Thursday 28 October 2010

Dog amongst the pigeons

Tee hee, James Watt of BrewDog – never knowingly uncontroversial – has said that keg is the future of craft beer in Britain.

“I don’t think cask is an appealing way to get people into beer,” said Watt. “Cask is more sleepy, stuffy, traditional and just has this kind of stigma attached to it which isn’t going to get young people excited.

“It’s all CAMRA, beards, sandals, beer bellies, hanging out at train stations at the weekend. We think keg beers could be the future of craft beers in the UK.”

Watt also argued keg better suits the beer styles the company produces.
Keg also has the advantage of allowing bars to stock interesting and unusual draught beers where they don’t have the turnover for cask.

It would be amusing to see a few CAMRA fuddy-duddies squirming if forced to make a choice between cask Greene King IPA and keg Punk IPA.

10 comments:

  1. And it's a fact that most keg beer sold in beer bars sells for that premium The Cask Report thinks cask can attract.

    Could just be that they are interesting and unusual, imported and higher ABV, of course...

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  2. theres nothing wrong with Greene King Ipa if its kept properly, which is down to good cellarmanship, something that keg actually discourages.

    secondly I dont think I want to be in a pub that doesnt have enough turnover of beer to be able to offer the occasional unusual beer , because it suggests the pub isnt getting enough of the "footfall" to sell anything. Id rather be in a pub that does the simple things but does them well,and is popular as a result, which means it then has scope to experiment.

    and as for the Brewdog boys, well as autumn follows summer and as surely as winter is next,they will have to grow up eventually.

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  3. No squirming here. I don't like keg bitter and never have done - I'd much rather have a mediocre cask beer than a "craft beer" on keg.
    I'm with Melissa - BD are inveterate coat-trailers and publicity hounds, and by the law of diminishing returns they're having to work harder (and annoy more people) in order to make the same splash. Incidentally, I've had brilliant and ho-hum beers from BrewDog, and almost without exception the brilliant ones have been on cask and the ho-hum in bottle. They're shooting themselves in the foot as well as antagonising CAMRA for no good reason.

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  4. Of course, BrewDog's new Aberdeen bar serves only keg beers.

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  5. Brew Dog all bark and no bite. Nowt but a range a mediocre beers hyped up to the hilt. Wouldn't surprise me if it turned out their 'brewing process' involved adding drops of hop concentrate to tankers full of Fosters.

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  6. Brewdogs midget stunt was much better, but then again I like midgets.

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  7. In reply to your poll on the left, I had some keg Brewdog Punk IPA in Pivni in York today. It was miles better than the cask equivalent. However, I spent the rest of the afternoon drinking mostly cask Moorhouses beer. Keg is great, but cask certainly isn't dead.

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  8. Martin, Cambridge31 October 2010 at 12:00

    Brew Dog makes some brilliant tasting beers, but of course it's equally possible for a pub to serve keg badly if lines aren't clean etc.

    Just got back from Stasbourg where I found a few pubs with some fantastic craft Alsatian beers, lovingly presented and poured, and much better than many standard cask beers, let alone French lagers.

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  9. No squirming from me either - it would be a half of the GK and a pint of the Punk. I can't see the problem.

    As for Brew Dog, apart from a few bloggers with agendas to pursue, no-one of any consequence is going to treat this as the self serving publicity stunt that it so obviously is.

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  10. Of course that should have read:

    "....no-one of any consequence is going to treat this as anything other than the self serving publicity stunt that it is".

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