Brewdog Camden at 5: what a long strange trip it’s been

Brewdog Camden at 5: what a long, strange trip it’s been

Brewdog Camden marked its 5^th birthday on Thursday. The actual public opening was on Saturday 10^th December 2011 when, some may recall, a tank was part of the opening publicity.

The bar itself is much the same, although of course the prices are a bit a higher. A pint of Punk appears to have cost £3.95 then for example.

The beer range on Thursday included some new Brewdog launches the latest Cloudwater DIPA (v10) several beers from Alesmith, an imperial stout from Evil Twin and so on. There were also beers from London breweries Howling Hops and Weird Beard.

As Des de Moor noted in a post at the time the first Brewdog opening in the Capital was a something of an event 5 years ago:

http://desdemoor.co.uk/brewdog-camden-nw1/

‘Eagerly anticipated’ certainly because the beers on offer 5 years back were likely to be ones that it was difficult or impossible to find elsewhere. That is no longer the case of course, though Brewdog bars do still innovate in terms of beer ranges from outside the UK.

What was not present then and is now is UK keg beer from ‘craft’ brewers (not a term much used at that time I think) so Brewdog now appears more in the mainstream of brewing and pubs than perhaps it was.

It also now has of course a number of London outlets including the commodious one at Shepherds Bush and the new one at Homerton, which is almost like a Brewdog local.

Certainly in London Brewdog is far from unique now in what it is doing, but it still does it very well.

One wonders where matters will be on the 10^th birthday.

I haven’t mentioned, btw, the issue of Brewdog and cask beer in this piece. I have posted on that elsewhere. Given that Brewdog is far from the only ‘craft keg only’ bar around in London these days you’d think a return to cask (not the halfway house of Dead Pony Club live) would be zeitgeist-ish. We shall see.

Beyond that, whatever you think of Brewdog, they deserve credit for widening the choice and range of beer available, in this case, in the Capital. The London beer scene would be the poorer without them.