The End of History

The End of History.

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They did it again. I suggested in a post at the end of last year, that Brewdog were at risk of their brand descending into something along the lines of “attention seeking super strong beer makers”.

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While there’s nothing wrong with positioning yourselves as controversial, most of coverage they were getting focussed almost entirely on the strength of their beers. Short of producing ever stronger beers, which would only fulfil that image, they needed to do something to change the perception people had of them

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And they’ve done it in their usual, unique way.

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A 55% beer, which is packaged in a taxidermy animal. Now, whatever you might think of the packaging you have to admit, it’d moved the discussion away from ‘why such a strong beer?’

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They’ve nailed it with the name and ‘proposition’ too. “The End of history” Apparently, “The name derives from the famous work of philosopher Francis Fukuyama, this is to beer what democracy is to history. Fukuyama defined history as the evolution of the political system and traced this through the ages until we got the Western Democratic paradigm. For Fukuyama this was the end point of man’s political evolution and consequently the end of history.”

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Hmmm <stroky beard>

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This is a bold way of saying – we’ve just brewed an insanely strong beer. Someone *might* brew something stronger, one day, so we’re going to also make it one of the most expensive, and packaged in such an extreme way that regardless, we’ll be remembered. And they limited it to 12.

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And now that the world knows we’ve got the know-how to make the strongest, we’re going to use those skills in everything else. A bit like Cox Gomyl I mentioned in this blog. We do THIS, so we can do anything else.

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I'm curious though, now they’ve set the scene for their next beer to be something other than ‘the strongest’, what will they do to promote it? How many people know, for example, that as well as starting their own pubs, they've recently taken over MUSA, and have already held one "Dog's Dinner"

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More than one commentator has said that these guys seem to think they’re the bad boys of beer.

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Another though compares them to Bowie, and Zappa. Out there pushing the limits, challenging preconceptions, the conceptual artists of beer. Will we see more boundary-pushing, or just a beer called Moon Unit?

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Whichever it may be, despite their youth, there's much to expect, and learn from Brewdog.

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