Hastily linking arms with a stranger, I screech as I’m spun across the slippy lino. Turns out that old Dr. Martens are not the right shoes to wear to a ceilidh—and that Edinburgh’s Leithers take their dancing very seriously.

“I need a break,” I gasp to my husband once the fiddle stops, feeling sweat prickle the back of my neck. Standing wide-eyed, I’m hardly able to catch a breath before the floor fills again as the next dance is called. A quick swig of NEIPA would do it.

Thanks to my years in Scotland, I’ve been left battered and bruised after ceilidhs in canoe clubs in Kilmarnock (try saying that three times—fast). Fingerprints from damp, fleeting hands lace my upper arms while grey storm clouds named “dehydration” and “hangover” roll towards tomorrow’s horizon. “This was just the way ceilidhs rolled,” I thought. I was wrong.

Back in January 2025, after Jump Ship Brewing held an alcohol-free ceilidh in celebration of its fifth birthday, everything changed. The day after, I was battening down the hatches as my house shook against Storm Éowyn’s record-breaking 80mph winds. My garden was uprooted, my windows shook violently, trees fell, roof slates soared and I actually saw my 200kg reinforced steel bike hangar do a somersault in mid-air. My god, was I pleased I didn’t have a hangover for it.

***

When Sonja Mitchell moved to Scotland back in 2009, she didn’t picture herself anchoring down for the long haul. In fact, it had taken her some persuading to get here.

Born and raised in south east England, she had reservations about Scotland’s chilly climate. The move was only intended to be temporary in her and her husband Al’s search for their next adventure. 14 years later, Sonja is now firmly rooted in Edinburgh, having founded Jump Ship Brewing—a woman-owned, award-winning independent brewery solely dedicated to low and no alcohol (NA) beers. A first for Scotland, at that.

In Scotland, where alcohol-related deaths reached a 15-year high in 2024, she feels proud to be part of a change in attitudes towards NA beer.

“I’ve met brewers who have said they've stared at pallets of their beer and hoped it's not causing problems somewhere. I think I'd struggle working in that space,” she says. “Being able to offer something that works against the harms of alcohol is really powerful.”

The road to becoming a brewer was far from conventional for Sonja. She juggled having three children and a career as a marketing consultant—all while fermenting a deep passion for something that she considered didn’t yet exist in the Scottish beer scene: a good NA beer.

“When I think about an entrepreneur I don’t think of someone juggling a family and home and responsibilities,” she says. “But if people like me didn’t try, then things wouldn’t change.”

Sonja’s relationship with beer began long before her brewing days in Pathhead, a village in Midlothian, 11 miles southeast of Edinburgh, where Jump Ship has moored. Growing up in Kent, she was surrounded by bitters and traditional ales. But after a stint in the United States when stronger, hoppier styles were becoming popular, her palate began to evolve. By the time she landed in Scotland, her beer journey continued as she got to grips with what a “heavy” was, before her perspective on beer shifted after becoming a mother.

““Sonja was full of ideas and suggestions as to how the beers should be and how to get there.””

— Julio Romero Johnson, Wear Beer

“I went through all three pregnancies without touching an alcohol-free beer, and it was pretty miserable,” Sonja says. “I thought I’d rather drink nothing.”

She tells me how she once felt ill after attending an event that only offered orange juice as an alternative to booze. Without beer, she realised she’d rather drink nothing. It wasn’t until 2018 that she started to notice a change in the low and no beer market. Inspired by a friend’s recommendation of a promising Dry January beer selection box (which boasted one of London-based Big Drop Brewing’s first releases,) Sonja began to see NA beer’s potential.

Like many of us as we age, Sonja found that her tolerance for booze had dropped. She was becoming irritable after drinking and dreaded the day after. “I was drinking less, but it was that Tuesday night beer that I was really craving. You know, when you’re finally sitting down, the kids are in bed, you’re tired and up early for work,” she says.

Sonja discovered that an NA beer really scratched that itch, but she still felt like something was missing: choice. Sure, she was making better choices for herself, but found her options in terms of the variety of NA beers available were woefully limited. “That’s when I thought, ‘why don’t I just do it?’,” she tells me.

Driven by this frustration, she decided to dive headfirst into brewing, attending Brewlab in Sunderland for a crash course on brewing and brewery ops. Her first recipe, a crisp and balanced 0.5% ABV lager named Yardarm, was developed with the help of Sunderland-based Wear Beer’s Julio Romero Johnson, who she met during her training.

“I’d been doing some work producing a 1% lager, and we got chatting about how we could do a 0.5% one,” Julio tells me. “Sonja was full of ideas and suggestions as to how the beers should be and how to get there.”

Together they developed three different versions and tried them out on a 50 litre kit. “One was awful, one was OK and one was great,” Sonja adds. The response to the latter was overwhelmingly positive. Friends, family, and even local running clubs gave unanimous feedback, pushing her to take the leap from small batch brews to commercial production.

Scaling up came with its own challenges, though, particularly as she navigated an industry where women brewers are far from the norm. “I didn’t automatically feel like there was a place for me,” she admits. Thanks to the support of Edinburgh-based organisation Women in Beer, plus a growing community of female beer enthusiasts, Sonja found her footing.

