Perthshire brewer hikes production after investment

Co-owner Jack Low at the new 'marshalling yard'

Blair Atholl craft beer firm bucking trends in Scottish brewing

A Perthshire craft beer firm plans to boost production by at least 50% this year after investing tens of thousands of pounds in new equipment and enhanced storage.

Blair Atholl company, Wasted Degrees, bucked trends within the brewing industry in 2025 by growing 57% at a time when 20 craft breweries closed their doors in Scotland.

Now they hope to hike production by 50% or more, to 150 000l+, after investing in new Kegs and Casks and negotiating a deal to repurpose land close to their unit to create a storage yard.

Escalating demand

With demand spiralling, Wasted Degrees bought in 150 new kegs to increase capacity in early January, with hundreds more to follow in the second half of the year.

Cask numbers within their inventory will also double, to meet demands in that niche category of the beer market.

In a collaborative effort between the brewery and landlords Atholl Estates, a lease was secured to redevelop a redundant area of concrete close to their Sawmill Yard base to store and process the extra kegs and casks.

Space has been a ‘perpetual challenge’ for the company, which started out with 25l ‘Home Brew’ buckets in their parents’ Pitlochry garage and has now grown 50% annually in the last five years.

Removing barriers to growth

The addition of the ‘marshalling yard’ begins to surmount that barrier, according to Co-Owner, Jack Low.

“In the last couple of weeks we’ve drastically increased our capacity,” he said.

“Demand was starting to outstrip our ability to supply. It was not necessarily constrained by the kit we have but by the space to store things and that was eroding our ability to grow the business.

“With the addition of the marshalling yard, we now have the ability to manage an additional 400 kegs or casks; something we didn’t have 3 weeks ago.

“That is an enabler. In 2025, for example, we produced 100 000l but we could be making 29 000l a month. That comes back to storage. We’ve got the gear to make more beer but we don’t have the storage space.

“We have now started to answer that question a bit more so this year the plan is to go from 100 00l to the region of 150/160/170 000l… we’ll see where we get to.”

Moving back ‘home’

The news comes as the company, which will be ten years old in August, gets set to begin work on building its new state-of-the-art £2,000,000 base in Pitlochry, late in 2026.

Last year, the company installed around 25 new taps in Perthshire bars and cemented its ongoing arrangement as official beer supplier of the Heartland Festival, supplying around 300 kegs over the weekend.

When complete, the new Pitlochry brewery, tap room, storage and outdoor seating area, located to the south of Ferry Road, will take the company to a new level.

At Blair Atholl the firm have been providing an outdoor tap room on 28/30 weekends per year but the new facility will create an indoor tap room experience on over 300 days per year, serving Wasted Degrees beer fresh from the tap.

“We love Blair Atholl and it’s been really good to us,” said Jack, “but Pitlochry has a higher resident population and there is not much seasonality to it anymore. Blair Atholl is exceedingly seasonal. There’s no one around in winter.”

Perthshire ‘dividend’

Despite the pains of growing, Jack and founder brother Conall still have ‘good fun’ projecting Wasted Degree to new heights, on a debt-free business model which is beginning to pay dividends.

Something which is important to them- and their strategy- is their Perthshire base and their ability to build lasting relationships with customers and consumers.

“It is an advantage to us and also to the places we supply. We increasingly stylise the beer as Perthshire’s local. It’s an easy thing for bar staff to talk about: go on, try the local beer.”

Visit Wasted Degree, here: www.wasteddegrees.com