Another BrewDog extreme beer comes in to land, another fairly predictable pressure-group fuelled mainstream media protest takes off as a result:

• UK’s ‘strongest beer’ condemned – BBC News
• Row Brewing Over Britain’s Strongest Beer – Sky News
• Brewdog bites back at binge drinking claims after launch of 18% abv Tokyo* – The Grocer

All of the above are referring to the re-release of BrewDog’s limited run, 18.2% ABV, £9.99 per bottle Tokyo* Imperial Stout – “brewed with jasmine and cranberries added in the kettle”, dry hopped after fermentation with “a combination of North American and New Zealand Hops” and then aged “for 4 weeks on toasted vanilla French oak chips”, only available direct from BrewDog or via specialist beer retailers – and all of the above pretty much take the same faux-horrified line that surely, surely an 18.2% ABV beer is only going to make Britain’s binge-drinking culture worse, not contribute to a cure, as BrewDog’s James Watt said in a press release.

As it happens I think both suggestions are actually somewhat wide of the mark, simply because BrewDog Tokyo* costs £9.99 a bottle and even at the discounted website-order only rate of £34.99 for 6 bottles (plus £7 p&p) that’s still £42 for 3 pints of beer.

Think about it: when’s the last time you saw a regular binge-drinker who’d be prepared to pay £9.99 for a single 330ml bottle of beer, when they could probably pick up a litre bottle of 40% ABV vodka (or a.n.other bog-standard spirit) for less than that in any supermarket or off-license? And when’s the last time you saw someone who was prepared to pay £9.99 for a single bottle of beer engaging in the sort of binge-drinking that’s hitting the headlines with regard to both increasing rates of alcoholism and anti-social behaviour issues?

I’d suggest the two groups are pretty much diametrically opposed, which means that Tokyo* is highly unlikely to either worsen or ameliorate – or in fact contribute in any way – to the very many issues caused by binge-drinking that affect the UK today.

In the meantime, of course, BrewDog are revelling in the media spotlight cased by the successfully-courted controversy, which will no doubt ensure that the 1,000 bottles of UK-available Tokyo* sell out in short order. Job done there. Plus: various health watchdogs and alcohol-concern charities also get to jump up and down and shouting about precisely the wrong end of the stick whilst ticking their ‘we are being dead pro-active, we are, please give us more funding’ boxes, without actually doing anything about the widespread availability of genuinely dangerous cheap poor-quality booze. Mission accomplished for them, too.

And then there’s the poor old mainstream media, which continues to demonstrate its general irrelevance by superficially surfing the headline shallows and lazily regurgitating whatever the next outlet along is saying without stopping to think, without actually bothering to do any sort of investigation into the very real issues behind the story.

In short: business as usual all round.

More Commentary:

• Adrian Tierney-Jones summed the situation up quite nicely on his Called to the Bar blog.
• Jeff of the Gunmakers’ fame invites debate on the issue (check out the comments thread).
• Alan McLeod challenges the maths over at A Good Beer Blog.
• Mark Dredge crunches the numbers and reminisces on his student binge-drinking days over at his Pencil and Spoon blog.
• DM of DM on Beer makes a similar point or two as well.
• BrewDog-stockist The Rake Bar’s Richard Dinwoodie responds to the allegations (via the BrewDog blog).
• Pete Brown questions the wisdom of BrewDog’s apparent habit of courting controversy as a marketing strategy.

All well worth a read.