Beer in Scotland

Brewing in Scotland goes back 5,000 years; it is suggested that ale could have been made from barley at Skara Brae and at other sites dated to the Neolithic.

The ale would have been flavoured with meadowsweet in the manner of a kvass or gruit made by various North European tribes including the Celts and the Picts.

The ancient Greek Pytheas remarked in 325 BC that the inhabitants of Caledonia were skilled in the art of brewing a potent beverage.

[1][2] The use of bittering herbs such as heather, myrtle, and broom[3] to flavour and preserve beer continued longer in remote parts of Scotland than in the rest of the UK.

Thomas Pennant wrote in A Tour in Scotland (1769) that on the island of Islay "ale is frequently made of the young tops of heath, mixing two-thirds of that plant with one of malt, sometimes adding hops".

The beer historians Charles McMaster and Martyn Cornell have both shown that the sales figures of Edinburgh's breweries rivalled those of Dublin and Burton upon Trent.

However, a single pair of records can be cited indicating a similar use of hops in a Scottish pale ale to an English one.

Dr John Harrison in Old British Beers gave a recipe for the English brewery Brakspear's 1865 50/- Pale Ale in which 1.8 oz of hops are used per imperial gallon (11 grams per litre),[11] which compares with the Scottish brewery W. Younger's 1896 Ale No 3 (Pale) that also uses 1.8 oz of hops per imperial gallon.

[14] As with other examples of strong ales, such as barley wine, these beers tend toward sweetness from residual sugars, malty notes, and full bodies.