In a move that most conventional marketers would chastise as throwing the baby out with the bathwater, the craft brewing king pins at Brew Dog have thrown open the floodgates with a remarkable, and daring new initiative. The craft beer company, which was founded by Aberdeenshire friends James Watt and Martin Dickie less than a decade ago as a response to the stuffy real ale market, are giving away their entire recipe book in an elegantly compiled online document called DIY Dog.
“Many of the classic BrewDog beers were developed during our home brewing days”
By making all 215 of their recipes available to the public, the duo, who started the company via crowd funding, wish to inspire more people to make their own brews at home and follow in their footsteps. The free download (CLICK HERE) includes a manual on the equipment and ingredients needed for each beer, and even suggests food pairings for each one. It is, however, not a complete brewing guide, so you'll need to understand the basics before you start. Indeed, most of the recipes included are pretty complex, so it's certainly not recommended for beginners.
Recipes include everything from the original Punk IPA, one of the best-selling craft beers in the UK, all the way through to BrewDog's latest creation, the Jet Black Heart, as well as a vast array of beers that have only ever been available via cask at one of the company's own pubs. Each recipe has been scaled down to home-brew volumes of five gallons or 20 litres, and has been detailed in a quick fact sheet. The company describes these recipes as the keys to the BrewDog kingdom, but the owners have actively encouraged people to not just copy their brews, but to adapt them into their own recipes and pay it forward, creating a wider community of craft brewers.
“We love the sharing of knowledge, expertise and passion in the craft beer community”
Run through a crowd-funding scheme, BrewDog now employs more than 350 people and as well as a number of bars in some of the largest cities in the UK, it also has bars in Sao Paulo, Tokyo and Gothenburg. It was recently named the UK's fastest-growing food and drink company by the Sunday Times Fast Track 100. Company Co-Founder, James Watt, said of the new initiative: “Many of the classic BrewDog beers were developed during our home brewing days and we still use a home brewing 50L system to develop new beers and recipes. We have always loved the sharing of knowledge, expertise and passion in the craft beer community, and we wanted to take that spirit of collaboration to the next level with DIY Dog. The more people that home-brew, the more craft breweries will pop up and help us in the fight against global mega beer corporations, making the future brighter for craft beer.”
So is this display of monumental hubris a genius marketing move or a dramatic folly? Honestly, considering how niche the home brewing market still is, I'm going for the former. Recreating these beers to a drinkable standard would require not only a fair amount of brewing experience, but a lot of luck, some pretty expensive specialist equipment and some serious patience. Ultimately, the reason BrewDog has enjoyed so much success as a brand is because it represents a middle ground between mass produced lagers and snooty, old school cask ales. It's a gateway company into beer fandom, and the DIY Dog manual could likewise act as a gateway for many into the world of home brewing. And that's certainly no bad thing, because there can never be enough beer in the world!
DIY Dog
Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance writer and beer snob from Kidderminster in the UK.
