Edinburgh drinks differently depending on which hill you're standing on. Up in the Old Town, tucked into closes and under bridges, small bars pour whatever's just come off somebody's brew kit that week. Down in Leith, converted warehouses along the docks host taprooms where the beer and the buildings both used to work for a living. Stockbridge does things quieter, more village green than industrial estate, and out past Corstorphine you'll find kit tucked into units that look like nothing from the road. The city's granite keeps the temperature honest and the haar rolling in off the Forth gives even a Tuesday afternoon pint a bit of atmosphere. Fringe season turns every spare doorway into a bar for a month, then August ends and the regulars get their pavements back. What ties it together isn't a postcode, it's a habit: brewers here seem happy borrowing from Belgian tradition one week and doing something loud and hazy the next, without much regard for what's supposed to be fashionable. Bottle shops sit wherever there's footfall, sometimes next to a chip shop, sometimes below a tenement flat, stacking local cans alongside imports from further afield. If you're new to the city, don't expect one obvious strip to head for. Follow your nose from the Royal Mile down towards the water and you'll pass enough doors worth pushing open along the way.
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