Orkney

When you think of places to go visit to see how traditional breweries are modernising, Orkney isn’t the first place that comes to mind. And not just because it’s not the easiest to visit. If you’re trying to find it on a map, look to the very north of Scotland, and then look a bit further north. It’s that group of islands just off the mainland. Although if you talk to anyone from Orkney they consider themselves separate from Scotland with their own mainland and associated islands. And it is a totally different culture too.

Orkney has had a long history of making beer. As far back as the 8th century the Vikings were making ale on the Orkney Islands with a variety of barley called Bere that they brought over and farmed for beer and bread. It was so hardy and prolific that it became ubiquitous, being farmed as far south as Northern England until as late as the Industrial Revolution. In fact Bere is still grown on Orkney today. You can visit Barony Mills, a small Victorian watermill that mill the grain for flour, and use the spent husks to fire the malting kiln to also produce Bere malt for brewing on the island. You can read more about VIking Ale here: https://beernouveau.co.uk/recreating-viking-ale/ 

There aren’t really any pubs on Orkney though. All the bars are usually part of a hotel which is also their restaurant and you may end up table hopping as more diners come in, or a cafe that also sells beer under sufferance until the confused looks of the staff give way as they remember that we’re now in the twenty-first century (I have to keep reminding myself of that) and it’s not the world we all grew up in anymore. Generally the locals get takeouts and go around each other’s houses to drink. The population is so spread out that they almost have to drive to have a drink, and there is a zero tolerance on drink driving.

But you really can’t fault the hospitality of the people here. When visiting the islands I sometimes wish I could drag along a load of bar staff from some of the cities I drink in and point to the people here saying “Look, see, this is how to make someone feel welcome!”

In a census in 2021 the population of the Orkney Islands was only 22,540, although that was up from 22,400 in 2020. Almost all of those extra 140 will likely be English emigrating to the quieter lifestyle offered; along with the risk of being snowed in for a few weeks during winter when there’s only 6 hours of daylight compared to the 18 hours of semi-darkness in the summer. It’s definitely a culture shock when you come up from England and swear blind that it doesn’t get dark enough to sleep in the summer or light enough to see where you’re going in the winter. But given how much space there is to how few people there are, at least the risk of accidentally bumping into someone on the unlit paths is low.

Things change slowly here. But they are changing; possibly as more people move expecting it to be more modern than traditional. But possibly also to cater to the vast numbers of tourists that the island receives each year. 

In 2019 there were 394,000 visitors to the islands, around 180,000 of which were passengers and crew from the cruise liners that stop by -  on any single day there is a risk of up to 6,500 cruise passengers on a day out swamping the local population and bringing with them waves of shoplifting. It seems to be a problem when the large cruise liners come in, that the small shops are crowded and the tourists believe that once they’re off the island a few hours later there’s no way for them to be caught and prosecuted for their sticky fingered actions, and unfortunately that seems to be the case. Which is a bit weird when you consider that the average tourist in Orkney is a 55 to 64 year old male. So whilst visitors spend an estimated £67m a year, I do wonder how much is stolen each year; a stark contrast to the average of 11 shoplifting offences per year committed by the islanders.

But the majority of visitors are there for a few days, and are looking for something to do. There’s a lot of neolithic history, it is a World Heritage Site, and you can often see coach upon coach of elderly couples offloading in fields in the middle of nowhere to look at some stones in a field. I do the sites a disservice by referring to them as such, the monuments and sites on the Orkney Islands are an incredibly fascinating insight into how life used to be up here and I really do recommend going to see them. Just not when a cruise liner is in and the roads and sites are full of coaches of people surprised that there is so much wind on these windswept isles.

But when it comes to the evenings or for food the choice is somewhat limited. Most seasonal holiday resorts have shops, restaurants and bars that are boarded up throughout the off-season, Orkney doesn’t seem to have them at all. Maybe because there is no real large centre of population, everything is spread out, a lot. The mainland is 523 square kilometres, roughly the size of Madrid with its population of 3.2 million, but with only 0.75% of the population.

That is, however, starting to change.

The bars are still moving slowly towards modernity, and the breweries are showing the way. In their own way.

