Blending invention with convention
How three bold brands are making traditional alcohol in an untraditional way
Our recent work with Asahi Super Dry, featuring the Japanese-inspired Kanpai London sake brewery, got us thinking about brands that are bringing genuine modernity and innovation to traditional alcohol categories.
We all know that the alcohol category can be a very traditional place. Which makes sense, as a lot of brands, recipes and techniques have been passed down for generations, requiring exact mashing temperatures or specified distilling times. But there is obviously a lot of innovation in the alcohol industry too. You can’t move for a new flavour or finish or botanical or bottling. Except most of it’s not really true innovation. Not really. It’s wiggle room within a strict set of category laws. The same, just tweaked a bit. But the brands we’re truly excited about are the ones taking us in new directions, and perhaps even reinvigorating their category in the process. Opening our eyes to the bold new world beyond the conventional distillery and brewery walls.
It can take a lot of bravery or will power to do something really different. Here are three success stories:
BrewDog are the obvious category-smashers. They are the punk rockers of beer, exploding onto the scene in a shock wave PR and attitude. They ruffled the feathers of the altogether more genteel British beer industry, taking up the mantle of the craft beer revolutionaries and constantly shouting (loudly) from the rooftops. Yet they succeeded in making beer relevant and compelling again, stomping on the UK’s fuddy-duddy image of old people sipping warm ale.
What’s interesting is that the beer is still traditionally brewed, but it’s just everything surrounding the beer was completely refreshed (and pushed to the limit – especially in the case of the world’s strongest beer at 55% ABV!). Their pack designs screamed modernity. They had a foul-mouthed manifesto. They’re based in Scotland not Burton-on-Trent. They were brewed on an industrial estate rather than in a beautiful ancient brewery. They had young and opinionated founders. They had a new take on the category and how to talk to their drinkers. It’s certainly revitalised the beer sector.
A lot of people won’t have heard of Kanpai London. We certainly hadn’t until our work for Asahi Super Dry beer and our series of ‘Curiosity Collective’ features led us to its graffiti-covered walls in deepest south London.
Sake is an ancient drink made with polished rice and perfected over hundreds of years; best known as the preferred tipple of Japan. It’s subtle and delicate in flavour with a quick, clean (or ‘Karakuchi’) finish, making it the perfect complement to sushi or rice dishes. That’s why it’s so unusual to find a sake brewery in Peckham, rather than Kyoto, founded by people called Tom and Lucy Wilson!
Sake fascinated the Wilsons after an inspiring trip to Japan. Like all good stories, it started as a hobby at home but got serious when they started perfecting their art in brew-school in Japan. Every expression in their range of sakes has been traditionally brewed (did you know sake is a beer not a wine or spirit?), but given a Western twist. As they eloquently say, ‘Japanese traditions, London style’.
Although resolutely traditional, Kanpai London is also resolutely innovative. They have reinvented sake for a European audience, creating the UK’s first sake brewery. They brew their sake for a Western palate – to be more full-bodied and suit people who love craft beers, gins, Sunday roasts and curries rather than ‘cleaner’ tastes. They perfect their art in an industrial unit. They have colourful hipster packaging. And they’re made in Peckham for goodness sake!
To find out more about these traditional innovators, take a look at our short film.
We would also love it if you’d support Kanpai London by buying a bottle of sake from their online shop.
Whisk(e)y is one of the most ancient and traditional of spirit categories, one carefully and tightly controlled (at least in Scotland) by all-powerful Scotch Whisky Association laws. It makes it doubly difficult to innovate in whisky beyond unusual cask finishes. That’s why Ailsa Bay have not so much reinvented whisky, but given it a 21st century makeover.
The Ailsa Bay Distillery, on the west coast of Scotland, is one of the most high-tech and advanced in the world, with the whole whisky-making process easily controlled by one person in a control room.
So it was only natural that this technology positively impacted their whiskies, with each expression crafted using advanced data analytics to get exactly the right balance of flavour – a proprietary technique that assessed the liquid by both peat parts per million (PPPM) and sweet parts per million (SPPM).
This ‘analytics over alchemy’ approach allows them to do what other distilleries can’t – to precisely control the flavour, to an almost molecular level, of each of their whiskies. We were lucky enough to work on the brand identity, so wrapped this scientific approach up using a ‘generative art’ look and feel – one that used distillery data to create responsive beauty imagery that would appeal to a new tech-savvy audience.
We live in a time with more rules and traditions for making alcohol than ever before. But we also live in a time of inspiration. Stimulation. Pop-up brands and punk attitudes. One where consumers are constantly crying out for something new. So, to the beer-shaking brewers and the whisky-hacking distillers, we’ve just got one thing to say – we’re a captive audience and we’re looking forward to what comes next.