Scottish beer
Scottish beer has traditionally meant malty ales with little hop, but today's scene is a lot broader. At Hoptimaal you'll find Scottish beer from Vault City Brewing, in the sour beer style. Below you can see all the Scottish beers we currently supply.
- In stock now4 beers
- Breweries1
Breweries from Scotland 1
All beers in stock 4
A beer scene that goes back thousands of years
In Skara Brae on Orkney, Neolithic stone buildings have been found, about 5,000 years old, with traces of grain processing: malting, mashing and fermenting. So Scottish beer history begins long before the first breweries in the modern sense.
In the twelfth century, Benedictine monks in Edinburgh and Dunbar developed commercial brewing, using fresh spring water and locally grown barley. Belhaven in Dunbar, founded in 1719, is considered the oldest brewery in Scotland. In the nineteenth century, Edinburgh and Alloa were known for their beer exports, including to the British Empire.
In the 1950s, almost all independent breweries disappeared in a wave of takeovers. Scotland now has more than a hundred breweries again. An important boost came from the Progressive Beer Duty, now Small Brewers Relief, which lowered the tax for small breweries.
Malty ales, whisky casks and idiosyncratic brewers
Scotch ale is dark, malt-rich and barely hopped, with a rich sweetness and a soft, smooth texture. The designations 60/-, 70/- and 80/- come from the nineteenth-century shilling system, based on the price of a hogshead of beer. The wee heavy resembles a barley wine. American brewers often make it with smoked malt, against the wishes of the Scots.
Hops grow poorly in the Scottish climate and were expensive to import. There is some written evidence, and a lot of folklore, that heather, myrtle and broom were used as bittering herbs. Brewers such as the Heather Ale Company are going back to this.
Scottish brewers have also often been at the forefront of innovation. Harviestoun, Fyne Ales, Orkney, Highland and Black Isle have each developed their own styles. Harviestoun matures Ola Dubh in former whisky casks, and BrewDog from Aberdeenshire has been playing the bad boy for years.
Scottish beer at Hoptimaal
At the moment, Vault City Brewing is the Scottish brewery you'll find with us. That's a different direction from traditional Scotch ale: our Scottish range consists of sour beer.
Highly rated on Untappd are, among others, Vault City Stoopid Spaceshake, Vault City Bake-Off: Cranachan, Vault City Bake-Off: Sago Pudding and Vault City Bake-Off: Matcha Mochi.
Every brewery in our range has its own page, including Vault City Brewing. There you'll find everything we supply from the brewery.
Frequently asked questions
What is typical Scottish beer?
Scotch ale is the classic Scottish style: dark, malt-rich, with little hop and a rich sweetness. That malt-forward taste comes from a tradition in which hops were hard to grow and expensive to import.
Which Scottish breweries are well known?
Well-known names are Belhaven (founded in 1719), Harviestoun, Fyne Ales, Orkney, Highland, Black Isle and BrewDog. At Hoptimaal you'll find Vault City Brewing.
What do 60/-, 70/- and 80/- mean on Scottish beers?
They are shilling designations from the nineteenth century, based on the price of a hogshead of beer. A 60/- was a light ale, a 70/- a heavier one and an 80/- an export ale.
Beer from other countries
- Dutch beer 175
- American beer 71
- Belgian beer 68
- Canadian beer 54
- German beer 37
- English beer 37
- Spanish beer 21
- Romanian beer 17
- French beer 16
- Swedish beer 15
- Norwegian beer 14
- Estonian beer 17
- Polish beer 11
- Irish beer 8
- Finnish beer 9
- Hungarian beer 8
- Latvian beer 8
- Croatian beer 8
- Danish beer 8
- Portuguese beer 4
- Welsh beer 5
- Brazilian beer 4
- Ukrainian beer 2
- Greek beer 3
- Slovenian beer 3
- Czech beer 3
