Tue 2nd Sep 2014 - BrewDog to launch lager with free tasting BrewDog to launch lager with free tasting at bars tomorrow: The Scottish brewer and retailer BrewDog has set its sights on obliterating what it says is the "insidious culture around lager drinking" cultivated by decades of mass marketing by launching a beer that it claims takes the lager style back to its roots. The new beer, This. Is. Lager. (sic), launching tomorrow, will be a 4.7% ABV pilsner that BrewDog says is designed to offer lager drinkers a craft beer alternative to “the mass-produced lagers that still dominate the UK market”. The company said: “This. Is. Lager. is brewed with 100% malt and ten times the hops of most industrial lagers." BrewDog is offering free one-third pint tasters of This. Is. Lager. at all of its UK bars from 12 noon to 12 midnight tomorrow, Wednesday 3 September. James Watt, co-founder at BrewDog said: “This. Is. Lager. redefines a beer style that has for so long been defined by shallow, listless beers undeserving of the name. For years, global breweries have spent millions convincing the British public that lager is a beer style best served as fizzy, tasteless liquid cardboard propped up by snappy straplines, glamorous advertising or counterfeit stories of foreign provenance. We hope to perpetuate a movement of craft breweries blazing a new trail for lager, proving it’s a misunderstood, neglected beer style. Lager is often demonised or derided as the choice drink of chavs and louts, which is the result of laddish marketing that diverts attention away from taste and enjoyment and undermines the potential of lager as a creative and artisanal beer style. If we can redefine lager in the UK, we will redefine our relationship with alcohol. We can actually start to reverse binge-drinking trends currently being tackled by toothless and misguided legislative proposals unlikely to ever see the light of day anyway. With the volume-driven industry leaders trying to pull the wool over drinkers’ eyes and the government trying to legislate their way out of a media-disaster cul-de-sac, it’s time we treated drinkers like adults and gave them an alternative to stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap beers with no soul or taste. Gone are the days of lager being synonymous with extra-cold taps, lads on tour, fake Aussie accents, Burberry baseball caps and pot bellies. That is not lager. This. Is. Lager.”