Winner of ‘solid gold’ BrewDog beer finds can is mostly brass

A man who won a can of BrewDog beer advertised as “solid gold” and worth £15,000 by the company has been left disappointed after it transpired the can was made mostly from brass.

As part of a promotional campaign, the Scottish Brewer and its co-founder and current CEO James Watt had advertised the chance to discover a “solid gold” can of its flagship Punk IPA beer.

However, Mark Craig, who hails from Lisburn, Northern Ireland, was left somewhat underwhelmed after becoming one of just 50 people to find the gold can in their case of beer.

Craig was told by gold traders that if the can really did turn out to be made from solid gold, then it could be worth up to £10,000 based on its weight – despite being hollow. He had hoped to fund his wedding by selling the gold.

“Sales of Punk presumably went through the roof,” Craig said, per The Guardian.

“You saw people claiming that that they’d ordered 20 cases to stock up, all on the basis of it being a ‘solid gold’ can.

“I can’t imagine a similar frenzy for a novelty can, which is what it ended up being.”

Unfortunately, The Guardian reports that a certificate provided by BrewDog shows that the can is actually only gold-plated. It’s coated in gold plating three thousandths of a millimetre thick.

Despite this, the brewer said it stood by its valuation of the cans at £15,000 “based on multiple factors”. These include:

“[The] price we paid for its manufacture, the constituent metal and quality of the final product, the standard retail markup and the rarity and uniqueness of the cans.”

The company said it could not guarantee the value of the cans on the open market.

A spokesperson for BrewDog said that social media posts containing “erroneous” mentions of “solid gold” cans had been removed as soon as the company became aware of the slip up, though mentions of the apparent value and makeup of the can were still appearing on co-founder James Watts’ Twitter page as of Monday afternoon, per The Guardian. The tweet since appears to have been removed.

Among the other prizes Craig received are £10,000 in BrewDog shares and a VIP tour of its Aberdeenshire brewery. The shares cannot be freely traded until BrewDog floats on the stock market, a move that has long been anticipated.

As for the brewery tour? “I’m now wondering if they’d want me there,” Craig said.

BrewDog has endured a slurry of negative PR lately, after a group of ex-employees accused the firm of a “toxic” company culture in an open letter. You can read more on that story here.