On the map: Dundee

71Brewing itself opened in 2016. Founders Duncan Alexander and Mark Griffiths were inspired by Edinburgh’s growing craft scene and felt this increasingly buzzing port needed one too. Today, the brewery has 15 staff, produces some two million pints a year at its base, and has a tap room in an old foundry on the Blackness Road. Karen became MD in November when it merged with her own family-run soft drink company Bon Accord.

“There are a lot of similarities in terms of ethos and production so coming together to scale up made sense,” she says. “What I have found, though, is with beer, people are a lot more interested in tasting sessions than with soft drinks. You get through a lot more samples.”

Today, they are the only brewery in Scotland where both MD and head brewer — that’s Bella Perez from California — are women. “We’re super inclusive,” says Karen. “We’re all about different visions and different experiences informing the product.”

So, for International Women’s Day, they put out Brank’s Wrath, a juicy hazy named after a muzzle used to silence outspoken women in mediaeval Scotland. “It’s about reclaiming that history and breaking down barriers,” says Karen.

A couple of minutes’ walk away on the Mid Wynd Industrial Estate, Holy Goat are trying to break barriers of a different kind: they’re trying to educate us all in the delights of mixed fermentation, unconventional bacteria and wood-aged beers.

“What we make is pretty unique, pretty niche,” says the aforementioned Johnny Horn. Their beers are all wild yeast, mixed cultures, ripe fruits, lots of the region’s berries. “The idea is intense flavours with barnyard funk,” notes Johnny.

In a former life Johnny was a co-founder of Vault City (in Edinburgh) but left after yearning to experiment more. “They’ve had amazing success,” he says. “Maybe two percent of me thinks I should have stayed but I’m so proud of what we're doing — making the beers I want and selling them around the world.”

This is true. He and friend James Scanlan started Holy Goat in 2021 and, today, export 40 percent of the 150,000 pints they make each year. Beers like Crimson Veil (a plumb-based Flanders red) and Sunsmasher (a sour made with hand-pulverised apricots) get sent to Scandinavia, Switzerland, China and Singapore. “There aren’t many breweries who do what we do,” says Johnny. “That gives us a global reach.”

The city’s other two breweries are smaller but no less impressive.

MòR Beers — based in the village of Kellas — is a one-man outfit run by former Mad Squirrel brewer Dominic Hughes, and is known for its experimentation (it produced 25 different cask beers in 2025). Law, meanwhile, is named after a local peak and is the creation of a post-doctoral microbiologist.

Dr Danny Cullen moved to Dundee 25 years ago to work at the James Hutton Institute (which, incidentally, does research into berries) and only took up brewing after deciding he wanted a mid-life career change. He took redundancy in 2016 and set up Law — also on the Mid Wynd Industrial Estate. “I thought it would be all experimenting and designing labels,” Danny laughs. “It turns out it’s 90 percent cleaning!”

Nonetheless, he wouldn’t change a thing.

Beers like his Cooncil Juice milkshake IPA and the Berliner Tart lager have — with their Mod-inspired iconography — become cult hits. His Scott's 80 Shilling Discovery Ale is sold onboard the famed explorer’s ship, now a major visitor attraction on the city’s waterfront.

And he works with microbiology students from the university. They come and do beer-based experiments here. “It’s great,” he nods as he prepares to head back to cleaning. “My hope is some of them will become Dundee’s next generation of brewers.”