Collabfest 2019

We drank 57 beers last weekend. What did you get up to?

Regular readers will know what's going on here: since 2013, we've been regular attendees at BrewDog's annual beer festival, Collabfest. Once a year, each of their bars gets together with a local brewer and makes a brand new beer: and then for one crazy weekend, all those beers go on sale simultaneously in all the bars.

When we first did this in 2013, there were only eleven BrewDog bars and eleven beers on offer, and we were able to comfortably squeeze tasters of seven of them into the gap between a couple of films at the LFF. By 2019, that number has grown to, um, 78. Luckily for us, only 69 of them were available for Collabfest in the UK: the Asian and American bars couldn't ship their offerings over here, while Reading's contribution turned out wonky and had to be scrapped at the last minute.

Still, 57 out of 69 isn't bad, is it? Depending on your interpretation of the word 'bad', obviously.

BrewDogging #63: Itaewon

April 29th-May 6th, 2019

Well, you knew it was coming. We've done Japan: we've entered Korea via the back door of Busan: and now we've made it up to Seoul, where they've got one of these bad boys.

Was BrewDog Itaewon the only reason we went to Korea in the first place? Well, no. But it was probably the final nudge that drove us into visiting the country after several years of talking about it. And after a weekend in Busan bookended by horrendous weather, you'll be pleased to hear that our week in the capital is blessed with glorious sunshine throughout. It's a week that takes in two hotels, five palaces, and countless bars, cafes and restaurants. Plus, just like Busan, there's a bridge that needs to be named and shamed for its FILTHY LIES about a light show. (But that'll have to wait for another page: this one is just looking at the bars, restaurants and hotels.)

Spank's Edinburgh Diary, Saturday 24/08/2019 (though really it's BrewDogging #66/#67: Perth/Edinburgh Airport)

Reviewed today: nothing really, it's not been that sort of day.

BrewDogging #64: Le Marais

As of Friday June 14th, 2019, The Belated Birthday Girl and I have been doing that thing we do for eighteen years. That thing has, over time, come to involve beer and travel in large quantities, so inevitably our anniversary celebrations would involve those too. And thanks to a pure fluke of timing, we could combine them all in one fell swoop.

Did you know that there's a Paris Beer Week? I know, it's a set of words that refuse to sound right together, like London Fashion Week or something. But it exists, it happens during the middle of June every year, and this year it coincided perfectly with the weekend of our anniversary. Which is handy, because we've had other Parisian beer business on our schedule for a while now.

And before you ask: yes, I know these are still appearing out of order. BrewDogging #63 is coming soon, it's just going to require a bit of a run-up to get to it.

Mostly MIF 2019, and Partly BrewDogging #65: Outpost Manchester

Friday July 12th

2310: Manchester Piccadilly station
We've arrived back in my home town once more for a weekend at the 2019 Manchester International Festival, bringing my coverage back in-house after four consecutive Festivals elsewhere. (It's running till July 21st, so at the time of writing you still may be able to catch some of it for yourself.) Over the next 48 hours or so, we'll be revelling in MIF's commitment to bringing us artistic experiences that haven't been seen before. A journey that along the way will bring to us new colour, new dimension, new value. New new new.

2350: BrewDog Manchester
Okay, so not everything here's going to be new. But as we pop in for our nightcap beers, we're immediately confronted by a DJ playing Billie Jean at top volume: it's funny how quickly that became socially acceptable again, isn't it? And as we sip on our #Mashtag2015 and Jackie O's Oil Of Aphrodite, I can't help but notice that over its seven years in the city centre, BrewDog Manchester has gradually become just another place in town where the kids come to get bladdered on a Friday night. A group of merry girls asks me to take a photo of them holding their cocktails: another group gets told off by bar staff for standing on the seats in their booth: a bloke takes his shirt off to mark something on the stroke of midnight, and is discreetly escorted from the premises shortly after. There's no trouble as such, but something essentially BrewDoggy seems missing. It makes you wonder what the new place is going to be like.

