Pilot & The Vintage team up on foraged Leith beer

ONE of Scotland’s top gastropubs has teamed up with Leith’s first commercial brewery of the 21st century to create a beer flavoured with foraged ingredients from around Leith.

Patrick Jones from Pilot and Kelsey Wood of The Vintage toast their new beer. Picture: Phil Wilkinson

Six foraged ingredients - scurvy grass, laver, crab apples, black loveage, juniper branches and sea buckthorn - will be included in the beer, created by independent Leith brewers Pilot in collaboration with Leith bar and restaurant The Vintage.

The Vintage explained the logic behind the foraged beer: ”The Vintage is all about local and good food, so why not a new beer with a local brewery to celebrate one year?

“The beer style itself is called a gruit, it’s a historic European style that doesn’t use hops but instead uses botanicals and herbs to provide the bitterness and flavour that hops normally do.”

The beer will be brewed in Pilot’s brewery, which put out its first ales at the start of 2014.

The Vintage, which opened last spring, was recently named as Scotland’s second-best gastropub.

SEE ALSO:

• Pilot Beer mark return of brewing to Leith

• Review: The Vintage, Leith