gbbf 2011

[Bucking Fastard]

[QUOTE=aleandhearty;35115]I like BrewDog beers, I really do. However, I find their petulant hissy fits and frothing-at-the-mouth rabid advocacy of keg beers just as tedious as the CAMRA 'beardy-weirdies' they obviously despise.[QUOTE]

Well said,I too have really enjoyed BrewDog cask beers.I feel the following quote lifted from their blog shows an overconfidence in their own contribution to the beer brewing industry... We feel the festival lacks the stylistic diversity amongst domestic brewers that makes craft beer great. It is easy to get lost in a sea of boring, lightly hopped bland cask ales at the festival and we were determined to change that.

Now I dont know what is going to be available at the GBBF 2011 but if cask product from Marble,Oakham,Titanic,Little Ale Cart or Dark Star were to be available,I would not expect a beer lover to tag those breweries with the words,boring,lightly hopped,bland.In fact IMHO those microbreweries have ales that would put BrewDog's in the shade.

[Quinno]

[QUOTE=Bucking Fastard;35118]

Now I dont know what is going to be available at the GBBF 2011 but if cask product from Marble,Oakham,Titanic,Little Ale Cart or Dark Star were to be available,I would not expect a beer lover to tag those breweries with the words,boring,lightly hopped,bland.In fact IMHO those microbreweries have ales that would put BrewDog's in the shade.

Add to that Oakham, Ascot, Thornbridge, Celt Experience, Moor, Otley...

[Bucking Fastard]

[QUOTE=Quinno;35119]

Add to that Oakham, Ascot, Thornbridge, Celt Experience, Moor, Otley...

If we all put our minds together I expect we could come up with a very long list of breweries that can match BrewDog's beers for quality,which only makes BD 's assertions sound like marketing puff.

[oldboots]

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i have no problems with your sentiments its a forum but the uncouth language is more suited to the dark side

Was it the K word or the reference to Scotsmen? As a ginger person born in Springburn I have no problem with the latter but appologise for the former. Is there a euphemism I could use perhaps?

[NickDavies]

I strongly suspect that most of those posts were made by the same couple of people who perhaps may or may not work for BD. All part of their PR campaign, to make it look like the whole world is anti-CAMRA and that BD are the untarnished virgin hero of British brewing.
I think BD are sailing close to the wind on this one.



I'd happily attend a craft keg fest with my CAMRA hat on and hopefully enjoy some of the beers available. Our former branch chairman wasn't averse to a pint of Staro when there was no hoppy ale available at the bar, so it's not like we're Nazis....

You do wonder don't you. Camra is a membership organisation, and a pretty big one at that. It only exists because of and for its members. All slagging it off achieves is to annoy those members, and they may well, individually or collectively, retaliate in kind by avoiding your products in future. It seems a rather foolhardy way to conduct business.

[oldboots]

You do wonder don't you. Camra is a membership organisation, and a pretty big one at that. It only exists because of and for its members. All slagging it off achieves is to annoy those members, and they may well, individually or collectively, retaliate in kind by avoiding your products in future. It seems a rather foolhardy way to conduct business.

You're absolutely right about what sort of organisation CAMRA is, unfortunately most of the Bloggeratti and especially those who comment on their blogs, view CAMRA as a monolithic organisation with some sort of power to control beer consumption in the UK, to dictate how brewers brew beer and how beer must be dispensed. Hardknott Dave and his fragrant wife for example seem to think there is a conspiracy against them by CAMRA and if only CAMRA "approved" their beer their business would flourish. Others see CAMRA only as a drinking club for bearded, sandal wearing, busybodies who should get out of the 1970s, worthwhile only for 'spoons vouchers and cheap entrance to the beer festivals they run. Brewdog have positioned themselves as "revolutionaries" and sniping at CAMRA is just one facet of their marketing strategy. On the GBBF debacle we mainly are relying on the Brewdog blog for what it's about, there is nothing offical from CAMRA only a fairly feeble response from the organiser (Marc Holmes) in the blog comments.

In spite of their behaviour I won't be boycotting Brewdog beers (except the keg versions which I've drunk and disliked, I'd rather drink a better quality lager than that stuff), any more than I boycotted Marstons when the idiot in charge called CAMRA members "hobbits" and I don't think many members of CAMRA would join a boycott either although maybe more than a Marstons boycott. Lovibonds and Meantime don't seem to have to resort to stunts to sell their beers.

[Brewguru]

I have reviewed BD's beers on other beer review forums and have found them over hopped. Just because you throw a few extra kilos of the stuff into a brew doesn't, in my opinion, make you a good brewer. Nor does putting it in a keg, if the beer starts off poor. Being simplistic and to the point it's all about crafting a balance between the malt, bitterness and aroma. Get it wrong and it shows, whether in cask, keg or bottle.

[aleandhearty]

I have reviewed BD's beers on other beer review forums and have found them over hopped....Being simplistic and to the point it's all about crafting a balance between the malt, bitterness and aroma.

I suspect BrewDog don't care too much about balance. Drinkers either buy into that out on a limb hoppiness, or they don't. I have to say I do. for all their faults, any brewer that can deliver such a tasty 3.2% beer as Edge can't be all bad.

[Spinko]

You do wonder don't you. Camra is a membership organisation, and a pretty big one at that. It only exists because of and for its members. All slagging it off achieves is to annoy those members, and they may well, individually or collectively, retaliate in kind by avoiding your products in future. It seems a rather foolhardy way to conduct business.

I am a CAMRA member but I also support Brewdog's campaign to open their eyes.

CAMRa should not be holding Beer Festivals if they want to arbitrarily enforce ridiculous rules. If they want to hold Real Ale festivals, that is fine, but they should definitely not be trying to sell their quirky rules as the only beer style in town at a unified Beer festival. Call it a real ale festival if that is all they want there

But of course, that's not all they want there. They happily accept "industrial carbonated fizz". So long as it is from another country.

And they happily accept things that aren't beer, namely cider and perry, so long as they can call it "real".

Compared to these exceptions, it is pathetic that they will not allow Brewdog to display some of the finest Beers in Britain at the moment purely because 30 litre kegs needs to be replaced more often than 60 litre kegs.

Camra have shown themselves to be truly pathetic in their exclusion of Brewdog. I expect at least one tenth of people at the Great British Real Ale Festival to be wearing Brewdog tshirts.

[Brewguru]

Taken from Roger Protz himself on UK Drinks Forums, I quote:

"Let's keep things in perspective. The demand for tickets for the Great British Beer Festival this year (starts Tuesday) has been unprecedented. Beer talks and tastings were sold out as soon as they were announced. The great drinking public is beating a path to Earl's Court even if BrewDog won't be there.
It was a racing certainty that BrewDog would get themselves removed from the festival. They are controversialists in search of a cheap headline. They announced they would attend the festival even though they consider CAMRA festivals "dull and boring". Why bother to attend, then? The reason their contract was withdrawn is simple: they didn't pay for their stand by the agreed date. The festival organisers then leant over backwards to accommodate them, extending the deadline, but still no money. Before anyone says CAMRA shouldn't be obsessed with money, it has to pay for the hire of Earl's Court. GBBF makes a tiny surplus -- some years it has made no surplus at all. The festival is staged as a shop window for cask beer."

So apparently it's because they didn't cough up in time, now that could just be an excuse, most breweries are exceedingly slow at paying their bills, seems to me that there is proably more to this than meets the eye...

here is the link http://www.wine-pages.com/ubb/ultima...c;f=5;t=001398