BrewDogging #61/#62: Aberdeen Union Square/Peterhead

"This sure enough is a bizarre sight in the middle of this shit."

- Mr Clean, Apocalypse Now

At the time, young Larry Fishburne was talking about a Playboy live show organised in the middle of a Vietnam warzone. Would he have reacted in the same way to BrewDog's two new Aberdeenshire bars? I'd like to think so.

BrewDogging #60: Dalston

As we enter BrewDog Dalston on its opening night, a nice young chap on the door says hello to us. It's the one big disappointment of the evening.

Thing is, at the time I thought it was a really nice touch, and that they were doing it for everybody. But within seconds of it happening, The Belated Birthday Girl told me that the chap in question was JB, BrewDog's guy in charge of bar management, and he was greeting her personally because they've met a couple of times on occasions like this. And there was me thinking I'd found a suitable role for my retirement years, standing in the doorway of a BrewDog bar and welcoming people as they entered like it was a pissed Walmart. Not to be, sadly.

BrewDogging #59: Paddington

*hard stare*

BrewDogging #58: Brixton

[Previously: Bristol, Camden, Newcastle, Birmingham, Shoreditch, Aberdeen, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Kungsholmen, Leeds, Shepherd's Bush, Nottingham, Sheffield, Dog Tap, Tate Modern†, Clapham Junction, Roppongi, Liverpool, Dundee, Bologna, Florence, Brighton, Dog Eat Dog/Angel, Brussels, Soho, Cardiff, Barcelona, Clerkenwell, DogHouse Glasgow, Rome, Castlegate, Leicester, Oslo, Gothenburg, Södermalm, Turku†, Helsinki, Gray's Inn Road†, Stirling, Norwich, Southampton, Homerton†, Berlin, Warsaw†, Leeds North Street, York, Hong Kong†, Oxford, Seven Dials, Reading, Malmo, Tallinn, Overworks, Tower Hill, Edinburgh Lothian Road, Milton Keynes, Canary Wharf]

You thought BrewDog Angel (see previous episode) had a long, drawn-out birth? Technically, they've been hyping the arrival of BrewDog Brixton since 2013, when they released a new dark beer called Brixton Porter in anticipation of its imminent opening. (Given the company's legendary tin ear for tie-ins with geographical locations, we should be grateful they didn't call it Brixton Riots.)

Brixton Porter came and went, and so did whichever site it was they had in mind for their second Sarf Landan bar. It took them a good five years to acquire an alternative location. Things have changed quite a bit over that time.

BrewDogging #24 v2: Angel

[Previously: Bristol, Camden, Newcastle, Birmingham, Shoreditch, Aberdeen, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Kungsholmen, Leeds, Shepherd's Bush, Nottingham, Sheffield, Dog Tap, Tate Modern†, Clapham Junction, Roppongi, Liverpool, Dundee, Bologna, Florence, Brighton, Dog Eat Dog Angel, Brussels, Soho, Cardiff, Barcelona, Clerkenwell, DogHouse Glasgow, Rome, Castlegate, Leicester, Oslo, Gothenburg, Södermalm, Turku†, Helsinki, Gray's Inn Road†, Stirling, Norwich, Southampton, Homerton†, Berlin, Warsaw†, Leeds North Street, York, Hong Kong†, Oxford, Seven Dials, Reading, Malmo, Tallinn, Overworks, Tower Hill, Edinburgh Lothian Road, Milton Keynes, Canary Wharf]

21-31 Essex Road, London N1 2SA. It's an address that's had so much bad luck attached to it, you'd think it was a former Indian burial ground.

Nevertheless, this oddly-numbered BrewDogging post marks a first for the series. At the top there, you'll notice that several of the bars listed have a † symbol next to their name, indicating that they've shut down since they were reviewed here (or, in one memorable case, before they were reviewed). It's a simple fact of life: they couldn't pull in enough punters, and the decision was made to kill them off. You wouldn't normally expect one of them to come back to life. But this one has - twice, technically.