It's been just over five years since we opened our doors in the historic heart of Glasgow’s East End. Today, we are  officially announcing our rebrand, and our new range structure - something we've been working on for a few months now.

We feel that to continue to compete in today’s crowded market, it is crucial that our range is recognisable and coherent. We’ve always had exciting and bold branding, featuring wonderful illustrations by great artists (John Felix in particular), but it was important to us that our range felt like a family as we move forward. Five years of business felt like the perfect time to take a step back and develop a new look that represents Drygate as we stand today.

Many breweries use organic, hand-drawn or textured design features to sell beer as a natural product, but beer doesn’t exist without human intervention. Beer is part nature, part art, and part engineering.

A lot of brewers play down that beer is designed and produced as precisely as possible using industrial-looking kit, or that the brewery is built and maintained by engineers. We are a distinctly urban brewery, located in Scotland’s biggest city - a long-standing centre of design and engineering - so we decided to go in the opposite direction with our style.

Our new branding features geometric designs and bright flat colours which celebrate the scientific, precise, and human side of brewing. This flexible new design methodology extends beyond our core range, and will allow us to incorporate photography, typography, linked by a common thread - the revised Seven Peaks motif. 

Our main focus is now on the five beers in our revised core range, rationalised down from our old core and studio ranges; Gladeye IPA (now at 5.2% ABV), Bearface Lager (4.4% ABV), Disco Forklift Truck Mango Pale Ale (5.1% ABV), and Orinoco Mocha Milk Stout (6%). Finally, Seven Peaks, previously produced at 5% ABV, has become a 3.9% Session IPA and remains our flagship product.

We're also super-excited to announce that Shred, a 0.5% ABV orange-infused pale ale, will be added to the range in 2019. We're working on developing it, but our first small batch is now available on-site, on draft only (for now).

Crossing the Rubicon West Coast IPA and Chimera India Pale Lager, will move into our new Draft Picks range. This exclusive series of draft-only beers is available from our restaurant & tap room, and from selected retailers. We'll share more info on our Draft Picks series in an upcoming blog post, but just to whet your appetite, here's what Chimera looks like now that it's become an ever-evolving dry-hopped bock-strength lager (with a different dry-hop profile upon every release)...

Of our original product line-up, Ax Man Rye IPA will become a seasonal-only brew, while Outaspace Apple Ale will be discontinued. (it's still available online, so if you're going to miss it, you'd better not hang around!)

To coincide with our new look and reiterate our commitment to the creative community, we are launching the Convergence series, which will showcase our collaborators and introduce them to new audiences - the driving ethos behind our company. We're looking forward to continuing to build great relationships with creators of all types; on an ongoing basis, we’ll be teaming up with other brewers, writers, comedians and bands, and whenever possible we'll also invite a designer, photographer or illustrator to collaborate on the artwork.

We released our first Convergence beer (brewed with our pals at Dear Green Coffee and Clever Kombucha) on our birthday week in May.

Our Brewhouse bar and kitchen is also rebranding as Drygate Brasserie, as we refocus on putting pairing to the fore and aim to deliver an unmatched customer experience.

Our style of food has evolved over the years, but what has remained consistent is our love of combining food and beer. By renaming our bar & kitchen, we’re giving a nod to the traditional French brasserie; a place where beer is brewed and served fresh alongside classic dishes such as steak frites and mussels, in a relaxed and informal atmosphere.

There's so much more we could say, but it's hard to fit it all into one post - so we'll aim to dive deeper into our new ranges and design processes in future blog entries.

For now, our rebrand and range changes are live, with all draft POS support, new packaged products, and new design assets switching to the revised branding immediately. Our new bottle and can designs will be phased in over the coming months, so keep an eye out!

Thanks for reading this far!

Team Drygate x