BrewDog’s WattDickie is “world’s first spirit made from beer”

Independent Scottish brewery and bar group BrewDog has taken a departure from producing high-strength and quirky ale and lager to create its first spirit, WattDickie.

Distilled from an IPA style beer, the spirit is created using a unique “ice distillation” the details of which BrewDog is reluctant to release until patenting has been approved.

Described as “blurring the line between a spirit and a beer”, WattDickie is bottled at 35% abv with notes of “marmalade, biscuit and caramel” with some hop aromas that are added at various stages of the brewing process.

Martin Dickie, “alchemist-in-chief” of WattDickie, said: “What we have here is not beer, but its alter-ego. This is Mr Hyde. This is the shiver down the spine of the grease-slick ad-man relying on people lapping up the ‘same-old, same-old’ from their sticky bottles of snake oil. This is a drink brewed by the misfits, for the misfits. It’s a beautiful, absurd experiment.”

The spirit was unveiled at BrewDog’s Underdog speakeasy in the basement of the group’s Shoreditch bar. While WattDickie is designed to be drunk neat or with ice, the Underdog team devised two cocktails featuring the new spirit: an aperitif-style drink with Old Tom gin, WattDickie and Benedictine, and an Old Fashioned-style, with agave syrup, WattDickie, crème de cacao, star anise-infused rum and orange zest.

James Watt, co-creator of WattDickie, said: “WattDickie is beyond innovation. This is alchemy and apothecary. There was no hypothesis here, no ‘grand plan’, just an innate need to see what was possible. We went to the limits of brewing and took a match to them. WattDickie shakes maniacally at the foundations of what’s expected of us and of everything around us.”

The spirit is the latest innovation from the infamous brewery that has so far released unique products such as the high abv Tactical Nuclear Penguin, and the 55% abv The End of History, served in bottles made of dead squirrels.

WattDickie is now available at BrewDog’s 12 bars around the country, at £2.99 for a 60ml bottle. Full 700ml bottles will be available later in the year, when both sizes will be available from selected specialist retailers.