Orkney Brewery
Orkney Brewery is one of Scotland's first independent microbreweries, brewing since April 1988 in the former Quoyloo school on the Orkney Mainland, a mile from Skara Brae. Norman Sinclair, whose father attended that school, took over in 2006 and preserved the building. Pure Orcadian water and a secret yeast strain go into ales like Dark Island, Red MacGregor, Dragonhead and Skull Splitter, and the casks reach pubs across the UK whenever weather and ferries cooperate.
Beers by Orkney Brewery
31 beers
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The recurring character behind the beers
Orkney Brewery brew a broad range across 6 style families.
Across these 31 beers, 4 notes keep showing up:
Four notes carry across the range. That's a tight house style — most breweries in the catalogue share just one.
Compared with the wider catalogue of similar styles:
How we measure this
Two thresholds are at work here:
- The signature list shows notes that recur in at least 6% of this brewery's beers. A low bar — enough to flag a pattern, not high enough to call it an exclusive trait.
- The peer comparison below shows only notes where this brewery's coverage differs from similar breweries by at least 20 percentage points. A higher bar — enough to call a real difference, not a nudge.
A note can appear on the signature list without appearing in the peer comparison: it recurs here, but similar breweries do the same thing.
Red MacGregor
Their beers place in the Top 37% of the catalogue on average, across 30 ranked beers. Consistent rather than spiky — no single standout carrying the rest.
Similar Breweries
hopIQ exclusiveBased on style overlap and flavor profile
About Orkney Brewery
Orkney Brewery is one of Scotland's first independent microbreweries, brewing since April 1988 in the former Quoyloo school on the Orkney Mainland, a mile from Skara Brae. Norman Sinclair, whose father attended that school, took over in 2006 and preserved the building. Pure Orcadian water and a secret yeast strain go into ales like Dark Island, Red MacGregor, Dragonhead and Skull Splitter, and the casks reach pubs across the UK whenever weather and ferries cooperate.
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