BrewDogging #84: Hull

Previously, on BrewDogging: back in January, things seemed to be calming down after a rash of bar closures. We started off 2023 with the opening of a swish new bar in Wandsworth - an event that impressed fan favourite Old Lag, as he noted that BrewDog now had a solid presence in South London what with this bar, Clapham Junction and Brixton.

We haven't had the heart to tell Old Lag that just a few weeks later, both the Clapham Junction and Brixton bars were closed with no warning, along with the one in Leicester. As usual, their social media and internet presence were wiped almost immediately, not only removing the chance for anyone to say goodbye but almost, to a degree, removing them from history. I can appreciate that a clean break works better for the business, but on a human level it seems a bit wrong.

Still, we'll keep on trying to visit as many of the bars as we can while they're open, because the BrewDogging project gives us opportunities for all sorts of experiences that we wouldn't normally have. For example, the whole train of thought which started with BrewDog opening a bar in Hull about a year ago, and ended with us being forced to buy a DVD about the abolition of slavery because it was Easter.

Let's take this slowly.

BrewDogging #83: Wandsworth

Last time on BrewDogging, I called into the Upminster bar just before Christmas, and wrote about it a month later. Not too long after the post went online, I realised that there was something important that I forgot to mention. The BrewDogging post before that one was written in August 2022, the climax of a berserk week which took in visits to bars that had recently opened in Inverurie, Ellon, Waterloo and Edinburgh. Waterloo was the most attention-grabbing of the four, being the biggest bar that BrewDog – or, depending on your criteria, anyone else – had opened in the UK.

Which made it all the more awkward when a couple of weeks later, they closed down half a dozen or so of their older bars. Three of them were former Draft Houses that they’d rebranded as BrewDog pubs, which we don’t cover here. But regular readers will recognise the other three. Peterhead, one of the smaller locations on the outskirts of Aberdeen: Old Street, the alcohol-free experiment which first dropped the ‘free’ bit of the concept, and then the ‘alcohol’: and Dalston, whose terrific vegan menu – a rare deviation from the standard BrewDog nosh – will make it the most sadly missed in this household.

It’s not just happening to BrewDog, of course, and it's not just limited to the UK. It's come to light that we lost Florence some time in the last twelve months: it's possible we might have lost Itaewon as well, but nobody at BrewDog seems to want to give a straight answer as to why it’s been closed for "refurbishment" for so long. Times are tough, we get it. And yet BrewDog are still bullishly opening new bars, and making them bigger and bigger, with Waterloo and Las Vegas being the most visible examples.

There aren’t many situations where you can mention Wandsworth in the same breath as Las Vegas, but I guess this is one of them.

BrewDogging #82: Upminster

For those of you who are counting, I've been in my current Moderately Responsible Job In The Computer Industry for just over four years now. It's fun to look back on my first Christmas there, when I had to explain to my new colleagues that I was going to be spending the festive season in Cardiff: not because we knew anybody there, but because we wanted to go to a bar and get them to put a little stamp in our Beer Visas. As I said here at the time, it led to a series of awkward conversations with people who were only just getting to know me, but "I'm sure they'll get used to it eventually."

Four years later, I'm telling the same people just before Christmas 2022 that I'm going to see a panto in Hornchurch because there's a newly-opened BrewDog bar a couple of miles down the road from it. They don't bat an eyelid. See, they did get used to it.

Spank's Edinburgh Diary, Saturday 20/08/2022 (including BrewDogging #81: DogHouse Edinburgh)

Reviewed today: After Yang, Josh Elton: Early Doors, Your Name.

BrewDogging #80: Waterloo

In January 2013, I emailed The Belated Birthday Girl a picture I’d just taken of a disused tanning salon in Stockholm, and she got very excited. Seven months after that email, she came back to Stockholm with me, by which time the tanning salon had been converted into BrewDog Kungsholmen. They make BrewDog bars out of the most unlikely places, but that was the only time I could claim to have before-and-after pictures. At least, until now.

There’s a post on this site that went up in November 2007, discussing the opening day of the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras International. It’s so comprehensive a discussion that it opens with a picture of the old Eurostar terminal at Waterloo station, taken just minutes after the last train to the continent had left from there.

Fifteen years later, that terminal’s now a BrewDog bar, which makes for a rather more spectacular before-and-after comparison.

BrewDogging #78/#79: Inverurie/DogTap 2.0

“HA HA! ‘THE NEXT STOP IS...’ THAT’S FUCKIN’ HILARIOUS! ‘THE NEXT STOP IS...’”

Not now, Spectacularly Pissed And Shouty Man On The Last Bus Out Of Aberdeen Airport Who’s Apparently Never Heard Recorded Stop Announcements Before, we’re not in the mood. Mainly because we never intended to be on the last bus out of Aberdeen Airport in the first place.

