Every Dog Has Its Day
I have probably spilled more column inches on the subject of a certain brewery from Ellon, Aberdeenshire, than I have on any other…
https://www.londonbiermeister.co.uk/blog/in-dog-we-trust-part-1
https://www.londonbiermeister.co.uk/blog/in-dog-we-trust-part-2
https://www.londonbiermeister.co.uk/blog/hair-of-the-dog-2023
The latest twist in the tale is the announcement that advisers have been engaged to look at the future of BrewDog, with the strong implication that the future entails a small number of profitable bits being broken out and purchased with everything else being shut down.
As a separate thing, I happened to be browsing Wowcher offers and saw a good one for a burger and a flight at BrewDog. So I snapped it up, and then (rationally or not) thought that it would be good to make sure I grabbed it before the opportunity disappeared. This led me to the BrewDog bar in Wandsworth Southside, London SW18, which is an easy cycle ride from my boat. The day started badly when it wasn’t open at a time when it should have been open, but that situation rectified itself within 15 minutes.
The flight on offer consisted of four thirds of the core range. So I chose Punk, Hazy Jane, Elvis Juice and Black Heart. All, actually, excellent. Plus - and this was crucial - there was someone behind the bar who actually gave a shit. OK I was the only person in there at first, so he wasn’t overloaded with serving other customers. But he offered me a taste of the beers before I finalised my flight and, when I said that I knew them all well, he asked if I liked sours and offered tastes of the (delicious) Vault City sours that were on offer.
After the flight and the burger, I went back to the bar to taste the slightly funky offerings. I asked for a taste of the BrewDog pastry stout; my friend behind the bar warned me that it was very sweet, and indeed it was over-sweet. I ended up with a pale ale from a brewery that I rarely see and always zero in on when I do see - Sea Foam from New York’s Finback. Utterly delicious.
Then, when I secured my “Equity Punk” discount by presenting the barcode, my friend behind the bar told me that the system told him I was entitled to a free pint and a free “Mello” non-alcoholic can. So I grabbed a pint of Punk. I made a passing comment about grabbing the discounts while I still could, and he said “sure, nobody knows where we will be in a year’s time”. He volunteered the fact that he had worked for a number of brewery businesses and this was an industry wide problem as opposed to a BrewDog problem. “At least at BrewDog we have fun”. Interesting.
So basically I had some high quality beers in a good atmosphere… not quite the BrewDog narrative that you get from the media. Definitely not what you get from the Equity Punk discussion forum, where some of the loudest voices are determined to conclude that BrewDog was all a scam from the beginning, and where people are trying to demand that any buyer “has to” ensure that the Equity Punks are at least reimbursed what they paid for their shares. My view is that basically I have to suck it up for having made an investment that did not pay off.
Because of the negative brand image of BrewDog, some people are also saying that the beer must be bad, and it really isn’t. BrewDog has majored on the supermarket trade. Beer in supermarkets is a heck of a lot better than it was 20 years ago. It is never going to be as good as the very best because it has to be able to deal with a long shelf life, which means that it has to contain the necessary chemicals to preserve it. The beer that I have had in BrewDog bars - and taken away from BrewDog bars - has been better than that.
In the meantime, James Watt has signalled that he is interested in buying back in. I have never believed that JW is either the devil or the messiah. His attempts to cosplay as Elon Musk preaching a DOGE-type approach to the UK Government are deeply tedious - frankly he doesn’t have a clue how to run a Government and his own business credentials are a tad shaky. Against that, whenever I have seen him in person he has always come over as kind of vaguely pleasant, and I believe that he genuinely believed in his growth-focused business strategy. It just didn’t work.
Anyway, in the meantime I have been enjoying a more straightforward investment deal with my local brewery Mondo - £100 contribution to their crowdfund secured me a £200 bar tab which I have slowly started to make use of. Life continues to be good for a British beer drinker.