As it touted the latest recipe change to its flagship beer Punk IPA in December, BrewDog decided to splash the news across many of the country’s billboards. The tagline? ‘Tastes like commercial suicide’. Rarely has a marketing campaign from the brewer proved so honest. This week, the one-time £2 billion company agreed a sale to a cannabis specialist for a mere £33 million.
Under the deal, Tilray Brands will acquire most of BrewDog’s British and Irish business, including the master brand, the brewery in Ellon in Scotland and 11 ‘strategic’ bars. What was once the biggest independent brewery in the UK will join a roster of North American craft breweries owned by Tilray, which is negotiating separately to buy BrewDog assets in the US and Australia.
It’s a sad fate for the Scottish brewer that did more than any other to champion craft beer in Britain. From small beginnings in head brewer Martin Dickie’s mum’s garage, the company forced taps across the country to embrace cold, hoppy ales; its combative approach to innovation only matched by its belligerence towards regulators and contempt for industry incumbents.
Inevitably, much of the blame will be put upon James Watt. As Dickie’s business partner and BrewDog frontman, Watt is controversial figure, latterly accused of creating a toxic workplace culture, being slightly free and easy with the facts behind many marketing campaigns, and – most heinously – buying up half a million pounds of shares in Heineken, the arch enemy of craft beer.
Most intolerable to many was simply his vibe: Elon Musk if he was a Scottish brewer rather than a South African trying to colonise Mars. Public appearances and reports from colleagues suggest men who are overly analytical, at times difficult to work with and perhaps not the most socially adept.
These latter attributes certainly contributed to Watt’s exit as CEO of BrewDog in 2024, some 17 years after he and Dickie first started flogging beer in earnest. Qualities that had been an asset in the company’s youth proved a liability in middle age, not least after bringing in the private equity firm TSG. Terms for the investor were sufficiently favourable, so it’s fair to assume it secured most of the proceeds from the £33m sale.
Since Watt stepped down, BrewDog has faced the brunt of a stagnant market for craft beer. As with many of its peers, rising operating costs have contributed to £37m of losses in 2024-25. Bars were closed, jobs were cut, and the brewer’s ill-judged spirits arm was amputated.
Such ‘decisive action’, in the words of a BrewDog spokesperson, could not prevent the new management from calling in the consultants. AlixPartners’ announcement earlier in February that the business is up for sale confirmed how desperate things had become.
Much of this can be put down to difficult times for anyone who makes and sells beer for a living. Last year saw the closure of 137 independent brewers in the UK, or 8% of those operating in 2024, according to the Society of Independent Brewers & Associates. Many more have been bought up and consolidated into larger groups, rather defeating the ethos of independent brewing.
BrewDog has found itself in an especially difficult position because of where it sits in the market. While it doesn’t enjoy the backing of what Watt used to deride as ‘global beer mega corporations’, who can muscle out rivals at the pumps, BrewDog is far too big to claim the mantle of a craft brewer appealing to early adoptees and beer devotees.
I know I’m not alone in feeling that old BrewDog staples like Punk IPA no longer taste as good as they once did. It is perhaps inevitable that quality is sacrificed in the quest for scale, wider distribution and price competition with the multinationals.
BrewDog’s reputation among craft beer enthusiasts has also been hampered by their treatment of crowdfund investors. The Equity for Punks scheme has long been criticised for taking punters’ money without the usual shareholder rights. The cynical bet that any rescue deal would stiff the 220,000 retail investors – or as some would put it, discount club members – has been entirely vindicated.
Other criticisms against Watt likewise land. The loss of 38 BrewDog bars and almost 500 jobs was certainly his fault. As Unite forthrightly put it: ‘A company does not lose 97% of its value in the space of nine years without catastrophic mismanagement.’
Although the average drinker won’t know or care, Watt’s personal reputation is also a liability. Alongside the other complaints, many of the hipsters who drink craft beer did not look kindly at his attending Nigel Farage’s birthday party on the arm of his fiancee, the Made in Chelsea star Georgia Toffolo.
But for all that, the fact is Watt built from scratch an entire business once worth – even at conservative estimates – hundreds of millions of pounds. He completely reinvigorated beer in the UK, forcing the multinationals he criticised to develop direct competitor beers in response, or buy out BrewDog rivals like Beavertown, Camden and Brixton.
When Punk IPA, Neck Oil and Camden Hells first appeared on the pumps they were exciting, innovative beers distinct from the lagers that most British drinkers still consume. To step inside a BrewDog bar was to experience a plethora of exciting beer styles, both from the brewer’s own taps and those given over to guests.
Much has changed in the years since, and BrewDog can no longer claim to be a strapping young punk. The revolution in beer it helped usher in has made independent brewers far more available than two decades ago, even if the recent economic crunch has made people more cautious about what they’ll spend their money on.
Watt was better placed than almost anyone to respond to these shifts. As it stands, it will fall to Tilray to continue to rationalise the business. With the youthful marketing stunts no longer feeling authentic, BrewDog needs to create a more mature image that aligns with the ageing punters who have grown up with their beers.
Perhaps it will achieve all of this, while focusing again on its roots in ‘craft beer excellence’, as Tilray chief executive Irwin Simon has promised. But it’s rather more likely that BrewDog will become another brand among many in a global beer mega corporation. Every dog has its day, and so too has BrewDog.
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