Beyond Punk IPA a beer culture that is passing into history?
The news that Brewdog are to shut 10 bars this week has led to a range of media commentary.
The media don’t generally write about beer beyond frequent reports that teens and twenties have given up drinking it and reports of financial results in the business pages.
There are of course writers who do know their beer that can be found in the MSM. Pete Brown has a regular Sunday Times column, and Melissa Cole, Adrian Tierney Jones (Daily Star) and Laura Hadland can be found quite regularly.
Articles about the future of Brewdog or lack of one, have appeared in the Telegraph and New Statesman (and perhaps elsewhere. I’ll aim to do one for the Culture Matters site). Here its less than obvious that the writers are that familiar with beer or Brewdog pubs. Even so they get the TSG private equity issues (presumably having read the recent FT coverage).
The pieces are of course paywalled but the final para of the New Statesman article speaks to wider cultural issues. So does a Telegraph piece (again paywalled) which will appear on-line and possibly on print on 26th July about pubs that are currently thriving including a trio of very well known London hostelries. Here the writer has clearly been in the pub, drunk the beer and talked to pub owners. I’ll post on that later. Meanwhile the NS
So is this the beginning of the end for BrewDog? Have we reached peak Punk? The world is a very different place now to what it was in 2007. The try-hard PR stunts, the private equity, and the controversial employment practises – all under the inauthentic guise of “punk” – feels, in 2025, deeply uncool. So, drink up your Lost Lager. It’s almost time for last orders.
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