Craft beer in Tallinn, Estonia: Tuletorn Brewing

Published: May 26, 2026

Tags: brewery visits | Estonia | Tuletorn

The Baltic craft beer scene is constantly evolving, but few recent openings have generated as much excitement as Tuletorn Brewing. Operating out of Estonia’s beautiful capital, Tallinn, this small-scale microbrewery has managed to capture the attention of beer geeks across Europe and beyond in just a couple of years. After ending our craft beer tour 2025 in Finland in CoolHead, we headed to Tallinn to find out what all the fuss around Tuletorn is about: in this post we introduce this small, family-run microbrewery, known for their excellent craft beers.

From big craft to an independent, small-scale operation

The driving force behind Tuletorn is a name very familiar to anyone tracking the European craft beer scene: Chris Pilkington. Originally from Scotland, Chris spent years working as the head brewer for larger craft breweries, most notably putting Estonia on the global beer map during his long, successful career at Põhjala. Compared to working for this larger scale craft brewery, Tuletorn is a more personal project, a leap back to the roots of artisan brewing.

Tuletorn was founded by Chris together with his wife, Kristina, and they run the project fully independently. The idea is to brew playful and interesting, high-quality craft beers in small batches, constantly creating something new.

“We brew tiny batches of the beers that spark our imagination. From DDH IPAs featuring a rotating selection of hops, to smoothie sours inspired by our favourite sweet treats, we want to bring fun back to the world of craft beer.”

The Tuletorn brewery and taproom is located in Kopli area north-west from the city center, in the former Põhjala Tehas (Põhjala Factory), a historic rubber factory complex turned into a rough, urban cultural hub. Despite the name, this area should not be confused with the current Põhjala brewery site, located in Kalamaja area. The name of the brewery is an old Estonian word for a lighthouse, literally translating to “fire tower”, and fire theme is also visible in the brewery’s logo. The lighthouse symbolises Tuletorn’s ideology to be a small, daring beacon in the world of craft brewing.

The production area of Tuletorn is a masterclass in efficiency – the space is tight, but the team has managed to fit a full-scale brewing operation inside. The beers are brewed with a 1,000-liter semi-automated brewhouse, that was sourced from the Baltic neighbors, Arpus in Latvia, and fermented in custom-made, tall and thin 2,000-liter vessels, engineered to maximize vertical space (but often not filled full). While the capacity is limited, this isn’t a limitation the crew wants to fix, and the goal is to stay small, creative, and highly agile.

From crispy lagers to thick smoothie sours

Tuletorn’s beer selection covers the entire spectrum of flavors, combining technical precision with experimentation and playfulness. The team does not compromise on the quality of the beers, and the ingredients are carefully considered for each style. There is no year-around core series, as the mentality is to keep experimenting and constantly bringing something new and creative to the market.

Tuletorn is well-known for their hop-forward IPAs in different styles, as well as for their juicy smoothie sours and playful pastry sours, but they also brew clean lagers and heavy imperial stouts, for example. Tuletorn also does a lot of collaborations, brewing limited-edition releases with world-class microbreweries from Europe and beyond. Around 60% of the production is packaged into cans, though the exact split between kegs and cans shifts depending on the style.

To mention some of our favorites of the Tuletorn beers that we tasted in autumn 2025, we loved the Mustikas blueberry ice cream smoothie sour, the Wee Brita brita-cake-inspired pastry sour brewed in collaboration with Vault City Brewing, the Moneyyy DIPA, brewed in collaboration with Finback Brewery and the Betsubara imperial pastry stout with coconut, chocolate & madagascar vanilla.

The best place to taste Tuletorn beers super fresh is of course the cozy taproom right next to the brewery. In this lovely little venue you can sip delicious beers with a view to the production area behind a glass wall. The taproom bar features 8 rotating taps, including two authentic Czech side-pull faucets that ensure their lagers are poured with the perfect, creamy head. Here it’s possible to catch taproom-exclusive experimental batches, chat with the crew and grab cold cans to go from the fridge. For those wanting a deeper look, the brewery hosts tastings and detailed brewery tours by arrangement. The taproom is easy to reach from the Tallinn city center either by tram or bus.

Tuletorn Brewing
Põhjala Tehas, Talinn
https://tuletorn.beer/
https://www.instagram.com/tuletornbeer/

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Craft Beer Nomads is a blog about artisan beer, microbreweries and craft beer culture in Europe and beyond. The blog is written by FinnsAway, a nomad couple who has been on the road since 2017, and enjoys tasting new craft beers all around the world.

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Wee Brita
May 26, 2026
A lovely Pastry Sour with heaps of strawberries and vanilla by Tuletorn from Tallinn, Estonia.
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Craft beer in Tallinn, Estonia: Tuletorn Brewing

Craft beer in Tallinn, Estonia:
Tuletorn Brewing

Craft beer in Tallinn, Estonia: Tuletorn Brewing

From big craft to an independent, small-scale operation