There are two breweries on the islands, Orkney Brewery and Swannay Brewery and whilst both are on the mainland, neither are in the towns and require a drive out to visit. But both do have their beers available in venues in the towns. Orkney Brewery has a tasting hall and does tours, and the Swannay Brewery is “in discussions” with the Islands Council about the completion of its expansion.

Originally founded in 1988, Orkney Brewery is the seemingly more traditional, I visited on a Thursday afternoon to meet up with a couple of local beer and brewing archaeologists that I’ve made the acquaintance of, and have the wonderful opportunity every now and again of really geeking out about beer prehistory with. The brewery’s tasting hall is a converted school house that joins onto the brewery. A bar at one end serving up the fresh beers in pints and flights with the now expected Orkney Welcome from the staff and a wider range of 500ml bottles on offer if what you’re after isn’t one of the four casks or one keg on draught. The atmosphere was more restaurant than bar, but the sort that you’d find in pretty much any city in England. There was nothing “back of beyond” about it, and if it wasn’t for the accents and overwhelming feeling of being welcome, you wouldn’t know that you weren’t in a major city.

The brewery itself is beautiful to look at. Not in a showcase way where everything is labelled up and sparkling, but in a properly thought out, well laid out working 20 barrel brewery where the staff are proud of their kit and of the beers they make on them. The head brewer was full of genuine welcome, and as he was filling casks got a shift brewer to show us around. He’d previously worked at BrewDog and was happy to compare the two different environments and the brewing styles. Orkney Brewery uses open top fermentation, leaving the top manways open during the first active stages of fermentation before recirculating the beer from the bottom to spray over the top towards the end to aerate and agitate the yeast to help it finish off cleanly; and you can see that in the beers. This isn’t something I’ve come across before, but it is something I now wish to try. Whilst the beer styles, the brewing techniques and the packaging are traditional, the hops used aren’t. It’s all pelletised American hops to lift the flavour profile of the traditional malt base, giving a more modern flavour to the beer, a blending of tradition and modernity, like the brewery itself. And the brewers want to install a 1bbl pilot kit so they can play around more with new ideas for beers, as well as wanting to do more barrel-ageing and reserve variations of their beers, following in the success of Dark Island Reserve.

Swannay Brewery seems to be at the complete opposite end of the scale, albeit a small scale. Founded in 2005 by Rob Hill who had previously worked at Orkney Brewery and Moorhouses’ Brewery in Lancashire there seems to be a more modern styled push, firstly evidenced by a canning machine and pallets of kegs. But there’s more than meets the eye when you get to have a nose around as I was lucky enough to. They don’t do tours yet, and their onsite bar and restaurant is still to get a building completion certificate from the council because the council advised and signed off drainage didn’t meet the council’s approval once it was built. Go figure. But it is built; to incredibly high standards with a very unique and beautiful bar that nods to the heritage of the islands.

The new brewhouse is 22 hectolitres (a modern way of saying 20 barrels) and has capability for pressure fermentation, which they’re not using just yet, and the majority of the core beers are modern styles, including Double IPAs and session pales, but rather than only using pelletised American hops, they only use whole cone leaf hops, most of which are English or European blended in with some American varieties. Everything at Swannay is new, from equipment to attitude and beer styles, but the ingredients are more traditional and that surprised me.

I’ve probably drunk more Swannay Brewery beers than I have Orkney Brewery ones, and before visiting the two breweries I would have guessed that it would be Swannay using all American hops. This really shows how some brewers are able to get the best from the ingredients they use, lifting traditional recipes with the more citrus focussed American hops, or creating modern styled beers with a blend of European and American hops.

For both breweries there is a reliance on export south to Scotland and beyond and it’s such a shame that we don’t see more of them. But when visiting Orkney a trip to both should definitely be on any itinerary, and hopefully the problems with getting the Swannay bar open will be sorted.

Overall Orkney might not initially spring to mind as a destination for a beer break, but it’s a wonderful place to come and switch off. Phone signal is sporadic, waking and working hours are season dependent, but the landscape and the people are truly unique and well worth the trip.