Northern Scotland recommendations

The Anderson was terrific (amazing selection of malts as well and wonderful food), as was the Moulin Hotel. On our way to Edinburgh for the next four nights if anyone's around for a beer!

 

No worries, had a great time. Didn't make it to Cloisters, but Hanging Bat and the Bow Bar were both great.

Thanks again for all the recommendations, had a wonderful trip!

 

I have them all written down someplace, but it's buried under unpacking right now... will post a fuller list when I unearth it. Had a few great beers from both Fyne and Tempest (missed a Tempest brewer's night, which was too bad), a few BrewDog beers at their pub (and, like a tourist, took a picture of myself holding the End of History bottle), and tried two really good Buxton beers at the Hanging Bat (was hoping to track down some Tsar Bomba and failed, but I got to try the regular Tsar, which was excellent). Earlier in the trip had a bit from Black Isle, lots from Orkney (Dark Island on cask... so good), Isle of Skye, and Kernel (got their Double Citra at Holyrood 9A, which was fantastic).

Also, Valhalla in Shetland is starting to put their beers into key kegs, which will hopefully improve distribution and quality. He's been hand-bottling everything not in a cask up until now, but was installing the first part of a real bottling line the day we were up there (really, really worth scheduling a tour if anyone ever happens to be on Unst). The two (Island Bere and Old Scatness) that he's using bere malt in are particularly interesting. We also took a tour at Harviestoun, who just expanded to a new storage facility and has about two dozen more barrels of Old Dubh going, which smell amazing. It seemed like they didn't have a real tour, but we e-mailed in advance and got shown around by one of the brewers. Quite a good time.