The beer industry looks like a gloomy place. The smoking ban, the recession, and ever rising taxes have weighed on sales. Some 52 pubs are closing every week and on-trade beer sales volumes were down 8.7% in 2008.

But this overlooks a rapidly-growing corner of the sector where brewers, many of them based in Scotland, are successfully building a market based around innovative flavours and techniques and a marketing approach that can claim to be creating a new generation of beer drinkers.

This craft ale sector is tricky to define. But essentially it features independent brewers, often operating on a small scale, who seek to produce high quality beers.

One measure of its success is the sale of cask ales, beer which ferments in the barrel after leaving the brewery and falls into the category of “real ale”.

Sales volumes of cask ale fell 3.3% last year but its share of the market rose to 13.5% of the draught on-trade, up 150 basis points on the year before.

The smaller brewers are doing particularly well. Sales volumes from the local brewing sector grew by a total of 10% in 2008, even as the recession weighed.

This growth has continued. Cask beer grew volume in four out of the first six months of 2009.

And it is not just cask ales that are doing well. Premium bottled beer sales, an increasingly important distribution mechanism for craft brewers, are also soaring although the category takes in lots of mass produced beers.

Driving this sales growth is a breed of brewers that are producing adventurous ales targeted at a new audience from the aggressive, dry Punk IPA from Fraserburgh’s BrewDog to the oily Ola Dubh, aged in Highland Park whisky barrels produced by Alva-based Harviestoun.

These beers often have strong flavours, are produced with a much higher alcohol by volume than is customary, and are designed to be savoured rather than downed.

The signs are that this can lead to commercial success. Since launching in 2003, Edinburgh-based Innis & Gunn, whose core product is an ale aged in oak casks, has recorded 60% year-on-year sales growth and expects to have turnover of just under £5 million a year. Next year it will make a major drive for the North American market.

In Fraserburgh, BrewDog, carving itself a niche as the bad boy of British brewing, recorded sales growth of 130% over the first seven months of the year.

It recently got permission to open a new brewery just outside Aberdeen that will massively increase capacity.

In the West, after having been rescued from administration last year by Gerald Michaluk’s Glasgow-based Marketing Management Services International, Isle of Arran Brewery, has seen sales rise 91% year on year to just under £1m and has run out of beer to supply the supermarkets this Christmas.

Scotland has dozens of small breweries. Their products may differ considerably but what a lot of them have in common is a desire to build a premium beer market within a consumer base that is developing increasingly sophisticated tastes.

Dougal Sharp, managing director of Edinburgh-based Innis & Gunn, has some claim to have driven the creation of a premium beer market in the UK.

The beer was discovered by accident as a by-product of William Grant & Sons’ Cask Ale Reserve blended whisky.

But the key to the product’s success was its targeting.

Sharp said: “We quickly realised there is a huge section of the British public that would be interested in premium beer properly packaged.”

He added: “It is people who graduated off standard lager. They have branched out into premium spirits. They probably don’t drink instant coffee any more. They are interested in flavour. They are interested in what they drink. They are interested in what they eat. They might be foodies.”

Typically, this phase begins when a consumer reaches their late 20s and early 30s.

He added: “The market is definitely changing. When we launched in 2003 there were no premium specialist beers produced in clear glass 330ml bottles at a higher ABV (alcohol by volume).

“These are beers designed for savouring with flavours that are complex and interesting like for instance what you get in a Rioja (Spanish red wine).”

James Watt, the 27 year-old co-founder of BrewDog, said he doesn’t want to steal a piece of the existing ale market.

“We want to introduce a new beer market that is edgy, punchy and fun. We want to take people on a journey with us and show them what we think beer can be.”

Watt explicitly sets BrewDog up against the established ale market which he describes as “stuffy, traditional and old fashioned”.

“It is boring. Everyone makes the same kind of beers with the same kind of hops, and the same kind of packaging with steam engines on it, selling to guys aged 45 to 50 with beer bellies.”

Michaluk is less concerned about revolutionising the drinks market. But he does believe that Arran Brewery is catering to increased demand for a more authentic drinking experience.

He caters to people “who want to drink something really good, wholesome and good flavour”.

He makes much of the brewery’s use of whole hops and real barley and its eschewing of chemical flavouring.

This, Michaluk argues, gives him the ability to charge a premium price for his product.

