Our Brewery
Evolution Not Revolution
At Black Isle Brewing Co. we don't want to change the world. We won't throw the baby out with the bath water.
The Old Brewery
For 11 years we operated our craft brewery from a small 5 barrel (a brewer's barrel is 36 gallons. So 4 firkins / standard casks) brewkit in our old brewhouse on the south side of our organic farm. The business grew at 50% each year, despite the short brew length, that brewhouse now houses a total of 35 barrels worth of conditioning tanks.
The New Brewery
In the snowy months of 2008 construction began on our new brewhouse, a very different beast. This 1300sqm of modern brewing utopia is kitted out with a 30 barrel brewery with 210 barrels of conditioning space. The semi-automated brewkit is an example of technical excellence, all operated by our world class brewing team of Colin Stronge and Andrew Fraser.
Our shiny new brewery took 18 months to complete construction, it contains...
- Cold Liquor Tank
- Bio-Mass heated Hot Liquor Tank
- Traditional mash tun with motorised discharge
- Direct fired whirlpool copper
- Four fermenters
- Bright Beer Tank
- 5 x 50 hectolitre / 30 bbl conditioning tanks
- 1 x 100 hectolitre / 60 bbl conditioning tank
- 12 Head Moravek Carbonator/ keg, bottle filler - 3000 bottles per hour
- 1 x DE (diatomaceous earth) filter
- All conditioning tanks and fermenters have glycol chilling temperature control
- The all important water used in the brewing process comes from our own borehole.
We also have:
- 120 acres of organic malting barley crop
- Two cows
- Four Horses
- A lot of Hebridean sheep
- A confusion of cocker spaniels
And finally the people who make all this work:
- Two brewers, 3 brewing assistants
- A Roy (I.T.)
- A Richard, 3 lovely assistants (shop)
- A David
- A Mike
- A Pamela
- A Lewis
- Numerous WWOOFers (volunteers working on organic farms, check it out if you'd like to come WWOOF!)
- Oh, and chickens....