FDBusiness.com

Caledonian Brewery has unveiled the latest addition to its Edinburgh site, a state-of-the-art pilot brewery to further drive beer innovation at the iconic brewery. The pioneering pilot brewery, which was commissioned on the 1st June, has a 400L capacity and will produce 2-3 brews a week.

The smaller brew runs will enable the pilot brewers to test and develop both new and existing recipes without the usual constraints of minimum brew length, and will ultimately lead to the most successful results being scaled up for wider production in the main brewery.

The installation follows a 12-month renovation of Caledonian’s core range, led by our flagship beer in Deuchars IPA, Flying Scotsman and Edinburgh Castle, which ensured consistency across the family of brands and strengthened Caledonian’s position as a historic brewer of quality beers. The renovation also delivered on Caledonian’s quality pledge through the investment in raw ingredients (moving from dried to fresh pack full-leaf hops), improved yeast propagation and consistency in brew runs.

Andy Maddock.

Caledonian Brewery’s managing director, Andy Maddock, comments: “We’re thrilled that our new pilot brewery, affectionately known as Wee George in a nod to our founding father George Lorimer, is up and running after 12 months of careful planning and a total investment of over £100,000. This innovation allows us to remain fleet-of-foot in the market and help Caledonian enter the world of modern craft on the back of our continued success of Three Hop Lager, with credibility through the new products we’ll be developing within it. We’ve invested heavily in our core range over the last year so now that we’re confident our premium traditional ales are at their very best, it’s time to get a little bit creative with our beer innovation.”

The pilot brewery equipment can fill bottles of all sizes as well as cask and kegs, meaning Caledonian intends to bring its newly developed products to both the on and off trade across the UK in the coming months and years.