A dog so small

When I was a kid they played lame music for middle aged people in the supermarket but this morning at Whole Foods it’s now all amazing bangers from my youth.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 24, 2025 [since deleted]

This tweet reminded me of the observation that there's been a recent generational shift in beer; that the cool craft of 15+ years ago now has something of a yer-da vibe. In these parts, the impression is strongest with BrewDog, a ship that's still afloat but, according to the business pages, is springing leak after leak.

Lest it suddenly wink out of existence, I took an afternoon spin across to their gargantuan Dublin brewpub to do a bit of catching up. From the onsite kit there was Hazy Craic, a light 3.8% ABV effort and looking quite wan and sickly in the glass, though properly hazy. If it's all hop flavoured I would be surprised because there's a lot of mango and passionfruit in it, to the point of tasting artificial and syrupy. Not that it's thick: the ABV is very much in evidence in its light body. That does mean, however, that it lacks the necessary softness for good hazy IPA. There probably isn't much point in making them at this strength. What you're left with is a mélange of tropical fruit, something that's technically not out of keeping with the style, but not done this way. I'm all for brewpub experimentation though I don't think this one worked very well.

Headquarters has two new lagers and I started with the lighter one as a palate cleanser. It's titled simply Cold Beer and is 3.4% ABV. For the bad boys of craft beer, they're really watching their excise duty overheads. The visuals here are excellent: a pristine bright gold and a perfectly Germanic fine froth on top. It smells on the sweet side, so seems to have been designed malt forward, which is probably a good idea for this sort of thing, avoiding the sharp edges that too many hops can bring to light lager. The flavour certainly doesn't shout hops, but barely whispers anything else. I guess the clue was in the name: it's extremely plain. Cold and fizzy? Check. The sweet side I picked up in the aroma manifests as a kind of marzipan effect, suggesting fermentation esters which probably aren't meant to be there but there's nothing to mask them. I'm not going to ding it on the technicalities of precision lager brewing, however, because I know next to nothing about that. The marzipan doesn't cling to the palate so this beer does its job of being cold and refreshing. Did BrewDog need a Budweiser clone, though? I guess they have data somewhere that says they do.

Fool's Gold, the 5% ABV Helles, looks altogether more serious, approaching amber in colour and with a fair amount of haze going on. So it looks like a German brewpub lager, and it smells that way too: the grainy biscuit and mild grassiness of the rustic sort of Helles. Those distinctly noble hops swing into action from the start of the flavour, suggesting salad leaves in a light herbal dressing, although without the vinegar, I'm happy to say. Low-to-no filtration, and a decent gravity, gives the taste a richness and depth which the previous two were lacking. The almond-like esters from the last beer are here too, to an extent, but masked by the green hops and a biscuity grain crispness. While it's not a stellar example of a German-style lager from a full-size brewery, I would be quite happy to find it as a kellerbier somewhere in Germany. It's quirky, and quite charming in the way it diverges from clinical Helles. Maybe there's something to this whole "craft beer" concept after all.

Who is making new amber ales in this year of our lord twenty twenty-five? BrewDog, apparently. Here's Shore Leave, only 4.3% ABV, so channelling Irish red more than anything American in its spec. Not that it looks like one. It's barely amber at all, more a tarnished brassy shade. Still, the aroma is delightfully fruity in a red way: cherries and strawberries in particular. We're back to the thin body of the early beers, however. Onto that is tacked a toasted grain crispness which does remind me of Irish red ale, and then a mild sort of bubblegum sweet side. I am unimpressed. I had hoped for a bigger malt richness; more caramel malt and a bigger new-world hop load. This is very weak tea and feels brewed to a price point, to be inoffensive, not that BrewDog would ever admit to such a thing. It is most definitely not an explosive riot of hardcore anything. I say "meh", BrewDog. Meh!

I had the strongest beer on the menu to finish: Pinball, a double IPA. It's a hazy one, 8% ABV and pale yellow, which seems to be the norm when these are done well. And it is done fairly well: there's a freshly tropical aroma of pineapple and mango, dusted with cinnamon spice and set on a vanilla base. It's all very familiar, and the likes of Whiplash and Hopfully turn out beers like this on the regular. That's not a criticism -- good beer is good beer -- but there's nothing distinctive or different going on. For a boozy, murky, hop bomb it's very well balanced, and the different elements of fruit, spice and custard unfold in a discrete and mannerly way. It's the hazy DIPA style done in a way which suggests experience and expertise. That's not exciting unless you've never had one before, but I fully accept it, and enjoyed it.

Having been an observer of the company since 2008 I will say BrewDog did once have an edge, even if it never quite measured up to the cringeworthy marketing bluster. On today's showing, that edge seems to have been dulled by the intervening years and business requirements. If I wanted a stunning craft beer experience, I don't think any of the 17 house beers on the menu would have delivered that.

I was quite shocked when I learned that the De Molen brewery and brand had been discontinued by its owners because the craft beer customer base which once supported it simply moved on and the brewery, under multinational management, never adapted to that. The momentum and capital behind BrewDog will take longer to wind down and fade out, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it happening.