Only here for the Hebridean beer?
By Phil Mellows
The Outer Hebrides span 130 miles of mountains, moors, rocky coasts and dazzling white beaches set in a luminous blue-green sea. With scenery like this you’re not really here for the beer, yet the craft brewery revolution has lapped the shores of even this remote sliver of the British Isles.
To be sure, outside of Stornoway, the busy capital, there aren’t many pubs, but there are two new small local breweries working hard to give these islands its own beer culture.
Loomshed is just outside Tarbert, the main town of Harris, and announces itself with a colourful mural in a modern style that evokes a Hebridean heritage, distinctive and striking artwork that extends into its branding for, currently, two draught beers.
One is a lager called Iasgair, gaelic for fisherman, the other a smoky, intriguing Scottish ale called Poacher. The latter has a whisky-ish flavour, a reminder that the brewer and owner, Chris Thomson, started out as a distiller. Alongside the brewery there’s a cosy taproom, open in the summer months, and you can also taste Loomshed’s beers at its deli and coffee shop in the centre of Tarbert.
Thomson is steadily building capacity and hopes that, in a few years, his beers will be in most pubs on the islands. It’s already in the Old Barn, a great little pub behind the Cross Inn in the far north of Lewis.
The other brewery is on the pier at Leverburgh, where the ferry from the southern islands disembarks. English beer enthusiast Nick Helfrich switched from being little more than a home brewer to delivering his bottled beers all over the Outer Hebrides during the pandemic, and at Easter this year opened the smart and spacious Isle of Harris Brewery taproom, restaurant and shop.
There are views across the harbour and 10 taps on the backbar. When I visited only two were pouring but that will grow, and it reflects Helfrich’s ambition to brew a diverse range for visitors and locals.
A couple of other places deserve a mention. The Fank in Stornoway is a bar operated by Stornoway Distillery that specialises in seafood and craft beer – alongside its own range of spirits, of course.
Unless I’ve missed something, it has by far the best range of beers on the islands, on draught and in can, showcasing Scottish brewers including 6 Degrees North, Black Island, Bellfield, Fierce, and Pilot.
And on Eriskay, off the southern tip of South Uist (pictured), after a walk around this beautiful island you can recuperate at Am Politician, named after the ship that sank here in 1941 with 264,000 bottles of whisky on board. The salvage operation is celebrated in Compton Mackenzie’s novel (and the subsequent films) Whisky Galore!.