Modern craft brewing is all about innovation and although many of the changes that take place relate to the technical side of our industry, that’s only one facet of a much bigger picture. Another often-overlooked area is social innovation. It is here that conformity can be challenged and preconceptions overturned. And our latest brewhouse collaboration is a case in point.
We have joined forces with People Like Us on a beer with a difference.
People Like Us were founded by brothers Lars and Jesper Carlsen, and are a Danish brewery who raise awareness and create jobs for autists. We invited the guys over to Scotland recently to collaborate on a beer which will be launching next month, with all proceeds going back to People Like Us to continue their amazing work in their home country.
Once they arrived in Ellon, the next step was to discuss what beer to create – but as we spent time with the guys one particular style stood out above all others. The idea of things being filtered in order to be seen as ‘pure’ or ‘normal’ was something that was returned to several times. Autists are often said to ‘have no filter,’ but to some of them they find a way to use it as an asset to discover their creativity, freed from the constraints of society.
We love this, and the way in which People Like Us raise awareness of Autism by hiring people to do what they’re good at, instead of expecting them to do what they struggle with. Every time a filter is added something unique is taken away; some of the individual is lost. Together we discussed the natural parallels in brewing, in particular with stripping flavour from a beer using filtration.
So the beer we created is an unfiltered Hefeweizen – with nothing removed and no constraints. We decided to brew the beer to 5.0% ABV and add a generous payload of fresh blueberries. Hopped with Mandarina Bavaria and fermented out with German Weizen yeast we deferred naming rights to the guys from Denmark and they aced it with The Emperor’s Blue Clothes.
Look out for this amazing beer for an even more amazing cause, coming very soon. We are planning on releasing The Emperor’s Blue Clothes on Wednesday March 7th on draft across all of our UK BrewDog Bars and at Brewers Inc. in Copenhagen. The guys from People Like Us will be hosting a very special 'Meet the People of People Like Us' event on Wednesday the 7th in BrewDog Shoreditch, so head on down to find out more about their amazing work in person.
We love collaborations – we learn so much from them. Working with People Like Us has given everyone in our brewing team a new insight into non-conformity and how innovation can take many forms; as they say, “Some things in life are better unfiltered: Hefeweizens and creativity.”You can stay up to date by joining the Facebook Event and share your experiences of how you or people you know are unfiltering the world through their thoughts and actions with the #UnfilterTheWorld hashtag on social media.
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