19. Something Exciting is Brewing

            When you live in the Outer Hebrides life is governed by the weather and the seasons. For the crofting community the busiest time of the year is over; this year’s lambs have been sold, ewes have been sheared and peats gathered. The island's fishermen also have quieter days ahead with the first of the Winter’s storms rolling in from the Atlantic and keeping them from their boats. As the weather changes so does the number of visitors to the island. At this time of year many of the island businesses which rely on the tourist trade wind down or close for the quieter winter months. Most will be enjoying a much needed break but some businesses just like ours are open year round and working hard behind the scenes gearing up for the busy Christmas season. This year we are also working towards the start of an exciting new chapter of our story as visitors return in 2023.

                  When we started the brewery we hoped there would be an appetite for craft beer in Harris and we wanted our beer to be available to beer lovers living in and visiting Harris (and, at a stretch, over the Clisham in Lewis!) Starting in the middle of the pandemic when many shops were closed we decided to sell our beer online only. In our first season we delivered island beer orders ourselves every Saturday, however when we started regularly clocking up 300 miles on a single run we knew we needed help. We still offer free delivery for orders over £30 but our friends at Woody’s Express Parcels now do the miles for us. One of the very few negative things about living in Harris is the cost of shipping anything off the island so we were surprised that we had orders from all over Britain and even overseas. This showed us the potential of the business but we knew we didn’t want to grow too big and were cautious about expanding too quickly. Although we had ambitions for our little business they were tempered by our known limits. We wanted to grow just enough to support our family whilst still working from home.

      Our first tentative steps forward

     In our second summer season we extended our reach by saying yes to some of the local businesses who were interested in stocking our beers. The now closed and much missed Anchorage Restaurant in Leverburgh and the Island Spirit Whisky Shop in Stornoway were amazingly supportive of us and their owners are now great friends. In 2021, we increased production by upgrading our equipment and fermenters and in December made our first in person sale at the Flavour Food Festival in Tarbert. This was a huge turning point for us as it was our first chance to meet our customers and talk about what makes our beer and our brewery special. This is when a plan started to brew!

            At this point we had been living in a static caravan on our croft in Borrisdale for two and a half years and slowly renovating the old croft house in any spare time between brewing. Driving home from Tarbert that day we decided that we wanted, one day to open a shop at the house where we could sell our beer but we knew we had to be patient and not overstretch ourselves.

            The slower the growth the deeper the roots

      This year our beers were stocked in three new outlets; Ardhasaig shop in North Harris, An Clachan in Leverburgh and Scarista House in West Harris however we have had to say no to many more. Demand for our beer once again outstripped supply so, despite vowing to never be tempted by a bigger or shinier piece of brewing equipment, we took the plunge and upgraded our brewing vessel (again!) Nick collected the new tank on an epic 48 hour road trip from Borrisdale to Bedfordshire and back (via Dunfermline to drop off a bolt of tweed for our friends at Borrisdale Tweed and Manchester to collect a new Brewery van). At around the same time we were given the opportunity to rent some storage at the old coastguard’s hut in Leverburgh which allowed us to free up some much needed space in the Brewshed. This new equipment has allowed us to increase production so that we are now brewing five times the amount of beer we were when we started in July 2020 and although we may have said this before, this is definitely our last upgrade as our tiny tin Brewshed is now absolutely at capacity.