Region & History

Edinburgh has been brewing since the Middle Ages. When King David I founded Holyrood Abbey in 1128, the monks dug a well and are considered the city's first brewers to sell beer. Their customers lived in the Canongate, the street running from the abbey up to the Royal Mile.

Around this street grew a veritable brewing town. Brewers called the area with its abundant groundwater the "Charmed Circle." In the 19th century, Edinburgh had more than forty breweries, with around twenty at times standing on or near the Canongate alone.

The largest was William Younger & Co. Its Holyrood Brewery produced about 400,000 barrels in 1891, roughly 650,000 hectolitres, and shipped beer to America, India and Australia. The Scottish Parliament now stands on the site. Little remains of that old density. Today, small operations brew in Edinburgh, such as Stewart Brewing, founded in 2004 by Steve and Jo Stewart, and Barney's at Summerhall, where a brewery already stood in the 19th century.

The Caledonian Brewery on Slateford Road, founded in 1869, held out the longest. A management buyout led by brewmaster Russell Sharp saved it in 1987; it later passed to Scottish & Newcastle, and with that company, to Heineken. In May 2022, Heineken announced its closure, as the Victorian plant was running under capacity and would have required heavy investment. Deuchars, Coast to Coast and Maltsmiths were to be brewed from then on at Belhaven in Dunbar.

Artisan Real Estate bought the site, and in May 2025, 168 flats were approved there. Belhaven traces its history to 1719 and has belonged to Greene King since 2005. Greene King, in turn, was taken over by the Hong Kong-based company CK Asset Holdings in October 2019. No Scottish beer carries EU protected-origin status; none appears in the register.