Festive Williams Brew

This weekend at The Grog and Gruel we will be featuring a great winter brew from The Williams Brothers Brewery. "Yule Smile" at 4.5 % has become available over the past couple of weeks to tie in with the festive period. With a great evening of music from Sandra MacBeth on Friday night, we thought there would be no better time to try it out.

So if you are out and about over the weekend and fancy a nice beer, awesome music in great surroundings then The Grog and Gruel is the place to be. Only a limited supply of this great ale is available so try it while you can.

Good bye Easter !!

So Easter is well and truly over. Everyone is back to school or work and all the chocolate is gone. Fort William saw a very busy time in Fort William with a great spell of good weather, even some Ben Nevis sunburn victims were recorded. Easter also saw a record number of pints and pies sold at our "Pint and a Pie" Festival. The pies proved so popular we found ourselves having to place emergency pastry orders.
Down to business tho, and the big question is "who is the winner of the best ale of the festival?". As always we allow customers to vote for the beer they enjoy the most over the two weeks. As always the results were surprising especially when the quality and range of ales were the best we've seen here at the Grog. The winner was Kelpie Seaweed ale made by those clever Williams Brothers, with Ben Nevis 80/- coming in a close second. Great to see customers at the Grog are brave enough to try a taste of Seaweed ale. But the end of the beer festival ain't the end of the world and we will be show casing another 9 local cask ales this weekend to wash away your thirst. So pop in and see what we've got to tempt you with.

Festival starting line up !

Only 3 days to go to the Easter Ale festival and we can now release which ales will be included in the opening line up. All your favourite breweries will be included like Isle of Skye, An teallach, Atlas and Williams Brothers. Ten hand pumps will be on the bar and beers to be included Caledonian 80/-, Black Cuillin, Latitude Pilsner, Williams Red and more.

An Teallach has been in particularly good form of late and has been getting rave reviews in the bar. Remarkable what a man with a keen interest in cask ale can brew up in his barn. I think An teallach is a favourite to win the title of "Best Ale of the Festival" voted for by our customers.

My own personal favourite is also included in the line up. Kelpie Seaweed ale from Williams Brothers is also making an appearance. In addition to the seaweed (Bladder rack) harvested on the Argyll coast, they have also used organically grown malt. Kelpie is a rich chocolate ale which has an aroma of fresh seabreeze and a distinctive malty texture. How many of you will be brave enough to try a Seaweed Ale??Rememer..we'll even let you taste the ale before you buy a pint. It all starts on Thursday so don't be late or risk missing some of these great ales.

Beer Festival Votes

Our Summer Ale Festival is now over and all that was left to do was count the votes for the favourite beer of the festival. We are used to seeing the usual favourites come out on top, Orkney Dark Island, Skye Red Cuillin, Atlas Latitude which have all been string contenders in the past.



This year however a new Ale and reached 'new heights' of popularity, Coming in as a new ale this summer to our range. Williams Brothers 7 Giraffes was a clear winner, head and neck above the rest. With an ABV of slightly over 5% it is much stronger than our usual favoured ales. Brewed by the Williams Brothers in Glasgow it adds a new taste sensation to the already superb ale range from this brewery including- Fraoch Heather Ale, Williams red, Williams Gold and Kelpie Seaweed ale to name few.

Although not always on tap, The 7 Giraffes will be available in the Grog and Gruel randomly. So it's always worth popping in to see what interesting brews are on right now. If you miss the 7 Giraffes there is always a great range of Williams Brothers Bottled Ales to be tasting.

We'll see you soon for a pint !!