There are some partnerships that begin with a marketing plan.
This one began with a pie.
More precisely, it began with a simple question:
Each pie is painstakingly handmade on-site, ready for eager, hungry punters to carefully select a pie (or three) of their fancy to take with them on their Assynt adventure. Or, stay and eat in, enjoying the peace and tranquillity that Lochinver has to offer.
A Lochinver pie isn’t just any pie: it’s a recipe that has been perfected over thirty plus years. The savoury pastry is floured and rolled; perfecting the roll to get it an exact thickness. The ingredients are locally sourced, using the very finest foods available.
For nearly forty years, people have travelled to Lochinver for pies made here at our Larder in the village.
The pastry is made here. The fillings are prepared here.
Each pie is assembled, crimped and baked here, behind the wall where customers sit down for lunch, pick up a takeaway, or pause beside the River Inver before heading back into the extraordinary landscape of Assynt.
Lochinver Larder began in 1986, founded by Ian and Debra Stewart as a small delicatessen before growing into a restaurant and becoming famous for its handmade pies.
Many of our Lochinver Larder team are local people who have worked with us for many years - in some cases decades going right back to the early days of Ian and Debra. The knowledge of how these pies are made has not arrived in a manual from somewhere else. It has been accumulated here: by making pastry, cooking fillings, crimping pies, serving customers and doing it all again the following morning.
So when we began thinking seriously about a beer to carry the Lochinver Legend name, buying something generic and putting our label on it did not feel quite right.
We wanted to work with someone who understood the same things we did.
And down the coast at Poolewe, Lewis, our kitchen chef with a strong palette for beers, found James Struthers and EweBrew.
EweBrew is the trading identity of The Loch Ewe Brewing Company, a small family-run brewery near Poolewe in Wester Ross.
The company was established in 2021 and began operating shortly afterwards, making it a relatively young business - but one with a very clear sense of purpose from the outset.
James's connection with brewing goes back much further. He grew up on Speyside. His father was a brewer and distiller. James himself studied chemical and process engineering before following a career that took him into the maritime sector and overseas.
During Covid, James and his wife Jo returned to the west coast of Scotland, eventually finding themselves looking at an old agricultural shed and asking the sort of question entrepreneurs sometimes ask when everyone else sees only an empty building:
The answer was yes. The shed became a brewery.
By 2026, EweBrew had already produced more than 300 batches of beer, generally brewing in 600-litre batches.
Ewebrew's James and Jo - A Family Run Artisan Craft Brewery
What attracted us to Ewebrew was not simply that they made beer nearby. It was how they thought about making it. James explained they did not want to create a generic craft-beer brand that could have originated anywhere. They wanted the brewery to belong to Wester Ross.
Ewebrew beers draw their names and stories from local landscapes, local history and the communities around Loch Ewe. James spoke to us about beers connected with the Arctic Convoys, Firemore, wartime aircraft and the places around the coast.
The ambition was not to build a brand that could take over Britain. As he put it to us, they could become deeply rooted in Wester Ross and the Highlands.
That felt familiar. Because Lochinver Larder has much the same relationship with Assynt.
Our pies are not simply products carrying a Highland name. They are made here. The people who make them live here. The landscape, the journey to Lochinver, the customers who return year after year and the community around the Larder are all part of what the business has become.
Once you ask that question seriously, it becomes more complicated than it first appears.
There is not really such a thing as the Lochinver pie.
There is ...
Venison & Cranberry - won 'Best Scottish Meat Pie Award' at the British Pie Awards 2022.
Steak & Ale.
Chicken, Leek & Mushroom.
Chicken, Haggis & Peppercorn.
Pork, Apple & Cider.
Fisherman's Pie. Haggis, Neeps & Tatties. And a whole range of vegetarian pies alongside them.
A beer made to accompany all of those cannot shout too loudly.
A huge, heavily hopped IPA might work beautifully with one filling but overwhelm another.
A rich dark beer could sit happily beside venison but dominate something lighter.
So when James began thinking about Lochinver Legend, he approached the beer almost as a chef might approach a sauce. It needed character of its own.
But it also needed to make the food beside it taste good.
James's solution was a traditional Golden Pale Ale. He explained the recipe to us in wonderfully practical detail.
"Around 90% of the malt is Scottish pale malt, which gives the beer its foundation. To that we add a small quantity of Munich malt, contributing a gentle bready character, and a little caramelised malt to bring some sweetness".
For hops, the beer begins traditionally too.
"The principal hop is East Kent Goldings, one of the classic British hop varieties. It gives bitterness to balance the sweetness of the malt, while also contributing subtle aromatic character.
Then comes one small contemporary twist. A little Idaho 7, an American hop, adds what James describes as a light lemongrass note.
Not enough to turn Lochinver Legend into a mouthful of hops: just enough to make you notice something interesting.
The result is deliberately balanced: a proper bottle-conditioned pale ale with enough flavour to stand on its own, while remaining gentle enough to accompany everything from venison to fish or a vegetable pie.
Lochinver Legend was designed to be different.
Easy to enjoy. Easy to return to.
And above all:
made to accompany the pie rather than compete with it.
So if you are sitting eating a meal with both in front of you, hopefully surrounded by the mountains and wild landscape of Assynt, we rather hope you will agree:
some legends really are better together.