Free beer for life tattoo stunt sparks fury over BrewDog bar

By Oliver Farrimond

A CONTROVERSIAL Scots brewer has sparked outrage by offering free beer for life to anyone who gets their logo tattooed onto themselves at the opening of their first bar.

BrewDog, who have caused anger previously over the strength of some of their ales, are opening a pub in Aberdeen and are planning the promotional stun on the opening night,

James Watt, co-founder and managing director of BrewDog, said: “We’re going to have a tattoo artist in the pub on the opening night and we’re offering free beer for life to anyone who will have the BrewDog logo tattooed on their body.

“I think that we might get the tattoos ourselves – it only seems fair if we’re expecting other people to want to do the same.”

The Aberdeen branch – which will be called “The BrewDog Bar” is planned to open in mid-September of this year, and planning has been fully signed off and approved.

But the plan has caused outrage.

Row over “world’s strongest lager”

By Paul Thornton

ALCOHOL campaigners have hit out at a Scottish brewery who have started selling a 40 per cent beer.

WEST, a Glasgow run firm, have started importing Schorschbock, the world’s strongest lager, from Germany.

The drink overtakes BrewDog’s Tactical Nuclear Penguin as the nation’s strongest beer.

BrewDog – a Fraserburgh brewery – faced similar criticism when it launched the 32 per cent beer last November.

WEST are selling the heavy brew in their award winning restaurant on Glasgow Green and insist they will limit sales of the lager to one measure per customer.

BrewDog launches staggeringly strong beer

By Rory Reynolds

A SCOTS brewery has caused a storm after launching the world’s strongest beer on the day that the Scottish Government fought to keep the Alcohol Bill alive.

BrewDog – who already sell an 18.2 per cent beer called Tokyo* – launched Tactical Nuclear Penguin after 16 months of aging at artic temperatures.

The beer – which costs a staggering £30 per 330ml bottle – has brought the firm under fire from the Government and alcohol campaign groups for flaunting their product’s strength.

Jack Law, chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland, said the move was a “deeply cynical marketing ploy” by the brewing firm.

He said: “BrewDog are piggybacking on what is a very serious issue for Scotland.

New beer available at £10 a bottle

By ALEXANDER LAWRIE

A TINY Scots brewery has unveiled their latest alcoholic creation – a beer costing £10 a BOTTLE.

Brewdog’s new beer – the Atlantic IPA – is the first commercially available sea-aged beer in more two centuries.

Founder James Watt justified its’ hefty price tag saying he spent two months aboard a mackerel trawler in the North Atlantic with eight barrels of the expensive booze.

The intrepid businessman claims he survived 60-foot waves, Force 10 storms and killer whale infested waters to bring the 200-year-old recipe to fruition.

Brewers named beer ‘speedball’ to annoy critics

By Cara Sulieman

THE COMPANY behind the controversial Speedball beer has said they gave it the name temporarily – to give their critics something to complain about.

After years of grumbling from the Portman Group over beers called Hop Rocker, Punk IPA and Rip Tide, Scottish brewers Brewdog decided they had had enough.

Knowing that the name Speedball would cause a tide of outrage, Director Martin Dickie emblazed his bottles with the cheeky moniker.

He said: “It was basically us having a go back at them for being stupid and trying to ban a beer that has the word “aggressive” in the description.

“That’s why we called it a slightly provocative name and called it a Class A Strong Ale, but it comes down to a person’s perception.”

Three of the company’s other brews use the word ‘aggressive’ in the ale’s description on the back of the bottle.

The Portman Group had made a number of complaints about the use of the word, leading Martin and his business partner James Watt to respond with a drink they could really complain about.

Martin said: “The idea from the outset was that we would use it to wind them up a bit and then it would go back to its original name Dogma.”

Dogma is the name used for the ale in America and will be the one adopted by all future batches of the bottles in the UK.

But far from being satisfied by the headline-grabbing Speedball joke, Martin thinks that the Portman Group’s reaction has been equally unacceptable.

He said: “Strawberries are described as being Class A in the supermarket; Speedball is also the name of a film and a computer game.

“How many people in the general public actually know that Speedball is the name for a combination of cocaine and heroin? Not many I would think.

“They don’t give the general public any credibility as to what they might want themselves, people are perfectly capable of making their own minds up and saying ‘I want to buy that.’

“In the whole of the UK we have sold 1,100 bottles of the beer, it is an extremely hard to find, exclusive beer that we sell in very small quantities.

“Of the bottles sold how many people have went on to take drugs because they tried it? How many actual drug users have bought it because of the name? It is just stupid.”

Since its launch, Speedball has caused controversy amongst politicians and the drinks industry.

The term speedballing is slang for a combination of heroin and cocaine, and is the drug that killed both River Phoenix and John Belushi.

Earlier this month, the Portman Group, who monitor the social responsibility of the alcohol industry, ruled that the name Speedball was unacceptable and asked shops to remove it from their shelves.