In 2007, in an Ellon garage, in the north-east of Scotland, two young beer enthusiasts-James Watt and Martin Dickie-put their most rebellious creature into circulation. They called her punk IPA. Today that beer becomes of age and looks back with the awareness of having changed the rules of the game.
At the time the European market was dominated by industrial concentration camps: uniform products, easy, not inclined to amaze. Punk Ipa arrived as a shock, declaredly “unconventional” and built to overturn the idea of what could be a pint. The slogan, “Craft Beer for the People”, was more than an advertising manifesto: it became the flag of a movement that would have made Brewdog a global brand and the Scottish IPA an icon for millions of enthusiasts.
Eighteen years later, the path does not appear linear but coherent. Punk IPA has adapted, improving production and selection techniques of raw materials, without however losing its character. The intense aroma of hops remains the distinctive trait of a beer that has learned to grow by remaining itself. It is this balance between evolution and identity that allowed her to cross almost two decades without losing attraction.
Today, in the Brewdog catalog, Punk Ipa remains the most recognizable brand, the one that summarizes the original spirit of the brewery. With its 5.4 alcoholic degrees, an intense golden color and an aromatic plot built on American and New Zealand hops, it maintains faith with the promise of the origins. The nose hit the citrus and tropical notes – grapefruit, passion fruit, pineapple – while a long, fresh, pleasantly fruity ending emerges on the palate.
No longer the irreverent novelty of the past, but not even a “normalized” beer: Punk Ipa remains a challenge to the conventions, a flag of that craft revolution that conquered the world from a Scottish garage. And at eighteen years, rather than looking back, it seems ready to defend once again the role of icon, showing that adulthood is not necessarily synonymous with conformism.
Since 2022 in Italy the Scottish Brewdog brand has been distributed in Retail by Royal Swinkel Family Breweries NV, the Holding of the Swinkel Family Brewers group, 100 percent independent brewer’s reality and led by the same family for seven generations. A company born in Lieshout, in the Netherlands, with the Bavaria brewery, and has expanded over the years to understand other productive realities: De Molen in Bodepraven, Palm and De Hoot in Steenhuffel, Rodenbach to Roeselare and, outside Europe, Habesha in Debre Birhan in Ethiopia. The family also collaborates with the Trappist Brewery de Koningshoeven in Berkel-Enschot. The group also has two ill -intentions, including Holland Malt, capable of producing almost 400 thousand tons per year, as well as Cerex, which provides extracts and malt compounds.
In 2019 the overall production was 8 million hectoliters of beer and over 800 thousand of soft drinks. To complete the picture is Bier & Co, among the main European importers of special beers, joined the Swinkels galaxy in 2018.