Hair of the Dog 2023
Last Saturday saw me once again enjoying a Brewdog “Annual General Mayhem”. Whereas last July I had ventured all the way up to Aberdeen (https://www.londonbiermeister.co.uk/blog/in-dog-we-trust-part-2), this time around it was the slightly less demanding journey from Battersea to Waterloo.
After the events of last year, Brewdog announced that this time they would be holding a ticketed event streamed across a number of their top bars, including their new Mega Bar at London Waterloo. This engendered a certain amount of controversy. The “Equity Punk Forum” was running hot with excoriating criticism of the decision not to stage a fully fledged in person event in Scotland - the reason for not doing so being that it had made a loss. Many of the critics, I suspect, had been the ones whingeing about the shortcomings of last year - drink queues, choice of beer, etc.
They may also have been the same people who take to the Forum to lament that they have been unable to find buyers for their shares at a price that they find acceptable. The Forum does feature adverts from people offering to facilitate share trading. The snag is… many people including me bought their Equity Punk stake at £25 per share, and the market price on this secondary market is closer to £8. I am resigned to the fact that this was not my smartest investment. But there is nothing I can do about it except hang on for the ride and enjoy the benefits. Which do include some good deals in their online shop - I have stocked up on Punk, Planet Pale and Lost Lager, and also picked up some less ubiquitous offerings such as 5 AM Saint red ale, the Hop Fiction pale and the Craft Diaries DIPA.
Brewdog has had another fun year pissing people off. They nominated themselves an “anti-sponsor” of the World Cup, adapting the FIFA slogan to “Eat, Sleep, Bribe Football” and announcing that profits from sales of Lost Lager during the World Cup would be donated to Qatari human rights charities. This had the (probably desired) effect of riling up their UK critics. Some noted that they continued to sell beer in Qatar. The union Unite reverted to the “Punks with Purpose” criticisms of Brewdog for their own workforce practices. You might argue that the admittedly rather challenging experience that some have had working for Brewdog doesn’t quite equate to the Qatari migrant worker experience… I suspect that James Watt knew exactly what he was doing and persisted with his ongoing philosophy of all publicity being good publicity.
They also sponsored Tough Mudder in Finsbury Park… which is now being denounced in the Guardian for having turned Finsbury Park into a large mud bath, which is in turn sparking a fierce defence from the participants about the money that it brought in for the local council. So far, so Punk.
It was the first time I had been to the Waterloo bar and I have to say it is pretty stunning. The sheer scale is quite something and it is beautifully done out, right down to the coffee bar, the bowling alley and the slide that offers a quick way to get from the first floor to the ground floor.
I arrived for the streamed business talk by James Watt and Martin Dickie. The deal was that a £10 ticket got you a can of Punk and one beer from the bar - so you roughly broke even, and you enjoyed the occasion including the excellent live music (both the headliner Newton Faulkner and electro-pop singer harpist Tatanya were great). Finding my bearings, I noticed that there was a bit of excitement building around a man who was making his way into the bar. I saw the trademark reversed baseball cap. This was indeed James Watt. This being England, people were quite reserved - I tweeted at the time that it was a bit like a Royal Garden Party when the King had been spotted but people didn’t want to push themselves forward.
James gave a brief intro speech, including the self deprecating “was anyone in Aberdeen last year? [I had an irrational sense of pride that I was one of the few of us who had been] Did you manage to get served here a bit more quickly?”. Then it cut to the video message that he and Martin had recorded (with the odd experience of everyone being able to see James sitting nearby looking at his phone).
The business talk was all upbeat - more sales, more beers, more bars. Last year there had been a brief reference to profitability as measured in EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) - this year there was none. Last year there had been some reassuring words about corporate governance - this year none. In other words, Brewdog continues to be a business built around sentiment and hype. Which can of course work - as long as we all believe in the Brewdog fairy, maybe it will stay healthy.
There was some interesting stuff, especially the emphasis on supermarket sales. Brewdog are now the leaders in UK supermarket craft beer sales, with Punk, Lost, Hazy Jane and Elvis Juice leading the way, and a particularly strong tendency for Lost to attract drinkers to other craft beer.
Afterwards, James was milling around. I thought why not, and joined the relatively small group of people waiting to chat to him. I got the handshake and the selfie. I said the things I wanted to say to him - i.e. that I hoped he hadn’t taken the criticism of last year’s event too seriously, and that I hoped they were doing OK in terms of sustainable business and cash flow. As expected, he was suitably gracious and a bit vague…in so far as I could hear what he was saying above the music.
Anyway, the beer. I looked for some of the interesting ones at the bar and enjoyed a good late afternoon /early evening. My sequence was:
- Chaos Magic NEIPA - a bit stronger and more flavourful than Hazy Jane
- Sour cherry and cacao imperial stout (BBNO / Emperors collab) - 11%, incredibly rich
- Wizard of Spades imperial stout (Salt Brewery) - lovely, slightly lagging behind the other imperial stout
- Big Dumb DIPA
- Born to Die DIPA - my favourite of the two DIPAs - described on the website as a “liquid time bomb”
My head was a little delicate the following morning - that was some strong stuff. Like last year, I went away enthused, happy, and wishing Brewdog well albeit not with complete confidence.
