After a  few days of anticipation and some debate as to whether or not to make the journey to London for Brewdog’s grand announcement, we today learned exactly what James Watt and Martin Dickie had in mind when they proclaimed last week to their mailing list that Brewdog were about to change the World.

There was much speculation on forums and message boards but now we know. If we want our World changed alls we need to do is exchange £230 of our hard earned for a 0.0009 share in what is admitedly one of the UKs most innovative and exciting craft breweries. The aim of Brewdog is to raise a couple of million in order to expand to larger premises that will be, depending on the capital raised, as ecologically neutral on the surrounding environment as possible. I can only assume it is this ecological dream that is the world changing aspect because I know that shares can be purchased in The Black Sheep Brewery which, although not directly comparable with Brewdog, is certainly not a large listed company of the Scottish & Newcastle type.

The first thing I considered when trying to decide whether or not to try and scrape together £230 is what chance there is of seeing any return on my investment. Realistically anyone popping £230 into Brewdog is likely to lose some of that capital upon disposal, that is if you can sell the shares at all (although Brewdog have said that they hope to allow shareholders to trade on their website which would certainly boost liquidity of the shares). But, unlike if you were going to invest in Black Sheep (or any other brewery in an attempt to make profit), this is largely irrelevant.  Your £230 is buying you access to an idea, the Brewdog idea, and I will not be investing because I don’t want to throw that sort of money down an idea. Many people will feel otherwise and good luck to them. For there committment to the cause they will earn a vote at the AGM, the opportunity to exchange views and ideas on a shareholders forum, a 20% discount in the Brewdog online shop and the opportunity to go to the bar and bring back a round of drinks from ‘their’ brewery.

All of these are nice touches and if the opportunity existed for £50 I would be falling over myself to get some of the action. The problem is that I cannot reconcile spending £230 on a novelty that offers only remote chances of (most likely extremely) long term gain. So why did Brewdog not offer the same deal for a smaller shareprice? Simples. They have set themselves a target and this is how much they need to meet it. Credit to them, the Brewdog way is to grab the bull by the horns. Convincing 10,000 people to part with £230 might be harder than they think and my head is telling me that they might be stretching themselves too far too quickly. My heart on the other hand tells me that, with the business knowledge and experience that has come on board, plus some belting brews and the balls to take the plunge, Brewdog might just be able to pull this one off. I certainly wouldn’t take the £230 and bet against them making a job of it.

Anyway, there might be 10,000 people out there who don’t think £1,150 is too larger target for recouping the full £230 in the Brewdog shop!!!

Scottish micro-brewery BrewDog has hit the headlines this week with its claims about the impact of its new beer Tokyo*, which founder James Watt claims is “providing a cure to binge beer-drinking”.

His claims are based around the idea that anyone that wants to get inebriated will turn to stronger beers (such as his brewery’s 6-unit, 18% ale) and appreciate the flavour so much that they will not need to turn to “mass market, industry brewed lagers that are so bland and tasteless that you are seduced into drinking a lot of them”.

Of course, this is patently untrue – and it is more than likely that Mr. Watt knows this.

BrewDog, in its brief two-year existence is quickly becoming the rock n roll star of the micro-brewery world. As reports this week have reminded us, the company has previously flirted with controversy over a name given to one of its products that refers directly to drug-use (apparently; I wouldn’t have known said term if the BBC hadn’t informed me!)

But all publicity is good publicity and this is clearly the case here. BrewDog are now probably the most discussed brewery in the country and that can’t be a bad thing for them. I personally, love their manifesto. The aim is to target the younger market and turn them on to quality Real Ale and away from the cheap, common lagers popular amongst this demographic. In terms of Real Ale popularity, it is great achievement that such a young company, run by two clearly enterprising individuals, is taking the corporate alcohol producers head-on.

What they have also done with these statements is to highlight an issue that has plagued Britain for years; we don’t know how to appreciate alcohol consumption, certainly beyond the high-culture of fine wines.

We have never had the ‘café culture’ found abroad, where alcohol is consumed in a more respectable manner, and it is this side of the BrewDog argument that is strong. Growing up in the UK, drinking beer, wine, spirits and so on, is often more focused on quantity as opposed to quality. Although specialist bars and ale houses are growing in popularity, much of the city centre remains dominated by low-standard, low-priced alcohol which has ultimately become the norm.

Therefore, if companies like BrewDog are brewing special ales, such as Tokyo* – a run of three thousand units, of which only one thousand will be sold in the UK exclusively on the firm’s website – is this really such an issue?

All this debate has done is to highlight the country’s insecurities about its own drinking culture. BrewDog won’t change that, but at least it is putting the control back in the hands of consumers to try new and innovative ales, no matter how strong they may be.