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OUR YEAR IN BEER
Let’s look through the last 12 months at Vault City-it’s been busy!
WE RELEASED A LOT OF BEERS!
We had an incredible year, releasing 90 beers in total—up from 84 last year—including 76 sours, 11 imperial stouts, 2 barley wines, and 1 Radler. These beers reached a lot of Vault City fans, being sold in bars, bottle shops, taprooms and direct from our brewery, with 4 exciting new additions making their debut on supermarket shelves. We can’t take all the credit though; it’s our amazing production team who truly knocked it out of the park this year (and every year if we’re being fair).
It has been a lot of fun starting to experiment with different beer styles, and watching the sour category grow and evolve into something much bigger than anyone might have imagined.
FESTIVAL FUN
From Beijing to Bristol, we’ve brought Vault City to sour beer lovers across the globe, attending 30 festivals in over 10 countries Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, Finland and Portugal to name a few! We also made our debut in China at the Jing-A 8x8 festival this year, brewing an international collab with East Gate and kicking off a brand-new export market for Vault City. Along the way, we’ve had the incredible opportunity to catch up with brewery pals, old and new, and connect with passionate sour beer fans all over the world.
BIG SWALLY EDINBURGH
Our first-ever beer festival with The Caledonian Craft Beer Merchant, Big Swally Edinburgh, was a massive success and is now Edinburgh’s biggest beer festival! With over 20 UK and international breweries, two incredible sessions, a Proclaimers tribute band, and 2,000 tickets sold, it was a night to remember. Or maybe not, depending on how many Mikerphone imperial stouts you tried… The event featured an incredible beer list, amazing food vendors, and a Big Swally Edinburgh exclusive: YUP, our first-ever hard smoothie seltzer. Inspired by Piña Colada cocktails and crafted with pineapple puree and coconut cream, this super-limited 600-litre batch was made exclusively for the festival—but it could be the start of an exciting new series from Vault City. Stay tuned for Big Swally Edinburgh 2025!
CELEBRATING INDEPENDENTS
We released two indie collabs this year. The Damson Plum Cobbler, a pastry sour inspired by cosy desserts, took notes from past favourites like our Blue Boysenberry Cobbler to strike the perfect balance of sweet and tart, brewed with our friends at Inn Deep, The Town Mouse, and Jars Bar. For our 6th birthday, we launched Mountain Brew, a soda-inspired sour beer crafted in collaboration with Grunting Growler, R&G’s Beer Vault, and Dead Crafty Beer Co. One of these resulted in a swift cease and desist, we’ll let you guess which. All jokes aside - as an independent brewery with a reputation for flavour exploration - connecting and collaborating with other independent businesses is always at the heart of what we do.
SUPERMARKET STOUT AND SOURS
In 2024, we introduced 4 fresh beers to supermarket shelves, all while keeping independents and specials at the core of what we do! By taking a more focused approach to the supermarket channel, we’re building awareness and growing the category without compromising our values. Our core range stays with independents, and our specials remain just that—special. Looking ahead, we’re excited to bring 4 brand-new beers to supermarkets in early 2025, proving we can grow while staying true to what makes Vault City unique.
NEW YEAR, NEW BREWERY
After 4 amazing years of brewing in Portobello, we’re thrilled to announce that we’re moving to our forever home in 2025—thanks to your incredible support during our big Crowdfunder sale! With your help, we raised well over the £250k needed to make this dream a reality, and we’re already working on the next steps to transition from our Portobello site. The move will happen in phases, starting with our office and warehouse teams, while we create an exciting new production space. Stay tuned for more details on our grand plans—we can’t wait to share what’s next!
A TOAST TO OUR TAPROOMS!
Sadly, we’ve said goodbye to Porty Vault, but our tiny taproom, Wee Vault, with its stellar 4.8 average review, is still going strong in Edinburgh’s city centre. Huge thanks to both taproom teams for their hard work this year! Some Porty Vault staff will be moving to our Haymarket taproom, while Wee Vault will remain our only taproom for the foreseeable future. We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who supported Porty Vault—loyal customers, the local community, and our amazing staff who made it such a warm, welcoming space.
AWARDS SEASON
This year has been one for the books! We took home two golds and a silver at the Asia Beer Challenge, earned Great Taste Awards for our core range, and picked up an incredible 15 Untappd awards for our pastry sours and stouts. Not a bad haul, if we do say so ourselves!
SAY HELLO TO OUR SOUR SCALE
For 6 years our release schedule has showcased a huge variety of flavours all with differing levels of sourness, and this year we wanted to create a guide for all our cans to help you find your sweet sour spot.
In September, tying in with International Sour Beer Day (a completely genuine and not made-up holiday), we launched a series of 5 beers to showcase each level of our sour scale, from sweet pastry to tart fruited sours.
Our mixed fermentation base beer is bursting with tropical esters, juicy flavours and deliciously tart acidity. Paired with fresh fruit puree, juices, zests, cake batter, ice cream (and more), you’ll find our scale on each can helping you find your perfect level of sourness with every Vault City release.
CHEERS TO 2025
We hope you’ve enjoyed these beers as much as we’ve loved brewing them. Thank you for your incredible support this past year—here’s to more amazing beers, exciting collabs, and our brand-new brewery in 2025! Cheers!
