Brewery pub leads the way for top beers, service and welcoming dogs

Callie, the small black spaniel, was sitting on the bar, snoozing amid the boozing.

Quite literally, a Brewdog. The Scottish chain, which sees itself as a renegade brewery making beers – and massive profits – with a punk attitude, has grown from a bar in Aberdeen 11 years ago to a chain of 80-odd around the world. It’s now a major player. They even have hotels. (Tennent’s, are you watching?)

Earlier this year, Pub Spy had the duffest time in the Edinburgh Lothian Road branch, a soulless big cave on the ground floor of an office block, where the service came with more attitude than the beer did. Being a pub in a tourist trap (the capital), it’s little wonder the place felt like a merchandise shop more than a brewhouse. Nothing punk about it.

Cut to Perth, where dogs were sleeping on

top of the bar and musicians from the concert hall next door mingled with the punters.

We’d actually met Callie earlier in the night, asking her owner for directions to Horsecross, where we’d come to see Karine Polwart perform her brilliant Scottish Songbook LP.

Unlike the Edinburgh member of its litter, this Brewdog is a homely set-up, a tight snug opposite Horsecross and across from a kilt shop which had made tins of Punk AF. They’re famed for their strong beers but we were both driving and their new alco-free offering is more palatable than their long-standing Nanny State.

Members of the band were soon calling in for a couple after the gig, where they were warmly welcomed by fans who’d had the same idea.

There are no puggies or TV screens here, and the Brewdogs push the minimalist industrial look of poured concrete and metal caging with Polaroids of the local punters who’ve invested in their Equity For Punks crowdfunding drive in a gallery with the sign “we bought this bar”.

But Pub Spy doesn’t need to invest in a pub to want to drink in it. The reasons for wanting to come back are far simpler. Good service, good atmosphere, good beer, a good Friday feeling… and a spaniel snoozing on the bar.