Takeovers Taking Over

Toby Mckenzie barrels down the stairs – literally – straining under the heft of a key keg of Witless III. Thumping the cardboard-sheathed, Redwillow-filled beachball on the floor of the Hanging Bat, he stands up, introduces his wife, and looks pleased to be shot of it. That’s not surprising, as the ‘beer in a bag in a box’ has been with the Mckenzies for hours; in the car up the motorway from Macclesfield, then through the tram-shot Edinburgh one-way system, and even via the lobby of a hotel they had checked into (the staff offering to keep the thing in a fridge, unaware it wasn’t to be staying with them). For a tap takeover, this is commitment indeed.*

* Although, they had an easier time of it than Andy from Summer Wine, who once famously carried a keg up to Edinburgh on the train

Only three months ago, I wrote about the best way for breweries to get the message out there; in person. Meet the Brewer events, tap takeovers, farmers markets, off-licence tastings. Give people that link between the product and the producer. Grow the brand by making customers familiar with you and your beer. Events such as the Redwillow takeover of the Hanging Bat have since continued in Edinburgh at a frenetic pace – necessitating beer fans such as the roguishly handsome Calum here to write hit-lists on their own bodies, to simply remind them what to have (eighteen taps having been turned over to Toby’s beers).

The problem is, sometimes the popularity of these events combines with the sheer force of numbers of British brewers, and you get more than one takeover happening on the same night. Providence! What to do? Well, you power through a few thirds at one, and then head off to the next. After knocking back a few of Redwillow’s fantastic beers – the pick being the sherbety fizzle of Witless I (on keg) and the straight-up magnificence of the black IPA Soulless (on cask) – it was off to the Bow Bar. Huddersfield’s Hand Drawn Monkey weren’t there in person, but four of their beers were (plus, ironically, two of Redwillow’s Witless series we’d just been drinking on the other side of the Grassmarket).

123.45 IBU is the standout here, a dark, roasty cracker of a beer. Brewed in collaboration with Peterborough’s Bexar County Brewery, it’s an oily, resinous 7%er. Chopper, on the other hand, is a bit harsh on the taste, perhaps – despite the awesome Predator reference. HDM’s beers certainly have an imaginative side to them – I’m sure they would have loved the fact that the entire pub had a go at producing their own hand-drawn monkeys (predictably, with mixed results). By the time we left, the Bow’s whisky shelves were papered with numerous yellow canvases, each depicting a tiny alcohol-fuelled simian…