BrewDog ‘unfazed’ by copy-cats as it releases all of its beers recipes online
BrewDog has made the recipes of all of its 216 beers publicly available today (25 February) in a bid to engage the home brewing community, but insists that its corporate competitors “don’t have the reputation” to successfully copy its products.
In a company blog post the craft brewer instructs the home brewing community to “copy them, tear them to pieces, bastardise them, adapt them, but most of all, enjoy them”, while also encouraging them to share their results on social media.
Speaking to Marketing Week, the brand’s head of marketing Sarah Warman said BrewDog was keen to “give back” to the home brewing community as its founders originally started off as home brewers themselves.
“It’s all about the spirit of collaboration. That’s something that we’ve always done. If you look at the recipes, they include collaborations with other breweries and now we’re extending that to the home brewing community so they can get involved as well,” said Warman.
“It’s obviously very difficult for us to home brew with each of those craft beer fans around the world, and this is now an opportunity for them to do that and collaborate with BrewDog and scale up in their own way.”
Warman added that the company is not worried about its competitors stealing its recipes due to BrewDog’s unique brewing abilities and strong brand reputation.
She explained: “If anyone can replicate the beers and do it as well as us, then good luck to them. They’re not going to manage. The versions we have released are scaled down to home brewing recipes, so it’s slightly different if you’re brewing them on a bigger scale.
“If someone wants to give that a bash then they’re more than welcome to, but they obviously don’t have the reputation behind them or the balls to release their own recipes in the first place, so they probably won’t do as well as we have out of it.”
While the brand is not planning any marketing activity around the release of its recipes, it will be launching more home brewing initiatives in the future.
“We’re launching Dalston Hopworks later this year, which will be a site in London where you can come and brew one of our larger kits with our experts on hand to help. This should hopefully launch around March/April time. We’re also looking at selling home brewing kits online as well – home brewing will be quite a big thing for us this year,” Warman added.
Home brewing has become a big focus for beer brands. Heineken, for example, has launched a home beer machine The Sub which can be loaded with canisters holding up to two litres of beer. The Sub enables consumers to pour their own glasses of Heineken, Affligem, Desperados and several other Heineken beers in the comfort of their home.
Last November, Heineken’s global marketing director Søren Hagh told Marketing Week: “You can only fit so many beers into Tesco. We can potentially allow consumers to brew thousands of different beers, so the idea of a fresh brew at home is exciting. It will become the norm but not overnight. It won’t be a billion-pound business by next year, sure, but we’re confident we will find a way to make it one.”
