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Source: Daily Mail, LondonAug.mini storage 22--FOUR years ago, James Watt spent two exhausting months on a North Sea trawler, catching herring to make ends meet.Today he is excitedly looking forward to his own TV show, airing next month in the US.The transformation is all thanks to the rapid growth of BrewDog, the award- winning brewer he co-founded in 2007 during breaks from fishing.But while some self-made men forge their rags-to-riches story on the back of 6am jogs and wheatgrass smoothies, Watt has done it all while swigging from a bottle of beer.That's par for the course at BrewDog, which has embraced a 'punk' ethos by gleefully cheeking the industry's big players.'Too many people think beer begins with Carling and Stella,' laments the 31-year-old 'Captain' of BrewDog, a name inspired by Watt's sadly deceased chocolate labrador Sweep. 'They don't care what they're making. We want to put flavour and integrity and passion back into people's glasses.'His assault on 'big beer' has even taken physical form. 'We went clay-pigeon shooting with cans of Tennent's, ten-pin bowling with bottles of Budweiser and played golf with cans of Stella . . . that was good fun.'Such stunts are run-of-the-mill for a firm that hired a dwarf to stand outside the Houses of Parliament lobbying, successfully as it turned out, for the right to serve beer in a two-thirds-of-a-pint glass.It has also experimented with making the world's strongest beers, from the 32pc Tactical Nuclear Penguin to 55pc throat-burner The End of History.Esquire magazine's TV arm liked BrewDog's moxie so much it has signed up Watt and co-founder Martin Dickie to present a TV series about craft beer in the US.But 'behind all the anarchy there's a very stable profitable company', insists Watt.From humble beginnings in a small warehouse near Aberdeen, the firm's last set of results showed an impressive pounds sterling 2.5m profit on turnover of pounds sterling 20m.So would BrewDog ever succumb to the allure of a megabucks takeover by the likes of Diageo or SAB Miller?'It would go against everything we believe in. I could think of nothing worse than sitting by and watching a big company destroy everything we've worked so hard for, says Watt. 'We love beer . . . everyone here lives and dies by what's in the glass.'The firm's approach to finance has been equally idiosyncratic. Its 'Equity for Punks' fund-raising scheme offers beer lovers the chance to buy shares at pounds sterling 95 a pop, with a limit on trading until 2015.In return, investors get a 5pc discount in the 12 BrewDog bars, a 20pc discount in its online shop and an invitation to the annual meeting, 'basically just a huge party with beer'.The latest share sale has raised pounds sterling 2.9m on the way to a target of pounds sterling 4m by the end of the year.Including two previous offers, BrewDog has raised nearly pounds sterling 6m from 12,500 investors, many of whom had never oself storagened a share.'Our long-term goal is a public listing, perhaps on AIM,' says Watt. From a standing start, BrewDog sales have grown by an average 167pc over five years, but it still employs just 210 people.Some 60pc of sales come from overseas, while BrewDog bars are soon to open in Stockholm, Sao Paolo, Berlin, Brussels, Tokyo and New Delhi.Attracting international drinkers has proved easier than charming Britons, a fact that brings Watt back to his favourite subject.'This [UK] market is dominated by multi-national, faceless mega-corporations, making the lowest common denominator, homogenised, bland product, spending millions on advertising to convince people that's what good beer is.'By contrast, the craft beer revolution is old news in the US and Scandinavia. But Watt is increasingly optimistic about Britain, where new brewers are springing up every day.'More people will get disillusioned with mass-market beer. We want to accelerate that change.'Major alcohol firms haven't taken kindly to the disdain for their wares that accompanies BrewDog's belief in its own. Watt's advertising stunts, which have involved placing big brewers' logos on BrewDog posters in a rather unflattering light, have triggered angry phone calls.He also fell foul of the Advertising Standards Authority, after using some rather fruity language in BrewDog advertising.T HE intervention left the outwardly placid Scotsman fuming and he later stirred the hornet's nest by deploying a well-known but unprintable epithet to describe the folks at the ASA.'You get beer companies with such misleading ads . . . things like Stella made with only four ingredients. No it's not. Or Carling's ad, made with 100pc barley. No, it's got wheat and rice. These ads are misleading but the ASA chooses to spend it's time on us.'Watt is also unimpressed with the way the Government ditched minimum alcohol pricing. 'Alcohol imposes a cost on society,' he concedes. 'The biggest problem is big beer companies discounting to less than cost price to drive promotions.'So why did David Cameron drop minimum pricing. 'Lobbying by big alcohol companies,' he shrugs.But isn't more upmarket beer something of a luxury in a recession? 'For what it costs, craft beer represents the best quality gourmet, artisanal food product on the planet,' he counters, citing his own Punk IPA.'That beer will have twice as much malt, 35-40pc more hops, it will have taken four times as long to make.'Watt talks beer like a sommelier talks wine. And that's precisely the gospel BrewDog wants to spread.'It's not just so that you can get drunk, fall over, buy a kebab and wake up with a hangover.''Life's too short to drink bad beer.'It's a good motto to raise a glass to. But at 10am, it's too early even for a BrewDog.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 Daily Mail (London, ) Visit the Daily Mail (London, ) at .dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