Spinning the Web

If you’re going to sell a product, brand or company, you need to know what you’re talking about. Pitching a new exercise  bike to a health and fitness journalist without ever having used the product would just end in embarrassment and said journalist won’t take you or your agency seriously ever again.  I’m sure we’ve all done it though, blagging and PR come hand in hand don’t they? But who really enjoys those nervous, unsure feelings you get before picking up the phone and selling in a product you have never tested? I don’t. And after that first pitch, after you want to ground to swallow you up, you know it’s time to sort it out.

Lucky for me,  Manifest is a firm believer in work experience. Instead of reading a few previous press releases  and the ‘About Me’ page on a client’s website, we go the whole hog and actually do the clients job for a day.

So that brings me to the point of this blog. A client of ours, as you may know, is the mischievous scamps that go by the name of BrewDog, an independent Scottish brewery who we worked with to bring you the worlds strongest beer and an IPA laced with Viagra. We sell in stories almost weekly for the craft beer company, anything from the perfect beer for a festival to the 250% growth of the company in a year, so experiencing the BrewDog way was paramount. This is why yesterday saw myself and Sarah fly to sunny Aberdeen to partake in a day of grafting at BrewDog’s brewery in Fraserburgh!

After getting picked up at the airport by co-founder of BrewDog, James Watt in his rocket Audi (much to Sarah’s delight)  we arrived at the brewery, based on a huge industrial estate just by the sea. After a tour of the brewery, including the hypnotising bottling machine and the haunting ‘canteen of death’ (don’t ask), we got down to business. Dirty, sweaty business. For the non-beer drinkers out there, a brewery is made up of many different parts to make a beer. There are kettles for fermentation, filtrations systems, arctic freezers, but it all starts with the Mash Tun, a huge steel container which mixes two and a half tonnes of malt-goodness to give their artesianal beers the taste and aroma they’re famous for. Inside Said container is enclosed, tight and has a temperature of up to 60 Fahrenheit  - not a place you would like to stay for long. But, this was work experience, so experience it we did. I say we, I actually mean the very brave Sarah Warman. Obviously I would have put myself forward but i’m still healing from a broken collarbone you see…

Anyway. 40 minutes later and this tiny, blonde girl has cleaned out ALL of the malts in the Mash Tun. The pictures will probably describe how she looked after, as no words will do it justice. Franz, the viking like German brewer, was seriously impressed with her effort. Bravo Sarah, bravo.

The rest of the day was spent with the brilliant BrewDog team, teaching us about the different stages of brewing a beer, malts and hops, tasting notes and even a bit on Fraserburgh’s history. We left with bundles of knowledge, stomachs full of beer and a couple of goodies to boot.

But it didn’t end there! We had food to eat and more beer to drink. The scamps don’t just brew awesome beer, they own some top notch bars too and we got to sample the delights. First stop was Musa, a fusion restaurant that James bought two years ago. We were unbelievably lucky in the fact the night before had seen MasterChef winner Tim Anderson cook there, and his menu was still on offer! We feasted on haggis spring rolls, herring and miso, goats cheese ravioli, steak with lobster mash, partridge and honey and even a beer sorbet with tobacco and ginger biscuits. Amazing. Suitably stuffed, we waddled down to BrewDog Aberdeen. The pictures will do it more justice than words, but I have to say – the beer cocktails were unbelievable. Hardcore IPA mixed with rum and ginger beer? Yes please.

We conked out in the hotel after the hardest grafting we have both done in a while, aching all over and stinking of hops. All with a huge grin on our faces.

Thanks to that brilliant day at the brewery, we have returned back to blighty with a new found confidence in pitching BrewDog, and also bundles of respect and even more passion for this young team. The boss better watch out though, Sarah could be well on her way to becoming a master brewer one day.