5 Things we are excited about in 2013

1) The Dystopian Puppet Hobby Centre

Our Old Fraserburgh Brewery has now been turned into a crazy little brewing laboratory, somewhat questionably dubbed the ‘Dystopian Puppet Hobby Centre’. We have already collaborated with Brodies on a Tayberry Berliner Weisse, brewed a toasted hazelnut porter with our bar managers and have stepped up our barrel ageing program in Fraserburgh too.

Brewing in small batches is central to what we do and retaining the old site will enable us to do this as well as produce slightly larger batches of our core range beers at our awesome new Ellon brewery. You can look forward to barrel aged beers, sour beers and a whole host of other cool stuff coming from Fraserburgh over the next 12 months.

Long Live Dystopian Puppets.

2) Cicerone

Cicerone is the most well known and respected beer sommelier qualification on the planet. You can find out more here https://cicerone.org.  Cicerone Certification Program offers independent assessment and certification on:

• Beer Storage, Sales and Service
• Beer Styles and Culture
• Beer Tasting and Flavors
• Brewing Ingredients and Processes
• Pairing Beer with Food

We are taking Cicerone founder Ray Daniels over to the UK in April to run the first ever Certified Cicerone exams in Europe. There are 3 qualifications levels in the program:

• Certified Beer Server
• Certified Cicerone
• Master Cicerone (there are currently only 6 of these in the world!)

Some of our team have already passed the first level and are studying hard for the tough Certified Cicerone level exam which includes oral, written and tasting components. Every member of the team (including James & Martin) earn themselves a pay rise by passing each level. We are completely committed to education and promoting better understanding of craft beer and believe having as many of our team with these qualifications as possible will help us be even more evangelical and share even more craft beer passion.

3) Watt Dickie

It is a secret. Sharks might be involved.

4) Our 2013 Punk AGM

We are pretty sure this will be THE best AGM the world has ever seen. Full details to follow. This is happening on the 22^nd of June in Aberdeen (at the Aberdeen Exhibition & Conference Centre) with an open day at the new brewery on Sunday the 23^rd.

5) International BrewDog Bars & BrewDog's Beer Academy

BrewDog Stockholm is due to open in April 2013. BrewDog Sao Paulo is due to open in June 2013. We are currently also looking at opening 2 other bars outside the UK in 2013 as the craft beer revolution goes global.

We are also looking for a venue in London for our BrewDog Beer Academy:  a bottle shop, home brewing supply shop, 10 barrel craft brewery with interactive brewing sessions, home brewing classes and a BrewDog bar all rolled into one.

Our new brewery is pretty exciting too. But we speak about that enough.

Craft Beer for the People.

Oh and the latest edition of Hop Propaganda is also available now.