on brewery tours.

February

The Six Nations was upon us and we used that time to invite lots of great food vendors down to the brewery to create the perfect rugby atmosphere, we are really looking forward to screening the matches again this year.

In February our trade team also attended the Casual Dining Show to showcase our beer range as part of the Scottish Food and Drink pavilion.

March

Keeping up with our Six Nations events we also teamed up with I.J.Mellis to host a delicious cheese and beer night using our new marquee space.

March was also our busiest month for brewery tours with 133 people joining us over the month.

April

April was a busy month for us with two new Project 7 beers hitting the shelves, Hornindal and Aqualung. To mark the launch, we hosted events in pubs up and down the county from Aberdeen to London.

During April we were also honoured to host #craftbeerhour on twitter and attended the Visit Scotland Expo to showcase the brewery to international travellers.

May

May brought with it a host of events not least of which was our Annual beer festival, Mayfest. Over 1000 people joined us at the brewery over two days to enjoy live music, street food and limited-edition brews.

We also hosted our first taproom quiz back in May and teamed up with East Coast Cured for a charcuterie and beer pairing night.

Over on the trade side, we were excited to launch three new beers Scotland wide into Asda stores, Stewart’s Lager, Session IPA and Radical Road Reverse.

June

Back in June, we launched another Project 7 beer this time a collaboration with our friends from down under Brisbane Brewery and due to popular demand, we also brought back DIPA in a limited V2 batch.

June also marked the end of our 9th year working with Heriot-Watt students on the Natural Selection Brewing project and their beer The Altruist was seriously delicious.

And of course, the events keep on going with our inaugural Hop Run event taking place on June 8th and a pairing night with Wings both being great successes.

July

Back in July, we were proud to host the IBU Homebrew Competition Beer Launch to celebrate some amazing home brewers and we also brewed the people’s choice beers 'Goses are Red’.

To top the month off we received our Trip Advisor Hall of Fame certificate, to make five years as a five-star visitor attraction.

August

With August of course comes the Fringe Festival and our trade team were busier than ever, bringing in our highest week of sales since the business started.

If that wasn’t enough, we also launched another two Project 7 beers into the line-up, Micro IPA and Watermelon Grisette both refreshing lower ABV brews perfect for the August weather.

Not to forget our retail team who launched a brand-new merch collection with lots of great new designs for you to showcase your Stewart Brewing love.

September

September was a big one for us as awards season came around. We were lucky enough to have an amazing month winning more awards then we can list here but of course the highlight was taking home Scottish Brewery of the Year for the second year in a row.

We didn’t let all the fun stop us getting some serious work done. We teamed up with Nicholson’s pub to hosting ten Meet the Maker events. We also hosted a second cheese pairing night out at the brewery and two nights of Oktoberfest.

October

Halloween month and we had a lot of fun bringing back our Black IPA to mark to occasion. We were also honoured to host Sir Geoff Palmer OBE for a great night in conversation with Steve as part of the Midlothian science festival.

November

November brought with it two new beers, one the delicious White Russian as part of our Project 7 range and a rebrew so our famous Not Your Buddy Guy.

Ahead of the gifting season we also brought out a new Project 7 four-pack and mini casks returned by popular demand.

It was also very exciting to make a start on our expansion project, which will see the brewery double in size next year.

December

Ah, the most wonderful month of the year. Made all the better with the launch of our brand-new gin, The Collector. As well as the gin we also released our annual Christmas beer which this year was a Cranberry Scotch Ale, Face of Winter.

To round of a great year of Project 7 releases, we launched Negroni Sour as the perfect festive tipple in collaboration with Padstow Brewing.

A Year in Figures

In 2019…

We welcome 1,002 people to the brewery on tours

We completed 575 Craft Beer Kitchen brews with customers

We sold 989 reusable growlers, to help build a more sustainable future

We signed up 1,246 new customers to our taproom loyalty scheme

We sold 15,588 casks and 12,281 kegs of beer to our trade customers

Our best-selling bottled beer of the year was Cascadian East

Our best-selling Project 7 beer of the year was Horindal IPA