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

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

praxis is how you get to carnigie hall iirc

*pretends typo adds clever layer to whiskered old gag*

That was the gag I was playing with tho tbf

weird how Rotten's most important moment, that none-more-snotty "we mean it, maaaaaan" became ignored by endless bores opining that meaning it is all that matters

That McLaren quote is funny though.

Love2Malcolm, but then he wasn't the one turning moments into mausoleums

weird how Rotten's most important moment

enh i could make a case for 'ever get the feeling you've been cheated' as the defining rotten and/or pistols moment but i'm still pondering suicide over brewdog's 'equity for punks' tbh

yeah OK that's a good one too

those recalcitrant rebel rousers were just out of control, man, how did the establishment survive them?

this is why my aesthetic is the Mute records '78-'84 box set and a handful of Throbbing Gristle albums, no attempts to codify an ethos there

Just to note that I am in Tesco now and they have the following Brewdog beers- "Punk IPA" "Dead Pony Club" and "Elvis Juice."

kind of want to try their grapefruit IPA to see if it's as bad as claimed, but Elvis Juice is such a terminally bad name

'dead pony club' and 'elvis juice' basically just make me think of landfill leachate

Brewdog have some distribution deal, it's even in some of the roughest Onestop branches in the UK - where the idea of a £6 4-pack is unthinkable.

elvis juice just sounds like sloshing human remains siphoned from the bottom of the king’s coffin to me

Very much the Tramp Juice versions of craft beers, they're borderline drinkable and you kid yourself they're fine because of the price.

(Actually the two NEIPAs they did with Cloudwater were pretty fine and the Vietnamese Coffee edition of Black Eyed King Imp was excellent but apart from that they're bang average.)

The comment upthread about the bars being 'tie-off after work' places is bang-on; the one in Birmingham is the only place I've been asked if I'm selling coke, then asked if I'm buying by someone else within 5 minutes when an ad agency were in there following their Christmas party. The one in Sheffield has people who know nothing about beer there, more or less including their staff after the argument I had with one of them and we once saw two girls in Bristol buy bottles and pour them in order to take selfies with the beer and handbag dogs to post on Instagram then leave with the beers untouched. I was in the one in Stirling over Christmas and it was weird, guys at the bar just drinking lager and the staff trying to trade you up with merchandise every time you bought a drink.

The exception was possibly Brewdog Berlin which seemed to have a better atmosphere, however, we only stopped in briefly on the way between Mikkeller and The Castle and it was still full of English-speakers on Christmas parties.

'dead pony club' and 'elvis juice' basically just make me think of landfill leachate

http://www.neonfiller.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/fatima-mansions-viva-dead-ponies.jpg

quite enjoy Elvis Juice but it tastes much more like grapefruit juice than beer

this feels like a strange topic for a thread revive as I can't recall Brewdog doing anything publicly stupid or even noteworthy for several months

never met anyone who is vocally enthusiastic about Brewdog's image - it feels like something you either ignore or are put off by - but presumably they exist somewhere

thank you aldo for your fine reportage

Punk IPA is pretty bog-standard "3 bottles for a fiver in Tesco Metro" stuff these days, and AFAIK, most of it is not made by Brew Dog but under licence by other big non-punk breweries.

One of their early battles was with CAMRA. Although they used to make (very good) real ale, they fell out with CAMRA (or pretended to) about something or other, and stopped, claiming their kegged, pasteurised products were far superior to cask stuff. They then went back on this, and started making it again, except they don't call it real ale, obv. they call it "Live Beer", and it's the future.

Apols if I've got any of the details wrong here, I'm not an expert.

The Oatly ones all around town have been driving me up the wall

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DHhBnkYXgAASKuk.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DIaKeouVAAEKPJh.jpg
https://i.redd.it/mt8x2ez96piz.jpg

wankers.

passive-aggressive advertising seems to be what the Innocent twee aesthetic is morphing into

I mean one of the things that the craft beer thing has been really good for is providing cold beer in the 3% range that isn't pisswater so I'm fairly grateful to Dead Pony Club and the like for that.

XXp I am waiting for someone to finally make a poster with a picture of the product and "will this do?" handwritten next to it, it can't be long now

Thanks for posting those now I know to avoid this product.