We had a plan, and it was a good one. BrewDog were holding their first Annual General Meeting in three years in Aberdeen, and we were going to use our weekend up there to add a couple more of their bars to our tally (see also 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019). Flying up on the Friday evening, flying back on the Sunday evening, using the credit we'd got from British Airways when they cancelled our flights to the 2020 AGM (which never happened because of Covid) - there's a good day and a half there to fit in all our activities. And then BA took both of our flights off the schedule, meaning we now had to fly up later on Friday night and fly back earlier on Sunday afternoon. And then we had more delays on the Friday night when they gave our plane away to some tax-dodging bastards so that their flight to Jersey wouldn't be held up too long. We eventually got a replacement, which got us into Aberdeen Airport shortly before midnight and therefore onto this bus, sat behind a guy who smells like he would literally burst into flames if you lit a match within ten feet of him.

Still, as we calm down with an incredibly late Northern Monk nightcap at BrewDog Aberdeen, we reflect on how we now have a revised plan to crush that one and a half days worth of activity into a single Saturday. As long as nothing else goes wrong, we should be fine.

BrewDogging #77: Reykjavik (or C.I. part 1)

Sunday 5th June 2022

The last trip we made to a BrewDog bar outside the UK was Hamburg, which was two and a half years ago. The last trip we made to a BrewDog bar outside the UK by plane was Seoul, which was over three years ago. It's quite possible that after all this Covid nonsense, we've forgotten how to travel.

It's certainly the case that we've forgotten how to book Heathrow Express tickets three months in advance to knock them down to an acceptable price - we didn't realise that until it was too late to do anything about it. Still, it means that we start this adventure with our first ever go on the new Elizabeth line, which is currently just a rebranding of the pre-existing slow trains between Paddington and Heathrow (but will eventually connect fully with central London and the East End badlands). The trains look nice, though they're really just Overground carriages coloured in purple.

We get to the airport long before our flight's due, because you've heard the stories - aviation is broken now, and Heathrow is in a permanent state of chaos. But once we've got there, we whizz through check-in and security at a satisfyingly high speed. Our bags aren't so lucky: the baggage conveyors break down literally as we're checking in, and appear to be down across the entire airport. "Just leave the bags on the floor there, they'll get on the plane," we're told. It's a less than reassuring start, both to our journey to Reykjavik, and to a travel article that mysteriously has the words 'part 1' in its title.

BrewDogging #76: Bath

The pandemic has, among other things, made it clear how rigid a calendar this site works to: there are certain milestones that take place at the same time every year, except for the years when we’re not allowed to do that. Edinburgh in August and London Film Festival in October are the big dates: the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme in February too, to a lesser extent. And then there’s Easter, when The Belated Birthday Girl and I have made it a thing that we spend part of Easter Sunday watching a film made in whichever part of the world we find ourselves in at the time. In recent years, that’s tended to overlap conveniently with our ongoing quest to visit as many BrewDog bars worldwide as we can.

Except, again, for the years when we’re not allowed to do that. So Easter 2020 was spent in London watching 28 Days Later for grim infection-centric yoks, while Easter 2021 – and I don’t think I mentioned this at the time – was also spent in London, this time watching Rocks. (It's alright. End of review.)

Easter 2022? Well, we’re on the move again. We have a trip out of town, a relevant film, a BrewDog bar, and even a bonus city thrown in on top.

BrewDogging #75: DogHouse Manchester

So, here we are at bar number 75. I don’t mind telling you, these things are getting harder and harder to write. Back when we started in 2013, and made our way around the dozen or so BrewDog bars in existence during our first year, there were interesting little quirks to every one we visited. But as the chain’s got bigger and bigger, individuality has predictably been sidelined in favour of a standardised corporate image. The regular sized bars (like, say, Chancery Lane) have become much of a muchness: you’re left hoping for the occasional deviation from the norm.

Well, we should be getting one of those in London next year, thanks to the recent announcement of the new megabar set to open in the former Eurostar terminal at Waterloo station. From the initial press release, it seems like every idea BrewDog has ever had – both good and not-so-good – is going to be mashed up into a single location, topped off with the health and safety nightmare of a slide connecting its two stories.

Maybe this is the future for BrewDog (and, perhaps, BrewDogging): small bars opening without much fanfare, interspersed with high-profile showstoppers. And if DogHouse Manchester isn’t a showstopper, then I don’t know what is.

BrewDogging #74: Chancery Lane

Regular readers will know how Collabfest works. Every year, in the autumn, each of the BrewDog bars goes into collaboration with a local brewery, and they make a beer together. And then over a single four-day weekend - this year it was October 21st to 24th - all those beers go on sale in BrewDog bars simultaneously. Some years it clashes with the London Film Festival, some years it doesn't, but either way The Belated Birthday Girl and I have been to every Collabfest since 2013. (Even last year's, which was undertaken at home with cans because of the you-know-what.)

As always, the problem is that no single bar is capable of selling every single Collabfest beer simultaneously - this year there were 66 on offer in the UK - so a schedule has to be drawn up saying which beers will be on offer in which bars over the four days. Because The BBG is privy to Secret Knowledge, she had a spreadsheet with precisely that information on it, which we used to plot out which of the bars in London we'd need to visit on particular days to maximise our beer intake. And it was while poring over this spreadsheet that I found myself asking the following question:

"Wait, there's a bar in Chancery Lane now?"

This is how far it's gone now - BrewDog are opening bars and we're not noticing.