With Friday’s news that a new Brewdog bar is to open next month, mere weeks after the opening of Brewdog Soho, people were asking whether we have too many Brewdog venues in London. If it was a Guardian article it would be irritatingly titled “Have we reached peak Brewdog?”
If my maths is right I count seven Brewdog bars in the capital, including the “gourmet hot-dog” venue in Angel, Dog Eat Dog. My response to the above question is no, clearly not. I’m not a Brewdog shareholder, nor am I a fanboy. I often cringe at both the brewery’s antics and its attempt to position itself as an anarchic upstart. It’s not – this is simple marketing, and I just wish the brewery would say so. However, London is one of the most populated cities in the world, and while it has a growing number of bars selling fantastic beers, we can always use more.
Ideally, I’d prefer to see more diversity rather than an exponential rise in Brewdog bars. But no-one else is in a position to bring us such good beer on such a scale. To be honest I tend to drink from the guest list when I visit a Brewdog bar, but without it I’d never have come across this beer from Modern times that simply blew my mind. My only worry is with the current rate of US craft brewery acquisitions and Brewdog’s silly response that the guest list will become very limited…
But for now the answer is no, there aren’t enough Brewdog bars in London, and there won’t be until I can drop into one five minutes from my work for a post-work beer, or for Sunday brunch in my particular locale of north London. We need more and better beer, and Brewdog has long been at the vanguard of this mission, and long may it continue to be so.