The supermarkets have cottoned on to the chunky profit margin available on premium products and are offering an increasingly wide range of craft ales.

BrewDog’s beers are stocked in Asda, Tesco and J Sainsbury across the country.

Arran Brewery lost £20,000 when Threshers owner First Quench went bust after having just taken delivery into 1,000 of its stores. But the company recently struck a national distribution deal that starts in the spring.

Innis & Gunn made an effort to get into large grocers from the very beginning, and believes it can use the brand awareness to tackle the on-trade.

Sharp said: “What has happened over the last five years is that consumers have become used to seeing our brands on the shelf. They are familiar with the name Innis & Gunn. We have started to move to focus on pubs, bars and restaurants.”

The brewers differ on the extent to which they use their Scottish identity.

Arran Brewery trades very much on its Scottish heritage with labels featuring misty lochs and mountains.

Similarly the Inveralmond Brewery in Perthshire uses Celtic imagery on its bottles and pump clips.

Others look even more locally with tiny Larbert-based Tryst naming some of its brews Brockville after Falkirk football club’s former stadium.

Scotland has a strong beer heritage, albeit one that has been neglected in recent years.

Discoveries of a fermented porridge and herb mix by archaeologists on Rhum suggests Scottish brewing has a history dating back to 2000 BC.

But the major expansion came in the 18th century when names such as Archibald Campbell and William Younger in Edinburgh or Hugh & Robert Tennent in Glasgow or George Younger in Alloa emerged, brewing for domestic and colonial consumption.

Yet many of these have died off, particularly during the second half of the 20th century, when lager drinking, notably the ubiquitous Tennent’s, predominated.

This affects the sector today. Michaluk said many Scottish pubs are unable to take cask ales because they do not have a cellar in which to store them.

Sharp at Innis & Gunn is very much a product of the Scottish brewing scene. His father was managing director of Edinburgh’s Caledonian brewery and he became technical manager there himself.

Sharp also believes that Innis & Gunn’s Scottish location means customers understand their use of oak casks because it is a familiar part of whisky making.

BrewDog, on the other hand, takes a lot of its inspiration from American craft brewers such as Stone and 3 Floyds.

Its humorous and almost graffiti-like bottle labels are a world away from the steam engines that Watt deplores.

Such is the focus of Innis & Gunn on the marketing and promotion of the beer that it outsources many of the processes including the brewing which is done by Greene King’s Scottish operation Belhaven.

Sharp said: “We would have been worrying about whether the roof is leaking, whether we have enough hops in the hop store and who is driving the lorry next week.”

BrewDog has pioneered the use of new media. When it released its Zeitgeist black lager, each bottle had a code that allowed the drinker to post a comment on a dedicated website, thereby creating a community around the brand. Its whacky videos are another draw.

BrewDog also generates media coverage by provoking drinks industry marketing regulator the Portman Group which in December banned its 18.2% Tokyo beer because its label read: ”You must, from time, have excess. This beer is for those times.”

Michaluk said: “The UK is a very competitive market and we have got some really good marketing people in it, and we have got some very innovative people. It is a very exciting sector.”

Having built a UK market presence, many Scottish brewers are looking to conquer overseas markets.

Innis & Gunn already sends most of its production overseas, notably to Scandinavia and Canada. Both it and BrewDog are keen to break into the US and Irish markets.

All the signs are that the Scottish brewing sector has an exciting future ahead.

BrewDog has permission to open a new eco-friendly brewery just outside Aberdeen and has bought a pub on the city’s Gallowgate. The Isle of Arran brewery has signed a national distribution deal and is looking for other brands to buy. And Innis & Gunn, after testing its product in Scottish pubs, bars and restaurants, is making a play for the UK on-trade.

Sharp said: “The pace of change is accelerating in the UK. I think we can be justifiably proud in Scotland we have lead the thing a little bit.”

Well crafted

Scotland has more than 40 brewers that have some claim to the craft ale label.

At the larger end of the scale there is Caledonian Brewery in Edinburgh, now owned by drinks giant Heineken, which produces Deuchars IPA, and Dunbar-based Belhaven, part of regional brewer Greene King and brewer of Belhaven Best.

But there are dozens of far smaller operations, from the Valhalla Brewery on Shetland’s Unst in the far north, to Sulwath Brewers in Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbrightshire.