Does the entire Innocent Smoothies aesthetic strike you as deeply fucking irritating?

sometimes i wonder if i'm wrong about liking the taste of whatever crap I happen to be drinking or eating but then I stop worrying about it because

https://www.chemistryworld.com/feature/beer-music-to-your-taste-buds/3008206.article

This is quite a good intro to the compounds & interactions that affect a beer's taste

I think there are a lot of really nice very hoppy beers that don't have the signature metallic taste of your brew dogs

Yeah, brewdog stuff is generally... better than I'd like, given how laughable their marketing is ("fucking hell, punk beer! No reverse gear on this trip baby!"), but it doesn't rise to the level of 'good'. Too metallic as wins says.

Anyway, for all their marketing, an enthusiasm for Brewdog stuff is a pretty sure marker of a total normie (a term I never ever used until a few months ago, but am increasingly finding indispensable), one of those ironies that isn't actually that ironic.

I was just gonna say I know quite a few alt/punk kids that buy into it, I dunno if it's just for norms unless we travel down the "'alt' as normative" wormhole

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41AuZCog0uL._SX300_.jpg

I know quite a few alt/punk kids that buy into it

kids these days eh

I say kids, they'll be somewhere between actual kids and my age so y'know

anyway out here in the provinces we're a long way from reaching that post-hipsters cynicism that so many posters here like to affect, people are still loving drinking over-priced concept beer out of jam jars on wobbly tables as far as I'm aware, I keep out of them places

i wish it was affected tbrrwu, i'd like to straight-up enjoy something for once

can't even drink a pint without reflecting on the ills of capitalism nowadays

They have cans of punk ipa in Tesco in Ely, never tried it, but it seems to have reached the sticks already.

Love me a wobbly table

doesn't get more real england than a wobbly table

Don't love me a jam jar (for drinking out of, fine for containing preserves)

also good for saving your ejaculate in so that you can dunk your my little ponies in it iirc

look forward to brewdog's forthcoming 'pony cum' pale ale, hitting shelves in march

omfg

.

tough room

so this brewdog thing is just a brewhouse chain with some sort of membership club scam?

I want to hear more about NV's acquaintances that buy into this. Literally, as in their "shares" or they just like some of the beers and the branding doesn't offend?

yeah I meant they drink this stuff altho they are punks themselves and it feels like they are warm to the brand because of this

I did wonder if you were in the big smoke or not NV, it probably does make a big difference.

cf talking lager with a Polish guy in Liverpool, he was blown away by the fact that in zones 1-3 of London it's basically impossible to be further than 100 metres away from a can of Tyskie.

ya using big twice in the same sentence that's the good shit banana-fucking-man

it feels like they are warm to the brand because of this

Guess I feel like my definition of normie is wrapped up in this- receptivity to (what I find) cliched advertising tropes, and smooth integration of sense of self with these. Seems to be a more important divide than whether someone considers themselves punk/alternative or not.

yeah, that's what I was getting at with the normalcy of your self-perceived altness. tho I think it's a little more complicated, and then I don't know that they're influenced by the word "punk" in the branding so much as other aspects of it - the (lol) realness or something. I don't know, they're people I like, I'm like bg, I wish I could enjoy stuff without being repulsed by this nonsense

it's basically impossible to be more than 100 metres away from a can of Tyskie in Hull too

partly the thing I guess is that Brewdog is sold at the kind of alt-y venues that those people like to hang out whereas I'd rather be in the traditional old man pub drinking swill. altho that's also complicated by my main pub being half old man pub and half student-friendly cheapo bar

A Portuguese friend was staggered that I could get a pint of Estrella in London. Now he lives in Leyton so London things seem much less amazing.

I think punk/alt culture is a red herring here tbh. In London and I suspect other metropolitan cities its main market is young professionals who lean towards the hipster so the name is a vague gesture in the direction of that market. I suspect if you're at an actual punk gig it's still all cans of warm Red Stripe like the Good Lord intended.

It was also the first craft brewer to get really big so it was able to sell itself as the alternative to Heineken or whatever. Now there are hundreds of breweries like thatm, including loads of better ones, it just looks a bit wanky, especially as they're flush with private equity money these days.

I'm going to a hipster-ish (not really) venue on Saturday night to see an Iron Maiden tribute act, iirc they only serve over-priced craft shit, i'll report back

Also there are just a lot of credulous twats in East and South London who will buy into virtually anything with a bit of hype behind it. There was an excellent craft beer pub, Mason & Taylor, in Shoreditch for years and as soon as it became a Brewdog it was twice as full. Like I said it's probably considered a bit old hat now.

xxp absolutely my experience, at least in their own branded bars (which I've been to three of in London, so lol @ me), full of ties-off after work drinkers. Even on saturday, that seemed to be the prevailing vibe somehow.

"hipster" and other oversignified words don't fully cut it here in the sticks tbh - there are definite demographic distinctions between different venues, often class-aligned, but there are loads of blurred middle grounds and tbh to think in a Londonish way about not-London is a kind of provincial naivety of its own, in short I'm old and out of touch, what hell I know?

tbh to think in a Londonish way about not-London is a kind of provincial naivety of its own

that's a good point old timer

I'm going to a hipster-ish (not really) venue on Saturday night to see an Iron Maiden tribute act, iirc they only serve over-priced craft shit, i'll report back

https://drinksenthusiast.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/oliver-robinson-bruce-dickinson-enjoying-trooper-beer-launch.jpg

closing time at the Lord Iffy Boatrace Arms

Yeah I was only really talking about metropolitan centres. You never see this stuff in country pubs, although you could get it in provincial Wetherspoons last time I looked.

bottom line is that branding works, to some extent, and may god have mercy on our souls

"beer for punks" sounds exactly like the opposite of the punk ethic but ymmv

here, punks, a beer _just for you_!

actually that is exactly the punk ethic in 2018

arguments abt what was acceptably "real" uk punk consumption behaviour already in effect by the time of the first pistols single in nov 76

(viz mclaren: "of course the real fans aren't buying it")

imo punk doesn't want or need you, but it'll serve you beer if you show up

maybe punk was a less smarmy innocent smoothies all along

punk has been a blight on aesthetic thought since c. the date of that McLaren quote

:0

don't mind using it affectionately for kids who like tats and hardcore/post-hardcore etc

Ultimate empty signifier innit

perfectly contested signifier (which is not quite the same thing)

I wish the prevailing musocritical orthodoxy had been for anarchoDadaists or something instead tho

I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

we wish that too

mark is being more reasonable than me, it's the anger-authenticity-youth-energy nexus that rankles. I know it's not the only game, any more than privileging ideas over praxis (practice, literally!) and materiality is