I noticed an article on the BBC News website earlier today detailing the release of a new 1.1% ale created by the BrewDog brewery in response to their controversial 18.2% Tokyo* brew. My initial reaction was much along the lines of ‘good on them’, but all is not as it seems when one reads between the lines.
The new beer has been named, rather unimaginatively and immaturely, ‘Nanny State’. Now, BrewDog are well known for their balshy, unsubtle, in-your-face, beer names. The brewery has previously been in hot water over their naming of their Speedball brew (‘speedballing’ is the name given to the practice of combining heroin and cocaine) . This continued outlook is irresponsible and paints BrewDog in a very bad light. In my opinion, they’d be far better off engaging in a professional PR campaign rather than trying to gain headlines by being ‘edgy’ and ‘unique’. Quite simply, boys, you look ridiculous. Not only are you giving yourselves a bad name, but you’re giving beer a bad name.
BrewDog have already attempted to wind up the rest of the beer industry by referring to real ale as ‘stuffy’, declaring that their childishly-named Hardcore IPA is aimed at ‘freaks, gypsies…’, and stating that their aims are ‘breaking rules, taking risks, upsetting trends, unsettling institutions’. These are all taken straight from their website.
It’s no secret that this sort of publicity seems to be working for BrewDog, who claim to be Scotland’s largest independent brewery. Does that, however, make it right? There’s an old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity but I must say I disagree. It seems that BrewDog don’t have the brewing ability, knowledge or experience to make half decent beers so they instead opt for the boring, tired strategy of being ‘different’. Whatever happened to being ‘good’? Brewing the UK’s strongest ever beer, giving your brews childish, controversial names and courting media attention in this way is not professional and does not give a good image at all.
Of course, BrewDog are unlikely to care, seeing as they’re ‘punk’ and ‘cool’. It’s a shame beer isn’t. Promoting class A drugs, misogyny, and super-strength alcohol at young people is not responsible, is not clever, and just isn’t cricket. Wrong industry, lads.
September 28th, 2009 - 3:26 pm
They are definately naming the beers with gimicky names, i think to attract the younger generation. I suppose if the beer has a gimick, young kids will think its cool to consume large amounts of it. There is too much anti social behaviour which is mainly down to cheap and often strong beer.