Brew Dog expensive and noisy ...

Originally posted by BenH
I’ve found the Edinburgh bar to be much better over the past 6-12 months. They’ve typically had 6 guest lines on when I’ve been in with only 1 or 2 of them being British beer, not that British beer is an issue and 8-10 of their own lines. I went in December on a random night and the guest list had Speedway, Hel en Verdomenis, some BA imperial stout from Mikkeller (cognac black hole I think) and 3 other high end beers that I can’t remember. No other pub in Edinburgh would ever have that line up on for a standard nothing special school night especially when you factor in their own lines which imo have been pretty good lately.

The staff in general across all bars i visit seem better trained and less ’dogwashed’, they seem to have a bit more freedom to do what they want bar to bar and will give their own honest opinion instead of ’everything is awesome’.

I like the bar in Edinburgh but it doesn’t quite cater for the ticker market which probably accounts for most of the people reading this. I always visit at least one of the London bars when I’m down, Sheps Bush is defo a tickers bar, always have a few new beers on when I visit.

I think the bottle selection in BD bars is excellent while stocks last. It went through a bad patch a couple of years ago but they’ve secured some pretty spectacular bottles in the past year. I think the prices in all bars (and online) are reasonable too. A lot of the bottles they get are more expensive when found elsewhere in this country, if found.

So aye, basically I’m a fan of Brewdog bars

Originally posted by pricey290483

Originally posted by McNeillR
I thought this was in response to the Pricey guy’s review (and his subsequent LOL contribution with "carat beef clarkenwell").
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What was up with my review?

I enjoyed this thread more than most other threads this year. Really interesting cross section of opinions.
I took a non beer drinking friend into Sheps Bush bar and the bar person, sorry didn’t register their age, was happy to give tasters til we found one they liked. The range there is good if expensive.
Camden bar I quite like. Shame the £5 burger seems to have stopped
Shoreditch less likeable but always picked up a few rates there. Good staff.
Birmingham one we walked in and out as too busy and music too load. Mind you it was Saturday at 1800.
Overall I still like BrewDog bars but I do tend to drink their guests more than standard BrewDog beers. I will drink new BD beers over the guests first.

As for place ratings I have been into enough disappointing GBG pubs not to always believe what I read

Two overall points:

Now that they’re paying "the living wage" to contracted staff http://www.brewdog.com/blog-article/brewdog-staff-to-receive-living-wage] they advised: "This will also have a positive knock-on effect on all hourly paid positions, whether they are in our bars or at the brewery." which I’m assuming is a bit of a pay bump - and assuming London will get more p/h than elsewhere.
They’ve had staff who’ve moved on to similar bars in elevated positions across the board, their turnover I doubt is high because people leave the industry but foray elsewhere.

Regarding cask...don’t forget as a brewery they did offer cask ORIGINALLY and James had said (Garvie may add further) they’ve looked at bringing it back, but I’ve no idea how it would fit into their current production setup and don’t think he ever mentioned it being put into their bars. That would be hilarious.

Originally posted by harrisoni
As for place ratings I have been into enough disappointing GBG pubs not to always believe what I read

just for the record, ive nothing particular against the brewdog bars ive been in, and like nearly every one else think there staff are very friendly and helpfull (though BD edinburgh could tweet more)

all my comments have been aimed at "Give BD a low overall score if it aint your thing but Dont Fuck me over on selection... Please "

I still think its perfectly reasonable for someone to score it lower for selection than there local watering hole if they find the selection in BD less to their liking.

I could walk into a bar selling hundreds of Macro Lagers, but im never going to give it a good selection score as there would be nothing there for me.

And compared to some where like Cloister or the Bow bar that offers a similar number of taps. But a mix of cask and keg i would say its a poorer selection

I know one Ratebeerian that if I took him to a BD bar would not order or want a beer. Instead he would ask which was the next decent cask pub we would go to. For him the selection would be a low score. But then he doesn’t do place ratings either so rather irrelevant. But shock horror some people on RB don’t like keg beer only pubs in the UK where the heritage of good beer has been cask.
Am currently drinking Old Dairy Snow Top on cask which is better than the Time and Tide Calista IPA on keg I had before it in the same pub. I like to have the choice. And in BD there is no choice but I know that before I go in. So keg selection in a BD bar is fine and I wouldn’t score it down on beer selection cos it don’t do cask. It would be better if it did in my opinion but hey you can’t always get what you want and it’s better to want what you’ve got than wish for something you don’t have.
Man this Snow Top is good.

It’s an interesting point and while we clearly all don’t agree on how we should score the place rating components and what the rules would be (if there were any), I think we can all agree that there shouldn’t be scoring rules and we can all just keep scoring however the fuck we want by our own rules. If you want to score down for no cask, do it. If you want to score down because the kegs don’t rotate quickly, do it. If you want to score down because there aren’t enough new ticks, do it. If you disagree with someone scoring down for those reasons then shut the fuck up and quietly mull over your disdain for their opinion. I mean that in a ’calling out individuals’ sense which hasn’t been done in this thread, so it was good to have this conversation in the context that it has been had. It’s easy to be under the illusion that everyone else should think in the same way that you do regardless of how right you think you are.

Originally posted by BenH
It’s easy to be under the illusion that everyone else should think in the same way that you do regardless of how right you think you are.