Valhalla Brewery
Sonny and Sylvia Priest opened the Valhalla Brewery, Britain's most
northerly brewery, in December 1997 at Unst in the Shetland Isles. The owners
originally set their sights solely on the local
Shetland market but have since expanded to areas all over the U.K. Neil
Smith, a graduate of Edinburgh University, joined the company in 2001.
The brewery has a four-and-a-half barrel capacity brew plant that originated in a brewpub in Glasgow. During the summer, the brewery's most productive time of year, brewing is undertaken up to three times per week. Additional staff and a Czech-made bottling line were added in August 1999 and the company is very proud to claim that their product is entirely produced in Shetland.
While most product is confined to the locality of the brewery, casks and bottled product are to be found in various outlets throughout the U.K. The logo designs that grace the bottle labels and pump clips are impressively designed; the latter can be purchased from the brewery - check the brewery's website for information.
Products (descriptions abridged from brewery website):
- Auld Rock - 4.5% ABV
- Valhalla's first product, a dark Scottish style ale with balanced malt and hop aroma and clean, smooth finish, the name coming from that given to Shetland by many expatriates
- Simmer Dim - 4.1% ABV
- A light, golden colored ale, named after the Shetland dialect words for the midsummer twilight during which the isles never get dark
- White Wife - 3.8% ABV in cask, 4.5 % in bottle
- A light golden session ale with a dry bitterness and fruity after taste, named after the ghost of an old woman that appears in vehicles on a stretch of road about three miles from the brewery