Burnside Brewery in Laurencekirk has been making a name for itself in the world of Scottish beer for some time now, scooping awards and crafting up all sorts of traditional and modern beers.
As one of the the increasingly few Scottish breweries still sticking to classic 500ml bottles, they certainly stand out from all the cans on the shelves in bottleshops, and they offer a wide variety of styles, from fruity sours to darker stouts.
I fell in love with their excellent elderflower pale ale Sunset Song in lockdown, due in no small part to it being one of the cheapest and most readily available at my local shop, but I’ve never really tried anything else in their range.
So here’s my review of three more of the Mearns brewer’s creations: a Blackberry-stuffed fruity beer, a classic bitter, and a rather unusual IPA.
Beer 1: Cloud Berry, Burnside Brewery
- 5.5%
- £4.29 a 500ml bottle at Fountainhall Wines
- Burnside Brewery, Laurencekirk
- Style: Fruity IPA
Brewed with truly copious volumes of blackberries sourced from Castleton Farm, just a wee drive north along the A90 from Burnside Brewery, this is an exceedingly fruity beer.
Bright pinky-red in colour, this beer poured extremely bubbly and fragrant.
Unusually for a fruit beer, this one doesn’t seek to marry the sweetness of fruit with a tartness of a sour ale, but instead matches it with the soft bitterness of an IPA.
The results are a seriously refreshing, summery beer that sort of reminds me of Eton mess or cranachan.
I should note that when pouring this, and the rest of Burnside Brewery’s beers, you should be very careful not to disturb the harmless sediment at the bottom of the bottles if you prefer a clear beer.
Store them upright and in the fridge, and pour very slowly into your glass to keep the bits in the bottle.
Rating: 3.5/5
Beer 2: Cryo Quake
- 4.5%
- £3.69 per 500ml bottle from Hop Shop Aberdeen
- Burnside Brewery, Laurencekirk
- Style: Double dry hopped IPA
This was a different take on an IPA than you’d be used to from the likes of Brewdog or other big breweries.
Made with something called “cryogenic hops” according to the back of the bottle, which are kept “incredibly fresh and punchy” through the use of “extra cold temperatures”, this is not your industry standard Punk IPA flavour.
Whatever cryo hops are, it’s resulted in a beer which tasted, to me, bizarrely like rich tea biscuits, in a very good way.
Sweet, malty, and light in body, it’d be an ideal beer to have with a sharp cheese.
Rating: 3.5/5
Beer 3: Flint’s Gold
- 4.1%
- £3.49 a 500ml bottle at Hop Shop Aberdeen
- Burnside Brewery, Laurencekirk
- Style: Best Bitter
This is the first “best bitter” style of beer I’ve reviewed in my column so far, and that’s not surprising.
In a modern world of Blue WKD-flavour beers, the humble, old-fashioned bitter can be seen as a little bit of a living fossil these days, consigned to the cask ale pumps in old-school pubs.
But what was definitely surprising for me was how much I absolutely loved this beer.
Crisp, lively, and, you guessed it, bitter, Flint’s Gold was the best of the three I tried here from Burnside by far.
I’ll definitely be going back and seeking out more bottles of this, and I’d love to find out what it tastes like on draft.
Rating: 4.5/5
You can also buy Burnside Brewery’s beer directly from their website.
Kieran is a former craft beer barman and publishes his beer column every Tuesday online. You can also read his column in the P&J’s Food and Drink magazine, which you can find inside your Press and Journal newspaper every Saturday.
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