BrewDog unveil first beer-based spirit WattDickie

FIRST it gave us super-strength beers like “Sink the Bismark”, “Tactical Nuclear Penguin” and “The End of History”, complete with bottles wrapped in dead squirrels.

The WattDickie packaging. Picture: BrewDog

Now Ellon-based Brewdog is expanding into spirits after inventing a drink that is made by distilling an India pale ale (IPA).

The spirit – named “WattDickie” after Brewdog founders Martin Dickie and James Watt – contains 35 per cent alcohol by volume (ABV), making it weaker than some of the firm’s beers.

Dickie and Watt are remaining tight-lipped about the production process for the tipple “until its patent is approved”. But, in typically colourful style, Watt said: “What we have here is not beer, but its alter-ego. This is Mr Hyde.

“This is the shiver down the spine of the grease-slick ad-man relying on people lapping up the ‘same-old, same-old’ from their sticky bottles of snake oil.

“This is a drink brewed by the misfits, for the misfits. It’s a beautiful, absurd experiment.”

The drink is already on sale at the company’s Underdog bar and will be offered at its other 12 pubs later this month.

Initially, the spirit will go on sale in small 60ml bottles, with full-sized 700ml being introduced later in the year.

News of Brewdog’s expansion into the spirits market came a day after accountancy firm Zolfo Cooper hailed the Aberdeenshire firm as the UK’s fastest-growing bar or restaurant operator, beating celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s chain of Italian eateries and Stefan King’s G1 Group.

Zolfo Cooper’s “profit tracker” index said that Brewdog has returned compound annual profit growth of 193.3 per cent, rising from £100,000 in 2009 to £600,000 in 2011. The firm invested £5 million to shift production from Fraserburgh to a purpose-built site in Ellon.