BrewDog: This.Is.Lager to redefine UK drinking

In what it says is a move against ‘lager lout’ culture, cult brewer BrewDog has launched This.Is.Lager, a 4.7% abv pilsner designed to offer lager drinkers a craft beer alternative to the mass-produced norm.

According to the producer, Scotland’s largest independent brewery, This.Is.Lager is brewed with 100% malt and ten times the hops of most commercial lagers, and “takes the lager style back to its roots”.

“This.Is.Lager. redefines a beer style that has for so long been defined by shallow, listless beers undeserving of the name,” states James Watt, cofounder at BrewDog.

“Lager is often demonised or derided as the choice drink of chavs and louts, which is the result of laddish marketing that diverts attention away from taste and enjoyment and undermines the potential of lager as a creative and artisanal beer style.”

BrewDog, and its founders James Watt and Martin Dickie, have grabbed the headlines around the world with their uncompromising, and frequently controversial approach to the marketing of their much-admired beer range.

“For years, global breweries have spent millions convincing the British public that lager is a beer style best served as fizzy, tasteless liquid cardboard propped up by snappy straplines, glamorous advertising or counterfeit stories of foreign provenance,” Watt continues.

“We hope to perpetuate a movement of craft breweries blazing a new trail for lager, proving it’s a misunderstood, neglected beer style.”

The packaging for This.Is.Lager was designed by Manchester-based United Creatives. In summer 2014, BrewDog introduced new packaging across its range, designed to place the emphasis on the quality and hand-crafted nature of the beers.

The company employed one of the UK’s few remaining letterpress studios to hand-print its designs using 100 year-old metal and wood letter blocks, using a thick, uncoated paper and applying layers of ink to enhance the personality and character of the bottles.

The company also added beer styles to each product name and tasting notes on the caps to help guide newcomers to craft beer, as well as adding a three-word tag-line to each of the beers as a brief summary of their individual style.

“If we can redefine lager in the UK, we will redefine our relationship with alcohol,” claims Watt.

“We can actually start to reverse binge-drinking trends currently being tackled by toothless and misguided legislative proposals unlikely to ever see the light of day anyway.

“With the volume-driven industry leaders trying to pull the wool over drinkers’ eyes and the government trying to legislate their way out of a media-disaster cul-de-sac, it’s time we treated drinkers like adults and gave them an alternative to stack ’em high sell ’em cheap beers with no soul or taste.”

15 September 2014 - David Longfield