Photo of
January 13, 2014

 

[Jim Anderson at the bar at The Anderson][1]
Jim Anderson at the bar at The Anderson

It will be Burns night in less than a fortnight and, as ever, there are all sorts of interesting events being held to commemorate the Bard’s achievements.

We’ll list some of the more colourful ones soon but, for today, we thought we would bring you news of a haggis beer which is being made in honour of Mr Burns.

The Anderson restaurant with rooms in the Highland village of Fortrose has collaborated with Cromarty Brewing Co. to brew a special haggis beer for their Burns Supper on Saturday 25 January.

Pepper up your pint

The Anderson’s chef, Anne Anderson, will make an individual haggis for each diner on Burns Night.  Collaborating brewers, Jim Anderson and Craig Middleton, will use the dominant spices from her recipe — black pepper, mace, coriander and nutmeg — to spice a 5%ABV red rye beer to match the haggis.

Chieftain O’ the Brewin’ Race

The haggis beer, dubbed Chieftain, will be cask conditioned and served exclusively at The Anderson on Burns Night only.

‘Tempted as we were,’ says Jim Anderson, ‘adding an entire haggis to a batch of beer is just wrong on many levels.’

While adding black pepper, mace and coriander to a beer may sound outlandish, it’s not a new idea. Passionate and extremely knowledgeable on the subject of beer, Jim Anderson explains ‘Cooking spices were used for thousands of years in virtually every beer recipe.

‘This was the case until hops, with their unique preservative and bittering qualities, came into common use around the thirteenth century.  Many of today’s microbreweries, however, are re-discovering the complexity that cooking spices can lend to a beer’.