This year we celebrated Burns Night with a fresh look for our Iron Brew sour, plus 3 brand-new variations inspired by Scotland’s national soft drink. Our 2025 editions showcased a Vault City twist with Iron Brew Raspberry Ripple, Bubblegum Brew and Iron Brew Export Strength – both served in iconic glass bottles.
This January tradition has been a big part of Vault City’s annual release plans since the early days, starting back in 2020. Our Scotland-centric sour was always perfectly timed for Burns Night celebrations but started out as a tactical release to help us through a historically tough month for independent breweries. Now in its 6th iteration, we’re looking back at the best Vault City brews in all their iron-y goodness.
Iron Brew Sour, 5.5% - The OG of UN-OGs
We’ve paid homage to Scotland’s best-selling soft drink for over 5 years, with a variety of sours showcasing the iconic orange colour and bubble gum-like flavour – but it all started with this one.
‘Girders’ was the unofficial name for our equally unofficial first ever Iron Brew sour, released January 2020. At 5.5% this mid-vaultage sour very nearly never happened after an issue with the first batch meant it had to be dumped and rebrewed. A quick debate secured the future of our Scottish sour and the rest is history.
Iron Brew Sour, 7.5% - Guess who's back?
The demand of our first Iron Brew sour saw us brewing once again a new tribute to Scotland’s national soft drink, released on January 17th, 2021 after a tough year of lockdown restrictions in our new brewery at Portobello, Edinburgh.
This time we’d dialled the beer up to 7.5% and it was brimming with girders as always. The zingy bite of our mixed fermentation base beer paired with the unmistakable flavour of Iron Brew to create a taste somewhere between pre-sugar tax Irn Bru and the now sadly discontinued Irn Bru chew bars. It sold out instantly.
Iron Brew Sour, 5.5% - Needs No Introduction
After a couple of years perfecting our Iron Brew recipe we had still never heard back from our pals at Barr (the legends that produce the real Irn Bru, among other things). We wanted to get their attention and in the hopes of an official collab, went a little too on the nose when it came to the design.
Strong, irony – this 5.5% sour boasted all the familiar flavours of citrus and bubble gum as our previous releases. The announcement became our most engaged Instagram post at that point, catching the attention of comedian Ed Gamble who quoted us as one of his favourite breweries of all time. We also picked up a few headlines in Scottish newspapers and beyond. All this attention meant our pals at Barr (or more specifically their legal team) reached out to talk over a few ‘concerns’ they had over the label…
A brief conversation with their Head of Legal and a case of beer later, we smoothed things over – we promised to avoid any of their trademark designs on future labels, and they promised to consider an official collab. The last part is still yet to happen, but we’ll never say never.
In April that year we even ‘launched’ an alcohol-free version of Iron Brew… Guess what date that was?
Iron Brew Extra, 8% - Our Strongest Brew to Date
After our last release nearly put us behind Barrs (get it?), we came back with a fresh look showcasing familiar colours of orange and blue in a tartan design. This was the first ever time we launched an Iron Brew sour outside of January, putting out our highest strength brew as part of our 4th birthday plans in July 2022.
Much like our first ever Iron Brew release, we hit a few stumbling blocks, and this brew took a lot longer than expected to get right. Thankfully, we nailed the flavour of our tart ‘n’ sour, which we launched with exclusive Vault City branded budgie smugglers in a throwback to their long-forgotten iconic spokesperson; Raoul, who later joined us for our launch campaign.
Iron Brew, 5.5% - Sour of Scotland
In January 2023, we launched the 5th iteration of our Iron Brew Sour – which at this point was as reliable as Scottish rain. Much like our other brews, this was a single batch brewed once for sale in January and was then unavailable for the rest of the year, despite how many times people asked. After 3 years of Brews, our Sour of Scotland had been exported to 15 different countries and remained the highlight of hundreds of Burns Suppers around the country, including Scotland House in London – who ordered a case for their Burns Night event and who we have on good authority saying the First Minister of Scotland at the time had tried our beer.
Iron Brew Trio, 4.8%, 5.5%, 6.4% - Float & Fiery Ginger
Welcome to Scotland – even our beer tastes like Iron Brew. This was our message to the world in January 2024, where we introduced a trio of Iron Brew sours and the first ever variations of our historic recipe.
Much like covering a great song, you shouldn’t mess around with it unless you’re confident you’ll get it right. That’s how we felt about Iron Brew – it was sacred, but it was time for a change, and we knew our beloved Scottish sour could do with a little spice…
The introduction of a spiced Iron Brew celebrated the many fiery gingers in our great nation, and became a firm favourite with it's unique balance of gentle heat and familiar refreshing flavours.
After all the heat, we wanted to cool off with a refreshingly smooth ice cream float inspired Iron Brew.
We celebrated Burns Night in style, taking our pop-up bar to London for an event with Auld Hag at Scotland House where we started with a free brew giveaway and ended with a ceilidh fuelled exclusively on whisky and sour brews. This trio was our biggest launch to date, and 2024 became the first year that Iron Brew was available all year round, which we launched with a fresh new design covered in iconic Scottish thistles.
Iron Brew Export Strength, 8.4%, Bubblegum Brew, 6.3% and Raspberry Ripple, 5% - The latest and greatest brews in iconic glass bottles
This year we launched a new Iron Brew Bundle with limited edition gift boxes alongside our biggest showcase of Iron Brew ever - with over 150 venues taking part.
We also launched a partnership with Johnnie Walker’s rooftop cocktail bar 1820, which saw our highest selling sour become the base for a new cocktail on their menu pairing Johnnie Walker Gold Label and ice cream foam.
