Yahoo Finance Why a Scottish brewer sent truth-telling beer to Trump and Clinton
How can a small, family-owned beer brewer in Scotland make a name for itself in America? Innis & Gunn, brewed in Glasgow, figured that harnessing the US presidential election might help.
So the 13-year-old company released a new beer, Smoke and Mirrors, aimed at “enhancing the truth, one sip at a time,” according to the label, and made “especially for the USA.” And the company mailed cases to both the Trump and Clinton campaigns.
While the beer bottles do not explicitly refer to the candidates by name, the company has named Trump and Clinton in promotional materials for the new brew. The beer is made with licorice root, mullein (a European plant often used in medicine) and vine essence, all of which have been credited with mind-sharpening properties.
The idea came about right after the European Union referendum vote, says Innis & Gunn founder and brewmaster Dougal Sharp.
“In the pub one night,” Sharp says, “a few of the guys were talking and someone said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could make a beer that would make politicians tell the truth?’” So Innis & Gunn set about to do it.
Once it had a new recipe, Innis & Gunn settled on connecting it to Trump and Clinton, both of whom have had their honesty questioned more than once this summer. (And Trump is no stranger to Scots; his golf course in Aberdeen has been a source of controversy.)
“The world’s media eyes are on these two,” says Sharp, “the most electric campaign for as long as I can remember.”
Innis & Gunn has done something like this before: in March of this year, it released a beer marmalade, Marm & Ale, or as Innis & Gunn boasted to industry press, “spreadable beer.” Innis & Gunn’s bottled beer sells in 23 states in the US and is looking to expand.
In an industry that continues to consolidate—Anheuser-Busch InBev has gobbled up smaller brewers and is eyeing a once-unthinkable merger with SABMiller—stunts like this are the best way for brands like Innis & Gunn to stand out, Sharp argues. And in terms of this latest ploy, Sharp thinks it’s something bigger brewers like AB InBev, concerned over anything too lighthearted, would never try.
“We create stories that get people talking and that’s perhaps something that a big corporate machine can’t do,” he says. “So, am I afraid of big brewers taking over craft beer companies? No… We’re smaller and more nimble and we can do things like this, that the big guys can’t.”
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Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.
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