From Punk to Pawternity

Travel Distilled visits the BrewDog Brewery and Distillery in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

A brewery tour at BrewDog is decidedly different, but you’d be disappointed if it wasn’t, at the punk brewers’ home in Aberdeenshire in north-east Scotland. For a start, our tour guide, the jovial Doug, is also a brewery worker who is carrying in boxes as we arrive at the bar/reception.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” he says, thrusting a can of their flagship Punk IPA into everyone’s hands while we wait. “Because… why not?” he says.

In the reception we admire a scale-model of the brewery, as Doug returns.

‘That’s made entirely out of Lego,” he tells us, “and was done by a postman, Ian Prise. Ian has been a regular in our Aberdeen bar since day one, and we discovered his hobby was making things out of Lego. So we asked him to do a scale-model of the brewery. It’s got 37,000 pieces and is copied from the original architectural plans. He recently did one for our brewery in Columbus, Ohio, and it took him 400 hours.”

Lego model at the BrewDog Brewery and Distillery in Aberdeenshire, Scotland — BrewDog in Lego

We climb a set of stairs into the BrewDog offices, which are totally open-plan.

“If you want to talk to someone,” says Doug, “you just have to stand up to see if they’re at their desk. BrewDog really believes in looking after its staff. Everyone loves working here. We have paid maternity leave, paid paternity leave, and paid pawternity leave. A lot of the staff have dogs, and if your dog has a puppy you get an extra week’s paid leave so you can help with the house-training.”

All of BrewDog’s workers, no matter where in the world or what their role is, participate equally in their Unicorn Fund, which shares out 10% of the company’s profits every year. Given their rate of expansion, that can’t be chicken-feed.

BrewDog was started in 2007 by co-founders James Watt and Martin Dickie. The two friends, being Scottish, thought that there was no point in paying for beer if you could make it yourself. They were always experimental brews, and one in particular, Punk IPA, proved so popular with their friends that everyone told them they should make it commercially.

The two got the chance to meet the renowned beer and whisky writer Michael Jackson in a London pub, and asked his opinion of one of their 8% ABV stouts that they had aged in a whisky cask. “This is really good beer,” he told them, advising them to quit their jobs and make beer for a living instead. They took out a £30,000 bank loan, and BrewDog was up and running.

The first beer they made was called Punk IPA, setting out their alternative agenda from the start. It’s still one of their most popular beers today. They then heard that the giant British supermarket chain, Tesco, was running a competition to find new craft beers in order to expand their range.

“It was a great opportunity for them,” Doug tells us, “and they couldn’t believe it when one day they heard they’d won fourth place. Then the next day they heard they’d won third place too. Next day the second place was announced, and it was BrewDog again. Then the next day they heard they’d won first place as well!”

Success brought its problems, though, as Tesco wanted them to provide 20,000 bottles a week to go into 500 stores, which was way beyond their production capacity. It was still just the two friends brewing and filling bottles by hand, and Tesco wanted their first deliveries in four months. Of course we can do that, they told Tesco.

Inside the BrewDog Brewery and Distillery in Aberdeenshire, Scotland — LoneWolf, BrewDog’s Spirits Range

They went back to the bank to ask for another £150,000 in order to expand and meet Tesco’s orders, but the bank turned them down as they were falling behind in paying off the original loan. This was back in 2009 when crowdfunding was a very new concept, so BrewDog came up with the idea of asking their fans and friends to fund the expansion and created their Equity Punk scheme. They’ve continued to finance the company’s expansion in this way ever since.

And expansion continues apace. In 2012 they moved from their original home in Fraserburgh to a much bigger brewery in Ellon. They outgrew that and bought two adjacent buildings as companies moved out of the industrial estate where they’re located. They then added a distillery, and built a separate building which they call The Overworks. Here they’re experimenting with sour beers, especially, and with barrel-ageing.

Experimental Brews in The Overworks at the BrewDog Brewery and Distillery in Aberdeenshire, Scotland — Experimental Brews in The Overworks

BrewDog also has breweries in the USA, Australia, and Germany. They built the world’s first craft beer hotel in Columbus, Ohio, and they also have 82 bars around the world. They also recently added their BrewDog Kennels in Columbus and in Aberdeen, where you can stay in accommodation above one of the BrewDog Bars. More Kennels are on the way. Despite all this growth and international expansion, BrewDog is still very much a company with a human touch, as our guide Doug explains.

“Here the week ends at Punk O’Clock on Friday, when someone pops a can of beer on your desk and says ‘You’re done, it’s the weekend, go and enjoy it.'”