“It’s always fantastic to see a new brewery being launched in Edinburgh,” says Women in Beer founder Amélie Tassin. “And it’s even more exciting when the brewery is launched by a woman!”

***

Jump Ship was launched in 2019 on the back of a successful crowdfunding campaign, with its £15,000 target hit within seven days. Then, in January 2023, the business raised a further £366,000 via private investment which enabled the purchase of a physical brewery of its own. Fast forward a couple of years and Jump Ship is now a multi-award-winning team of five. In 2024 it was named Scottish Small Brewery of the Year at the Scottish Beer Awards.

Sonja’s journey has been far from smooth sailing, however, with some of the resistance she’s met to NA beer being pretty grim at times. “When I first did online ads the comments I got were so vile and aggressive,” Sonja says. “It said something like: ‘NA beer is like having sex with your sister,’ and people were following up in my DMs with: ‘why are you doing this? How pointless is this.’ It was disgusting.”

“I don't know if people felt jaded because their community was built around alcohol,” she adds. “I didn't know if there was an element of me being a woman, too.”

And, in 2023, Sonja says she felt “forced” to launch court proceedings against Scottish beer giant BrewDog to protect the name of one of her beers, Shore Leave. “It’s the hardest decision I’ve had to make so far,” she tells me. Several months after Jump Ship launched its own Shore Leave NA pale ale, BrewDog launched a beer with the same name (which they then trademarked) and the tagline: ‘It’s Time to Jump Ship.’

““Consumer confidence in this space is still fragile, and I want their first alcohol-free pint to be perfect.””

— Sonja Mitchell, Jump Ship Brewing

According to a statement given to The Drinks Business in November 2023, an unnamed BrewDog spokesperson said “we are obviously surprised at this action,” but also claims it offered to “settle the matter amicably” via a collaboration brew. Despite this, Sonja decided to press on with her claim, before eventually reaching an agreement with BrewDog out of court.

“I’m really happy to be able to move on,” Sonja says.

Jump Ship is now brewing once or twice a week, 2000 litres at a time. Their line-up boasts four core beers, plus a rotating selection of seasonal releases. Many of these are inspired by produce from Sonja’s own garden, such as a chuckleberry sour and a gooseberry gose. My personal favourite is Haar, a 0.5% NEIPA with notes of pineapple and coconut straight out of my beach holiday daydreams. On draught, it’s really something else. With it, I get the feeling of light-headed summer days and lazy kisses in the park, with your toes in the grass next to your unopened book. It’s a funny association considering the word haar is a well-used Scottish term for the eerie sea mist or fog that crawls in from the North Sea.

“I am really happy to see how [Sonja] has managed to take Jump Ship to the next level,” Wear Beer’s Julio Romero Johnson tells me. “She saw the upcoming trend in low alcohol beers, and with a good product I think she’s done really well.”

The move to draught beer last year marked another milestone for Jump Ship. While Sonja tells me the transition was “daunting,” the reception has been heartening—with lines in a number of pubs across Edinburgh and Glasgow, including the famous Stand Comedy Club on York Place.

“Consumer confidence in this space is still fragile,” Sonja tells me. “And I want their first alcohol-free pint to be perfect.”

Sonja shares that she feels over the past couple of years the expectation of quality in NA beers has changed drastically. “People now expect it to taste good, not rubbish because it's alcohol-free. That’s what I wanted to happen,” she says. That must be why Jump Ship has over 350 stockists, and with it (presently) being exported as far as Winnipeg, Canada and Texas, USA.

As the owner of a small, independent brewery, Sonja feels that the NA category will only get more intense as it takes off—becoming populated with well-funded start-ups and huge competition from global brands. Competition is a given, sure, but there's a new type of challenge on the horizon, too. “There’s also a new generation coming through who have never drunk beer, because they have never drunk alcohol,” Sonja tells me. “The challenge of how to get them to try Jump Ship is one that fascinates me. What's the perfect beer style to tempt them away from a sugary soft drink, to craft non-alc?”

One thing that isn’t puzzling Sonja, at least, is her brewery’s commitment to sustainability. It's a cornerstone of the brewery, which operates on 100% renewable energy. It also uses a biomass boiler and is presently exploring a carbon audit to further reduce its environmental footprint. It’s little things like this that set Jump Ship apart beyond just Dry January—a trend that continues to grow with each passing year—Sonja’s desire and drive for not just a choice, but for change.

“What’s lovely about being in this space is that people are at a point in their lives where they’re thinking about making a change,” Sonja says.

For me that’s where a brewery like Jump Ship fits into my own lifestyle adjustments. I just hope that judgement for making such a change will be the first to be barred. Too many times have I been asked if I’m pregnant, or trying, when I’ve turned down a beer at the pub—even by total strangers. I’ve heard men being called “cowards” or other slurs in the pub when they’ve asked for tap water. Instead, now in my 30s, I’m just at a stage in my life where I don’t always need a beer. I always thought I did, though—to make friends, or appear like I had my shit together.

As I gingerly walked home from my first alcohol-free ceilidh with the phone numbers of local strangers to grab coffee with, and a huge smile on my face, I realised that maybe I never really “needed” booze at all.

Perhaps Sonja’s right. Maybe the biggest leaps do come from jumping ship.