“For too long people have been sold a fizzy, insipid lie. For too long consumers have been lied to by faceless, monolithic, generic, industrial mega-corporations,” James Watt told me last year. We were barely two minutes into a long interview and Brewdog’s co-founder was already off on his favourite rant against fizzy lager and the big brewers.

So you wonder what on earth he’d make of John Dunsmore, the former boss of Scottish & Newcastle and then C&C, owners of Tennent’s, who recently jumped the fence to set up his own craft brewery, the Edinburgh Beer Factory. To add to the irony, its first beer is a lager.

Yet there is nothing insipid about Paolozzi Lager - a tasty tribute to the Leith-born sculptor and father of British pop art, Eduardo Paolozzi who died 10 years ago. Permission to use his name came from the Paolozzi Foundation who “were a bit bemused,” says Dunsmore's daughter Kirsty, “but they thought he’d have a wry smile about it.”

It is a family affair with Dunsmore’s wife as well as his daughter onboard, along with two brewers – David Kemp and Mike Meletopoulo – fresh from Heriot Watt. Aware of beer’s slightly hairy image, Kirsty told me, “it’s important we’re not too über-male but half the company’s female and the men aren’t that macho.” Like seemingly all brewers Dave and Mike do have beards but nothing scary to frighten the punters, unlike Scotland’s gloriously bushy rugby star Josh Strauss.

“We are late to the party,” says Kirsty, who admits they missed the start of the beer revolution, “but I do think craft beer will grow while the big brands will continue their long-term decline.” With only 3% of the beer market compared to over 10% in the States, she sees no reason why the sector won’t expand the same way. And in a city which boasted 40 breweries a century ago there’s plenty of catching up to do.

Choosing lager as the first beer is a bold attempt to revamp a category trashed by the big brands and flogged as a loss-leader by the supermarkets. Six weeks in the making it tastes nothing like the stuff her father worked on in a previous life. For what it’s worth, the family are big Brewdog fans.

Next Friday evening and on Saturday, Edinburgh’s Summerhall is hosting its third annual Festivale beer event. For tickets: www.summerhall.co.uk