Brewdog Warszawa

Jet Black Heart: by far the best thing about Brewdog Warszawa

Where to start with Brewdog? Well, they do make some excellent beers. And they do also sometimes make me laugh, for example their Sink the Bismark: 41% and 1941 being the year the Bismark was sunk. But they also annoy more than a few people, sometimes amusingly, such as the cretins at the Portman Group, and sometimes not, such as when they mocked homeless people and sex workers while they crowd-sourced funding.

The runners and riders nicely displayed

There are also the tiresome PR stunts: driving a tank down Camden High Street. Dropping stuffed cats on the City of London from a helicopter. Selling beer cased in stuffed animals. Smashing bottles of macro-lagers with a golf club. Refusing to sell Camden Town beers after the brewery was bought by beer giant AB InBev. All utterly pointless from the perspective of beer.

And then there’s the insufferable brandwank. Ranting about the big beer corporations and about “venture capitalist toads, faux angel investors and greedy bankers” is annoying enough when it’s coming from a random hipster who hasn’t got into bed with ‘the man’. But

Yes, but do some twats make good beer?

despite posting on their website that Brewdog are “destroying industrially brewed beers made by the faceless multinational corporate giants.”, Brewdog are clearly happy for their beers to be distributed by those same faceless bastards, as shown by their deal in New Zealand. And while they claim that Brewdog have “No fat cats (or dogs). No pretentious investment bankers. No venture capitalists.” the reality is that significant blocks of shares have been sold to Griffin Group LLC (whose website says they are a “boutique merchant and investment bank”) and to a very wealthy man whose CV includes stints as CEO of Allied Domecq and Scottish Power. Hardly the “punk equity” Brewdog bang on about so much.

Then there’s the Brewdog book, which says on the front cover “Break all the rules” and inside advises “You need to know precisely which rules you can break and which you can’t”. A book which claims to be advice for doing business but in reality is nothing more than more advertising for the brand. But at least the cover of the book looks like the label of their very good beer.

With all of this said, largely because I discovered their beers long before finding out about their ‘brand’, I was very much looking forward to Brewdog opening in Warsaw. I thought it would be a major drain on my pocket and possibly the new favourite bar. But it’s become neither of those things, for reasons which are good and bad.

By far the best beer usually on offer in Brewdog is the Jet Black Heart. It’s a stormingly good sweet stout that might possibly be my choice if I was told I could have one last beer before being put up against a wall and shot. And on opening night it was 16zl, which made it more than a bit of a bargain. But the next time I went it was 17zl. And the time after that it was 18zl. OK, even at 18zl it’s still a cracking pint and absolutely knocks spots off the Guinness that’s sold all over the city at 22+zl. But the price rises still stuck in the throat a bit, especially as they were blamed on the zloty losing 8% against the pound but now that the zloty has gained more than 10% against the pound their prices haven’t moved at all. Also annoying when it comes to pricing are the prices of their Polish beers. While Brewdog do deserve some credit for supporting local brewers, do they really need to charge such high prices? The kind of beers that you’ll pay 13zl or 14zl for elsewhere in the city centre (or 11zl or 12zl outside the centre) are 16zl here. Are they being priced that way to encourage people to drink the slightly more expensive Brewdog offerings?

The less said the better

One for the road

Then there are the annoying things that show lack of attention to detail. The music is always too loud. If you fancy a pint and a chat with your mates on a Saturday night, don’t bother coming here: you’ll need to shout at each other over the noise. If you fancy a couple of cheeky afternoon pints while getting a bit of work done, think twice about coming here: it’s too loud to concentrate. The line-up is a bit limited, we aren’t getting anything close to the full range of Brewdog beers: the only Dead Pony Club ale (a particular favourite of IPIP) has been in cans, not on tap, and there’s been no Nanny State, arguably the best non-alcoholic beer in the world, at all. If you want a bottle of that, you’ll have to go to Cuda, which seems more than a bit bizarre. All too often the beer is simply too cold. The Ace of Simcoe is a marvellous session IPA, exactly the kind of beer Poland needs more of, but it’s served so cold you wonder whether the barman knows he’s not pouring Zywiec and that the customers want to taste their beer. And if you want a faktura, good luck: IPIP have asked three times with no joy.

It’s impossible to not want to visit a bar that serves beer as divine as the Jet Black Heart is, so just that beer alone will keep me coming back to Brewdog. Hopefully they can sort out the rest of their niggles and demonstrate to Warsaw that Brewdog is first and foremost about some excellent beer.

Jet Black Heart: so good it needs a second photo

Brewdog
Widok 8
No listed phone number