BrewDog's sales double

BrewDog, the maverick Scottish craft brewer, said its turnover in 2010 doubled as its range of bottled beers continued to appeal to drinkers looking for something different.

James Watt, one of the brewer's co-founders, said turnover rose to £3.4m in 2010, and taking into account contributions from its bar in Aberdeen the figure was close to £4m.

The group made a profit of £300,000, versus a break even position in 2009, he added.

The brewery was currently trying to cope with more demand than it could handle, Watt said.

"Production is around the seven million bottle-mark. We're at full tilt and could sell twice as much as we currently make," he added.

Watt said his company had received planning permission to build a new brewery near the existing site and building work would commence later this year, with an opening planned for the back end of next year.

The popularity of BrewDog's beers was a result of changing tastes among UK beer drinkers, Watt said.

"People have become disillusioned with bland, uninteresting beer," he said, arguing that the words 'bland' and 'uninteresting' could be applied to 95 per cent of the country's cask ale products as well the "cold, fizzy, tasteless" beers produced by the large national brewers.

"Small breweries in the UK don't do themselves any favours. Too many are reliant upon stuffy and traditional images and beer styles", he added, before taking another pop at CAMRA, which he argued "held the category back".

The focus in the UK was on lower strength beers that all-too-often were bereft of flavour, while in the US the range of styles and strengths helped to develop a greater offering of flavours and innovative products, Watt said.

He pointed to what he called the "US revolution" in taste and quality that was heading across the Atlantic and cited American brewer Sierra Nevada as evidence that becoming a large brewer did not mean that quality had to be sacrificed.

"Sierra Nevada is the fourth largest brewer in the US but produces amazing beers with flavour and depth. We aspire to be like that.

"We're not bothered about how big we are or become. I have no problem scaling up the size and coverage of our business in order that more people can taste our beers. What progress we make will not any way dilute the products," he said.

Meanwhile BrewDog remained on track to open its second bar, in Edinburgh, in about four weeks, Watt said, while the brewer had identified a further site in Glasgow which it hoped to have trading by the end of this summer.

"We plan to have five sites open by the end of the year, plus we're looking south of the border for opportunities too," he added.