Kmflett's Blog

Brewdog Alcohol free beer bar. Dry January meets Try January

Brewdog have latched on to Dry January (& being them Try January as well) by re-opening a Draft House in Old St (central London) as an alcohol-free beer bar.

https://blog.brewdog.com/blog/we-are-opening-the-worlds-first-alcohol-free-beer-bar

Brewdog of course are good at hype and the wording is deliberate. London and elsewhere have numbers of alcohol-free bars.

Here the claim is that it is a bar selling beers which are alcohol free.

It may be the first in the world for 2020 but such bars have a long history.

Part of the background can be found in a 2015 post from those tireless analysers of all things beer, Boak and Bailey:

https://boakandbailey.com/2015/02/temperance-spectrum/

Ginger beer and other variants were of course fermented and so not entirely alcohol free (and neither are the Brewdog beers of course)

Charles Booth noted in Life and Labour of the London People (1903):

temperance drinks too have now a recognized place. Ginger beer is sold everywhere, and not infrequently kept on draught* (*it is then called Brewed Ginger Beer’ – a sort of sheep in wolf’s clothing.)

It is perhaps surprising that Brewdog haven’t combined AF with vegan only food (which they sell at Dalston, but with the normal beer range) and the wider question is whether there is any history of a brewery also muscling in on what is traditionally the territory of temperance before now.

Heineken of course are at it in the US marketing a 0% beer for Dry January

I’m not sure that temperance ever made much if any money out of their efforts to promote alternatives to drink. Their aim was firmly ideological.

If you are looking for one or indeed any reason to celebrate 2020, the current Tory Government stands in the lineage of the party that supports brewers and beer and definitely not temperance (that was the LibDems).

Labour of course backed both…