It was six years ago when Duncan Alexander, co-founder of 71 Brewing, had his beer epiphany. He was visiting family in Melbourne, Australia, and a stop off at the city’s White Rabbit Brewery with his home brewing cousin changed everything.

“It was an eye-opening moment. To see raw ingredients go in at one part of the process and turn into something quite fantastic at the other end was inspiring,” he explains. In his own words, Alexander admits that he always enjoyed beer but was more enamoured with, and aware of, the intricacies of wine. Beer, he says, was great, but a love of food and wine pairings was where his passion lay, until then.

“I carried that enthusiasm and zeal back with me and started home brewing but even at that early point, I knew I wanted my own proper brewery to make my mark,” he says. So in 2011, Alexander ventured down south and picked up a 1bbl kit from a “metal basher” in Watford and before long, he had set up a community brewery in Portobello, Edinburgh.

“At first I wasn’t sure what I’d do with the kit but after brewing lots of different recipes, the venture turned into something of a community brewery. Portobello is the hippie side of town, a bit of a Boho so someone donated some brewing space and we would end up bashing out all types of beers for local parties, bars and events,” says Alexander. “It allowed me to concentrate on the hop-forward beers that I was a fan of, and gave me a platform and an audience to allow people to try the beer I was making.”

All good things come to an end, though, and the community venture tailed off naturally in 2015 with involved parties having their attentions diverted elsewhere. And it was at this point, that Alexander knew he had to act if he wanted brewing to play a key part of his future.

He explains: “I went through a period where I was brewing intensively and then it stopped. But I had the realisation that to continue, I couldn’t do it justice as a hobby, and in my spare time. As a software engineer, my career was dragging me more into the world of finance, which I didn’t like. So it was time to give it a bash, or let it pass me by.

“I chose the latter.”

But if it was going to be done, Alexander says, he wanted it to be done properly. So he contacted an ex-colleague, Mark Griffiths, a fellow beer fan and someone he knew was experienced in running companies incredibly well.

Despite being a proud Dundonian, it was the start of the 71 Brewing journey that truly brought Alexander back to the coastal city after his career and life had moved him away.

“It seemed to be going through a period of regeneration. For a town that had been very much down on its luck for a few years, it felt as if the winds were blowing in the right direction, once again. It felt right, and after realising Dundee did not have its own brewery, it helped make that decision even easier,” he says.

While exploring options for funding the venture, Alexander and Griffiths explored the various possible sites to call home. Some weren’t suitable. Some were functional, but were soulless.

“We wanted to be an urban brewery and located centrally. We eventually came across a place in the DD1 postcode. A glorious building and something of an oddity and uncommon for the area as it looks more like something you would see in Brooklyn, not Dundee! We fell in love and we knew where we wanted to be. The owner of the building was on board with our plans and with with that in tow, we rolled it into our business plan. The building became a big buy-in for people,” he explains.

And it is that which inspired the brewery’s name. The building is the last left of a huge complex which made up the Blackness foundry and was headquartered at No 71.

“We liked the idea of using a number for our name that had connections to the industrial heritage of the building and the area. And yes there are ‘secret’ tunnels running somewhere under the surrounding roads which once connected all the disparate parts of the foundry complex. Be great for a taproom if we can find them!” Alexander says.

The new brewery has been made possible due to funding from Scottish Enterprise, Regional Selective Assistance and The Scottish Investment Bank, as well as private investment.

“There were a few hoops to jump through but thankfully Scottish Enterprise accepted our plans and gave us thumbs up. It’s a very long and drawn out process, but we are very grateful to them and they’ve been nothing but helpful,” adds Alexander.

71 Brewing has commissioned kit from both the brewing and winemaking industries for its facility. It called on BevTech as equipment supplier for its 7,200sqft industrial warehouse that houses the 25hl brewhouse and integrated 12 tank system.

The supplier’s managing director David Cowderoy is a qualified winemaker of 30 years and as a result, 71 Brewing has opted to include equipment more commonly used in winemaking than brewing.

Cowderoy explains the rationale: “There are three main areas where we’ve leaned on technologies used in winemaking.  Firstly, the pumps we have specified for moving wort/beer around the brewhouse come directly from the wine industry and are very new to the brewing world.

“They come at a cost but have a number of advantages namely they have very little oxygen pick-up, they generate very low shear forces which can chop up the yeast and proteins in the beer and they lose very little dissolved CO2 i.e. fizz.

“Our fermentation vessels are also more closely related to wine fermentation vessels than those in a traditional brewery due to their shallow base cones.

“It is pretty trend-setting in the craft brewing industry to have large cylindro-conical tanks but as wine yeast acts almost exactly like beer yeast we have taken a leaf out of the winemaker’s book allowing us to have lower, larger vessels.

“And lastly, our kegging machinery was originally produced to handle Prosecco! The main benefit here being that it is designed to have extremely low levels of oxygen pick-up, far better than many equivalent kegging systems, leading to a beer with a much better shelf life.”

The brewery also has a bottling line that was something of a last minute addition to its setup. The machine came from Cromarty Brewing and was built by Chappy, the father of the brewery’s founder, Craig. It is based around a Vigo 4 head counter pressure filler that has the addition of a flush and purge station, an automatic capper (built by a gunsmith on the black Isle no less) a rinser, drier and conveyors allowing semi automatic bottling of 4-500 bottles an hour.

“It is truly one of a kind but we love it! A bit of Scottish brewing history, we like to think,” says Alexander.

The initial setup at 71 Brewing gives Alexander and his team enough space to lead with lagers and to get up to schedule where they brew three brews a week.

And its lager that is playing a key role in the formative stages of 71 Brewing.

“It has been something of an important thread for us as this whole thing has developed. Growing up in Dundee as as boy, it was something of common knowledge that we had beautiful water here. So when it came around to it, we tested that theory and sure enough, the results proved to us how soft it was. It was akin to the water used in a Czech Pils,” he enthuses. “There are some nice connotations with whisky so it was no-brainer to lead with a Pilsner, as we don’t have to mess around with it.”

The brewery is concentrating on a 4.4% Pilsner, 71Lager, that Alexander has been brewing for many years, calling on Muntons with malt and Hopsteiner on the hop front. Overseeing the installation of the brewery was David Smith, a brewing consultant and former head brewer at Samuel Smiths of Tadcaster, who helped the team scale up the recipe.

But with an official launch scheduled for this month (January), the team is more than aware that the hard work truly starts now.

“The beer industry continues to change. It has metamorphosed a great deal in the time we have been putting this brewery together. So you have to be at the top of your game, nimble and willing to adapt,” he says. The company currently occupies three quarters of the building’s ground floors, with plans to take over the remaining part in due course. The upstairs floors also offer scope for packaging and events spaces. A taproom element is possible in the next 12 months, too.

“If you’re not on your A-game, then you should be nervous. But I believe there is still room to grow in this industry. The market is crowded but you should be ambitious, and have faith in what you’re doing,” he says. “We want to build a local base, to prove ourselves and to make great beer. If we can do that, who knows where we can go next?”