Exit, Stage Left

It’s been an… eventful couple of years, to say the least. In spite of the turbulence that the world has thrown at us, the team here at the brewery on Arran have soldiered on, making multi-award winning beers, brewed, bottled and shipped from our site here at Cladach. I can say with confidence that I’ve never worked with a more diligent, hard working team than the one we’ve built here during my tenure - I certainly don’t know of any other brewery where the brewing staff double as bottling line supervisors, and are expected to be as competent at monitoring fermentations as they are fixing labelling machine errors. And yet they rose to meet every single challenge I threw at them.

So it is with a heavy heart that I announce that I will be leaving the brewery to move on to pastures new in Ireland (protip: If you don’t want to move to Ireland, don’t fall in love with an Irish girl. They’re tricky like that.) In my short time here, we have:

• Increased our bottled beer output (COVID having forced us to focus almost exclusively on small-pack offerings);

• Overhauled our website to include a much more user friendly online shop;

• Expanded the team to include part-time staff in the packaging team and shop, and are due to become an accredited Living Wage Employer;

• Achieved SALSA accreditation, one of the highest Food & Drink quality standards in Scotland;

• Added Ego and Valhalla to our range of new beers, the latter becoming the first in an annual tradition that I hope will continue long after I’ve gone;

• Made our bottled beers Vegan Friendly, and are phasing in Gluten-Free beers over the course of this year;

• Focused on our sustainability and carbon footprint, most notably by changing the old reliable Brewery Dug IPA into a double-barrelled beast of an English IPA;

• Resumed offering Brewery Tours, along with Tasting Sessions of the full range of all our lovely beers

I’ve absolutely loved my time here on Arran, and I have nothing but respect and admiration for the team who have made the brewery into what it is today (allowing me to coast by on the back of their hard work, like the hack and fraud that I am). I don’t doubt for a second that the brewery will continue to flourish with the team we have here. And I’d like to thank every single one of our amazing customers who have supported us through the years - it does sound trite, but every single bottle of Arran beer you’ve bought has kept us all employed and a roof over our heads.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the blogs - I’ve tried to keep them as interesting as possible without going way off on tangents about brewhouse efficiencies and yeast propagation (I think it’s fascinating, alright?!).

Thank you, thank you, and thank you. (Drink Arran beer)