Brewery celebrates silver medal

The Highland Brewing Company of Orkney is celebrating a top UK accolade for its flagship brand Scapa Special.

The golden cask ale scooped the silver medal in the Best Bitters class at the fiercely fought Camra (Campaign for Real Ale) Champion Beer of Britain contest.

Held at the Great British Beer Festival – the country’s biggest celebration of cask ales – the contest is judged by British and international beer experts.

An already much acclaimed brew, Scapa Special (4.2%abv) – a pale ale brewed with hops from the UK, Germany and the U.S – came second only to the beer which went on to be voted Champion Beer of Britain at the festival in London’s Olympia.

The success for their biggest selling brand is a further boost to Highland’s plans for future growth this year.

Founder and head brewer Rob Hill said: “We are delighted to pick up this award – it is just terrific to see our flagship best bitter included in the top echelon of British beers at this very prestigious contest. It reinforces our confidence that we are brewing some of the best beer in Britain with our approach of taking the greatest care and using only first class ingredients. After our successes earlier this year, this win further underpins our ambitious expansion plans to treble capacity so we can reach a much wider audience.”

The success for Scapa Special follows hard on the heels of Highland’s outstanding triumph of five world class accolades for its brands earlier this year at the International Brewing Awards – a bi-annual beer challenge judged by the world’s toughest taste panel. This included a hat-trick of gold medals.

The family run 20 barrel-brew-length plant, Highland Brewing Company was founded by Rob Hill at Swannay in 2005.

Now new branding is planned to highlight the long list of awards Highland has notched up over 10 years, while new brewing plant will treble production capacity to meet the spiralling home market demand and grow exports.