BrewDog "Join Forces" With Draft House

Teeny tiny micro brewery BrewDog today surprised the beer industry by "joining forces" with well known craft beer pub chain, Draft House.

In a move that isn't at all like one of the macro-breweries taking over a micro brewery, today sees Draft House owner Charlie McVeigh hand over the reigns to David McDowell, the MD of BrewDog bars.

McDowell praised McVeigh in the press release circulated from the BrewDog website this morning saying "Charlie has done an absolutely amazing job building the business to this size, we had to break open all our ceramic piggy banks to be able to afford his brand" McDowell continued "Effectively though we are creating one killer team, ruining an awesome collection of craft beer bars!"

Reactions have been mixed to this news today with some people asking whether or not BrewDog will take out the cask beer taps in favour of more evil keg lines whilst others have asked excitedly, in true craft beer fashion, whether or not they will be able to use their 'Spoons Equity For Punks vouchers in the Draft Houses now.

Some people are even more cynical saying that BrewDog have only brought the Draft House chain so that they can get rid of the final million pints of Out Of Date Punk IPA they've been trying to force on people for god knows how long!

Time will tell we suppose.

Beer Circus Coming to London

Brewdog and CAMRA?

Oooooh, Brewdog are going to have a bar at CAMRA's Great British Beer Festival this year. I'm looking forward to it. There's something about these two organisations that seems to get peoples creative juices flowing. It's because one stands for tradition and one stands for progression in whatever form. They are the polar opposites, night and day, Laurel and Hardy, Jay and Silent Bob.
I'm no different, CAMRA can infuriate me like a grumpy old git complaining about the price of beer* and Brewdog can annoy me like a screaming child on the bus to work when I have a bastard behind the eyes.
There's an irony that both of them feed off each other so easily, controversy it seems does create odd bedfellows.

Both have been in our insular beery headlines recently with their respective antics/quotes, not for the first time and certainly not for the last time. Brewdog with their cask ale is boring blah blah blah and CAMRAs Chairman Shirley Valentine getting all upetty about bloggers and our perpetual need to drink only the next beer**. Brewdogs stance is interesting this time though because they have publicly slammed CAMRA and cask conditioned ale whilst at the same time getting a stall at GBBF. The posturing and grandstanding is all getting a bit blurred now with both parties accusing each other of our popular sport of naval gazing. It's all about the beer in the end though, isn't it?

Brewdog will serving kegged beer at GBBF, I believe it's going to be Keykegged which I think suits CAMRAs 'no extraneous CO2 rule as no gas touches the beer. I was half expecting Brewdog to do something stupid like sneak a keg in but now they have clarified the Keykeg issue I'm just expecting Penguin suits and a shit load of Ratebeer fan boys dribbling over the Brewdog bar. We shall see, I'm too old to be a fan-boy and too young to be a beardy so you'll be able to find me watching from the sidelines with interest seeing how this one plays out.
The Beer Monkey has covered this too, you can read his blog here.


*That's a whole other argument though.
** If that was actually true we'd either 1) never drink any beer, or 2) be dead from liver failure.