When it was founded in 1998, Black Isle Brewery sought to demonstrate that world class beers can be produced using naturally grown barley and hops. The company’s support for organic farmers, care for the environment and superior product have propelled it forward ever since. Lawrie Wotherspoon, Operations Director, explained to Hannah Barnett how this ethos has developed over the last 25 years.
IN2011, when Black Isle Brewery moved to a larger facility just up the road from the cowshed where it all began, the company had the opportunity to purchase 130 acres of surrounding farmland. This proved to be something of a watershed moment.
Now, Black Isle runs the organic farm alongside its brewery operations. It has worked to increase biodiversity, planting 8,000 native broadleaf trees, reinstating hedgerows, digging new ponds and creating wetlands.
Black Isle also operates two craft beer and pizza bars, in Inverness and Fort William. The farm livestock and the five-acre market garden are used for the pizza toppings.
“We were organic from day one; that was always the big principle behind it,” said Operations Director Lawrie Wotherspoon.
“The farm itself is what sets us apart from almost any other brewery in the country. It means we can walk the walk on the sustainability side. We also use the farm to connect with the local community; school c hildren come out three times a week, plant vegetables and make fresh soup for lunch, that sort of thing. We’ve also had local volunteers helping out on the farm for many years now, generating a sense of community and
allowing us to educate them on the importance of sustainable growing practices.”
The company now employs 60 people, including its bar staff, and produces around 7,000 hectolitres a year, offering the biggest range of organic beer in Europe.
A sustainable outfit
Black Isle focuses closely on promoting circularity in all its operations. The spent grain from the brewing process, known as draff, is used to feed the animals or as compost for the market garden.
The company is also B Corp certified. This designation shows that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability and transparency; something which is no mean feat to achieve.
“There’s a lot of work involved, including some legal restructuring of the company,”
BLACK ISLE BREWERY I PROFILE
Mr Wotherspoon explained. “But for me, it was just about stripping everything back and looking at what we needed to address because ini tially we weren’t making the standard. But once the measures were implemented, it made a genuine difference to our staff and those that are in involved on the farm and wider brewery family.”
Black Isle recently attended the annual BioFach event in Germany, the world’s biggest trade fair for organic food and agriculture. With 3,000 exhibitors from around the world, the UK was scantily represented, according to Mr Wotherspoon.
“There were about four UK companies there,” he said. “In comparison, there were at least five or six hundred French and Italian businesses. Even the New Zealanders had double figures. That’s not a criticism of those who are doing organics in the UK, it’s just that more support is needed. Every other
country in attendance was being well-supported by government funding, with a view to increasing trade overseas and helping to grow the organic community.”
Indeed, many countries in the EU have targets to convert at least 25% agricultural land to organic production by 2030. But in the UK, a mindset shift is also vital, according to Mr Wotherspoon.
“As a general rule, people will shop organically when it comes to fruit and veg, dairy, and meat products,” said Mr Wotherspoon.
“But by the time they get to the booze aisle, they’re not thinking about how ethically sourced a product is. I think it’s partly
because there’s a high degree of removal between the raw ingredients and the finished product. There’s also the association with alcohol as something which is purely for a good time.
“The organic movement is growing in the UK, but I think beer will be one of the last things to catch up.”
A quality product
The provenance of Black Isle’s organic ingredients is hard to dispute. The water used is drawn from a borehole on the farm, while malt barley is grown as locally as possible. Securing a range of organic hops initially proved more of a challenge.
“In the early days, that was difficult,” Mr Wotherspoon added. “But now, there are far more organic hop growers than there used to be, in the States, New Zealand and across Europe. We use quality hops
with interesting flavour profiles from around the world to make great beer.”
The company’s biggest seller is its flagship Blonde lager, followed by Spider Monkey IPA, reflecting wider consumer tastes across the UK. There has also been an increased demand for low-alcohol beers; a market shift which complements the Black Isle ethos.
“Since Covid, people are drinking a bit less and thinking about what they consume a bit more,” said Mr Wotherspoon. “This suits us fine, because for us, it’s not about going out and having ten pints and collapsing at the end of the night. It’s about enjoying a quality product which is part of a wider movement that is doing some good. If a customer wants to nurse a pint of low-alcohol beer, that’s absolutely fine. We’re not a big volume brewery; we’re about quality.”
The power of partnership In order to maintain this level of excellence, it is vital for Black Isle to have a network of strong and trustworthy suppliers, which invariably means a shared outlook, too.
“We know that our suppliers prioritise organic production, which is not an easy market to be in,” Mr Wotherspoon explained. “They’ve got a principle and they’re sticking with it. We can pay up to three times more for our hops, because they are organic. It’s a real commitment, but we find it cultivates a very natural partnership because the growers are invested in the organic movement, and the environment more broadly, like we are.”
In 2023, the company launched Treehouse Pale Ale, a charitable beer in conjunction with Ecosia, the socially conscious search engine.
“Ecosia has planted close to 200 million trees,” said Mr Wotherspoon. “It’s a great company, very like-minded to us and half the profits from Treehouse go to Ecosia’s community-led biodiversity projects. I know Ecosia was approached by another big Scottish brewery to do something similar, but there wasn’t the same overlap in values, so they decided to go with us.
A shared ethos can carry us a long way in terms of forming business relationships.”
The company has exciting plans for the next few years. It intends to move sites to be closer to Inverness, taking pressure off the farm and allowing the development of some truly sustainable facilities. This will include embracing more renewable energy sources, primarily solar. Black Isle will also install carbon capture machines to enable the CO 2 emitted during fermentation to be reused for carbonation and cleaning.
“We’re lucky to have a real range of followers,” Mr Wotherspoon concluded.
“There are pure beer lovers, people who are interested in us because we’re focusing on the environment or because we are genuinely trying to do something of value to the community.
“Essentially, we’re a business and we have to make money to in order to operate, but we can be focused on much more than just profits while we’re at it.” n
