Bitter and Twisted Golden Ale Harviestoun Brewery Clackmannanshire 4.2% 33cl

Harviestoun Brewery began life when a home brewer shared his handcrafted ales with a few friends. Unsurprisingly, he found that he gained more and more friends as the original pals invited their pals and he outgrew his shed! So the brewer, Ken Brooker, decided to fulfil a dream and in 1986 he set up a brewery in a 200-year-old steading (farmhouse) on the Harviestoun Estate near Dollar in Clackmannanshire.

Building much of the equipment themselves due to a lack of funds, the spirit and enterprise of the small crew paid off and demand for their beers skyrocketed. Their Heath Robinson approach to brewing equipment gave way to proper investment in new kit and, having won the Supreme Champion Beer of Britain award at the Great British Beer Festival in 2003 (with Bitter & Twisted as it happens), they had to relocate to a less romantic but bigger and more efficient modern building in Alva in 2004. They proved that their success was no flash in the mash tun by winning Best Bottled Beer at the International Beer Awards in the same year.

In 2006 Ken sold the brewery to fellow Scottish brewery Caledonian, led by Donald MacDonald and Sandy Orr, who had been admirers of Harviestoun for some time. So high was their regard for their acquisition that when they sold Caledonian to the brewing giants of Scottish & Newcastle in 2008, these two canny entrepreneurs kept Harviestoun out of the deal.