Dundee mixed-fermentation brewery Holy Goat has announced its first four new beers of 2025, as ever across a broad spectrum of styles.
Holy Goat is offering a barrel-aged Flanders red, a stout, a Scottish 180 shilling, and a red wine, sour beer hybrid.
Brewer’s notes
Crypt Witch (8% ABV)
A Flanders red with Frederiksdal cherries and forest honey, brewed in collaboration with Black Iris Brewery. It was brewed with 70% provision-strength ‘young’ stock beer, aged four months, blended with around 30% mature stock beer, aged in third-fill whisky casks for a year. The combination of old and young beers has produced a complex sweet and sour flavour profile with a subtle oak character.
1895 Shipwreck Stout (8% ABV)
Brewed in collaboration with Glasgow’s Epochal Brewery, this is a recreation of a beer found in bottles retrieved from the shipwrecked vessel Wallachia, which sank after a collision in the Clyde Estuary in 1895. The beer itself was a strong export stout from the McEwan’s brewery, in Glasgow, destined for the West Indies.
180 Shilling Ale (12% ABV)
Another Scottish collaboration, this time with Newbarns Brewery. It’s a take on a traditional Scottish ale (barley wine) using a double/reiterated mash. This 17th century brewing technique utilises the run-off wort from one mash as the liquor for a second, to get higher alcohol without needing to add sugar.
Rondo Vines (7.4% ABV)
A red wine, sour beer hybrid aged for three months on the pressed skins of British-grown Rondo grapes, provided by Renegade Urban Winery (based in Walthamstow, London). The skin contact from this maturation has produced a deep purple colour, and complex flavours of blackcurrant, sloes and cherries, with a funk-forward natural wine character.
