I’ll be honest from the outset, this is less a blog and more of a personal add: -

BrewDog seeks Norwegian wife, ideally with a strong background in international law and no great desire to travel within the UK.

The ever expanding BrewDog sales team has been on tour recently, with Jo heading off to Tokyo, while I was posted to Bergen Norway. Jo will be bringing you up to speed on her adventures on these pages shortly (and it looked like an amazing trip) but for the meantime back to Bergen...

When the British Government eventually force James, Martin and myself into exile- I shall be taking up residence between the snow capped mountains of this beautiful city and coordinating manoeuvres from Bergen Base Camp. I have already put the word on the street, at the various tasting events we hosted, that I shall be returning to take a wife and settle there as soon as I can convince James to pay me in Norwegian Kroner.

So, other than checking out possible neutral countries to reside in and searching for the first Mrs BrewDog, we were there on a mission – and that mission was to hijack the Whisky-Meet 2010 event which I was reliably informed would be attended by the great and the good of the Norwegian On Trade.

The Whisky Meet is hosted by Frode @ the Terminus Hotel and it did not take long for BrewDog to muscle in on the action. We were supposed to hold a small tasting event on the evening before the main show kicked off, but when the word started to spread, the event sold out 3 x over and we had to be moved to the main stage.

The packed room of largely BrewDog virgins were treated to a Led Zeppelin intro before being taken through our mainline range, breaking down all the barriers of the usual tasting event, with huge interaction, debate and great diversity in the crowd across all ages and genders.

This was also the first time that we could showcase Alpha Dog, which is 4.5% red ale, brewed specifically for the Norwegian market and will be hitting the retail outlets soon. 

From that moment on the buzz around the weekends festivities was all about the Dog and we fanned out into the night to experience the first ever keg of Punk IPA to make its way to Bergen at the Kontoret Bar (It never ceases to amaze me how great this beer is on keg). This was followed by a weekend full of follow up events around the city - most notably @ Henrick’s Beer bar where  everyone in the crowd seemed too own a share in the company and know my exact movements since I had landed due to the evil habit of Twitter. – This is the place in Bergen to find all your Craft Needs and again we packed it out with our show.

A I said, this invasion was all being executed against the back drop the Whisky Meet and we even managed to infiltrate it directly with Martin (from Cask Norway) and Amund giving a Whisky master class that perfectly matched our brews to their single malts. 

The highlight of the trip for me was when I gave the final toast at the end of dinner, on the final day to all our friends from the world of whisky as we raised a glass of Tactical Nuclear Penguin for their appreciation.

The highest praise came from Dr Koichi Inatomi – The Senior Brand Ambassador for Japanese Whiskies when he said “perfectly balanced and very bitter” – he loved that it was a completely new flavour.

So until next time Bergen I bid you a fond farewell

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Posted in - richards-updates