Bellfield Brewery plays its part to Accelerate Action towards gender parity in the drinks industry

A well-known brewery in Scotland is raising a glass to International Women's Day (IWD) with a specially all-women brewed IWD 2025 beer. 

Playing its part to Accelerate Action towards gender parity, Bellfield Brewery in Edinburgh releases Rational Creatures, a delicious and quaffable Table Pale Ale brewed by the women working at the company.

This is the sixth time that the women of Bellfield have got together to brew a special beer to mark IWD. This year they have designed a beer that looks back at their 'Mimosa' IWD beer of 2020.

"Mimosa never got its moment in the sun as it was launched just a few days before the first lockdown at the start of the pandemic. But we were so proud of it – and it tasted so good - that we decided to try and recreate the recipe, with a few tweaks, to account for new processes we’ve introduced since then," says Bellfield Brewery.

A refreshing fruity beer

Bellfield Brewery describes Rational Creatures as a straw-coloured, Table Pale Ale: a balanced, light beer, with a prominent refreshing fruity hop character using hops originally selected for the 2020 IWD brew (Cascade, Centennial, Amarillo).

Rational Creatures has flavors of citrus, pine, orange and tangerine will all feature, balanced with a honey-like and toastie malt profile thanks to the mixture of light malts including Scottish Pale, Vienna, Cara and Cara Gold. The addition of oats delivers a smooth, creamy and luxurious mouthfeel.

Created by an all-women team

Bellfield Brewery's IWD 2025 beer was designed by six team members: Marie Brown, Director; Anna Orr, Sales & Marketing Manager; Giselle Dye, co-founder; Jessica Shoemark and Phoebe Crosbie, Taproom team members.

All five women took part in the brew day in January, fortified by plenty of strong coffee and Greggs doughnuts, a guilty brewery treat.

Dale, a brewer at Bellfield, lent his expert help on the day, supervising the technical aspects and keeping the team focused on track. Meanwhile, Head Brewer Keith listened carefully to what the team wanted to achieve, and designed the recipe with them.

"We’re really chuffed with the result and hope you all enjoy drinking the beer too, when it’s launched in a few weeks time," said Marie, Anna, Giselle, Jessica, and Phoebe.

Inspired by IWD and Jane Austen

The badge for Rational Creatures - its fresh colour palette of yellow and green - has been designed with the mimosa flower in mind. This blooms in early March and is a longstanding symbol of IWD.

The badge design for this beer replaces the stylised soundwaves that normally radiate from the centre of the Bellfield logo with the distinctive leaves of the mimosa plant.

The name is inspired from Jane Austen’s famous and much-loved final novel, Persuasion, which contains the quote: “But I hate to hear you talking so, like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.”

Fundraising for Scottish Women's Aid

Rational Creatures is launched as a limited edition beer in Bellfield Brewery's Edinburgh taproom. and sees 50p from every pint of Rational Creatures sold over that weekend in its Taproom donated to Scottish Women’s Aid, a charity that’s close to Bellfield Brewery's hearts. 

Scottish Women’s Aid works to prevent domestic abuse through a network of 36 specialist local Women’s Aid groups.