Well, that was fun! After what felt like years of work, we were so excited to welcome a fantastic crowd of friends, family, and fellow beer fanatics to Leith Arches last Thursday to officially celebrate the launch of Buck Wild!
Whilst we’ll very shortly announce the full list of bars & bottle shops where you can track down this year’s release, we wanted to start by saying some words of thanks to everyone who’s made the project such a success this year. With the launch night fresh in the mind, it’s only fitting to start with Leith Arches, who were incredibly hospitable in providing the venue for our launch, giving us the perfect setting to celebrate with you all and keeping the evening running smoothly.
On a similar note, catering came courtesy of Bandit’s Burgers, who did an absolutely stellar job in smoothly serving up some awesome burgers in the face of high demand! Again, the team were great to deal with and made life so easy for us, which was hugely appreciated as stress mounted in the run-up to the event!
Big thanks also to Saeed Siddiqui for the tremendous photos of the evening – thank you for giving up so much of your time to help chronicle the night, particularly to refresh some of our hazy memories (entirely down to launch night-giddiness, and nothing to do with volume of Buck Wild consumed responsibly)!
Turning to Buck Wild itself, Kate George – a freelance designer based at Leith’s Out of the Blue – truly brought our beer to life by perfectly capturing exactly what we envisaged for this year’s aesthetic. Kate has been so understanding, positive, and willing to invest time in us (despite none of us being particularly design-literate!) – which has definitely shown in the final product. We highly recommend checking out more of Kate’s work, especially her recent mural for Save the Children’s revamped store, which looks absolutely beautiful!
Of course, we also need to say sincere thanks to our lecturers and tutors at Heriot-Watt University – especially Dr Dawn Maskell and Rachel Sutherland – for giving us this opportunity in the first place, as well as for their support and guidance over the last six months. We’re honoured to have been selected as the team to resurrect NSB, and hope that we’ve made a positive contribution to the legacy of the project.
With Heriot-Watt representing one half of the project ownership, the other comes from Stewart Brewing, who it’s difficult to write about without this post getting even more gushy than it already is! From day one, quite literally everyone we’ve encountered in the business – across every level and department – has been selfless in providing us with considerable amounts of their time, offering both guidance and mentorship as well as the freedom to make decisions, finding out what does (and doesn’t!) work.
NSB is far from done for the year, but with the beer now out in the world we figured this was the right time to take stock of the people who’ve helped us get there. Keep the eyes peeled for more exciting goings on over the summer!
Love,
Team NSB x
Natural Selection Brewing 