We received an email late last night from James Watt, Head of Stuff up at BrewDog to tell us about their latest innovation: an online creative community for fans and friends of their Zeitgeist black lager.

Take it away, James:

“There is a very unusual hook behind the Zeitgeist website. The blog will not be updated by us, but by the customer! We want to give up ownership of the blog, website and brand to the people who drink the beer.

The idea is to create a whole alternative community online on the zeitgeist site. People can blog on www.zeitgeistbeer.com about anything: beer, art, film, culture. They can upload movies, pictures and say anything they want. The idea would be that the discussion has an alternative vibe which ties in with the non-conforming message of the beer. And all someone has to do to be able to blog is to buy some beer for our online shop.

This is a brand controlled by the people not people not a brand which controls them. It is not our blog. It is not zeitgeist’s blog – it is your blog!”

There are a few rules and regs: firstly, you have to register on the Zeitgeist website. Then, you have to buy some Zeitgeist black lager from the Zeitgeist shop. At that point, you’ll be given an activation code which will allow you to participate in the blog.

To help with that second step, James has very kindly sent through a discount code for a whopping 70% (yes, seventy percent!) off purchases of Zeitgeist made via the website. So instead of £6.50, a six-pack of this incredibly tasty black lager will set you back just £1.95 (plus p&p). And a 12-pack costs £3.60 instead of the usual £12. Bargain!

And that discount code is, appropriately enough: SHEEP

N.B. the code will only work on Zeitgeistbeer.com, not the main BrewDog.com site. And I’m not entirely sure how long that discount code will be active for, so you might want to get in there sharpish.

And then, of course, you can start adding content to the blog. James has assured me that whilst BrewDog are generally happy for all sorts of content to be posted – not necessarily stuff that’s Zeitgeist or BrewDog themed – he will reserve the power of executive veto (via the ‘delete’ button) for anything deemed too unsightly or unnecessarily crap. And he hopes that in time the most active members of the Zeitgeist community will be invited to become moderators and will help keep things lively and interesting. There could also be further discount codes issued to folks who post on a regular basis… so it might be worth making a few return visits.

So, to recap: head on over to www.zeitgeistbeer.com, buy the beer at 70% off and then add your creativity to the conversation.