Tweet-sourcing is a very real thing: Journalists use it, investigators use it, anyone who engages in a Twitter fight uses it. And now, breweries use it: #Mashtag, a new beer from Scottish brewery Brew Dog, has made its official debut. Mashable reports that the beer makers let their fans on Twitter, Facebook, and their blog choose both the name and other elements of the beer. The result is an American Brown Ale made from New Zealand hops at a respectable 7.5 percent ABV – and crowned with the name #Mashtag. Brew Dog spokesperson Sarah Warman explains they swapped the “h” in hashtag out for an “m” so it is a play on words, since “mashing” is part of the beer brewing process (we see what you did there – clever). The options for a socially-centered pun are endless really: Why not InstaIPA? or Stoutstagram? How about a nice pino noir called Vine(0)? I could go on.
Mashtag won the name race, though, with 58 percent of the vote, crushing the competition.
What does this crowdsourced beer taste like? Well, the hops were aged with hazelnuts and oak chips, which sounds like a tasty combo. The podcast Beershow O’Clock tested the brand-new brew and liked what they guzzled. “For a dark beer, it has a nice sweet softness to it,” they said. “Not as bitter as I thought it would be.”
It sounds like a delicious treat – although the Beershow O’Clock guys did say it had a treacly aftertaste. But we’d still try it in the name and honor of all things Internet.
Although #Mashtag is the first beer that’s both crowdsourced and named after a facet of social media, American beer maker Sam Adams is actually the first company that used social media suggestions to come up with a democratically created beer. In 2012, the company released a Facebook app that let fans crowdsource a beer, which they then planned to serve at SXSW. The Sam Adams project didn’t give its fans quite as much input as the Brew Dog contest, though, so you could say that Brew Dog’s is the first fully crowdsourced beer. Either way, it’s probably the perfect gift for anyone who loves drunk tweeting.
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