Waitrose copywriting for Special Brew goes viral

A photo showing the description given to a four-pack of Carlsberg Special Brew sold at Waitrose has been widely shared on Twitter.

Waitrose copywriter doing some real heavy lifting here. pic.twitter.com/DzJNWyNq3X

— cluedont (@cluedont) March 25, 2022

The Tweet, which at present has over 700 retweets and 9,000 likes, shows the tasting notes provided by the Waitrose copywriter for the infamously strong Danish beer. “Stronger lager with cognac flavour. Full bodied fruity tasting with a good clean bitterness.”

Though Carlsberg claims that the beer was first brewed to mark Winston Churchill’s 1950 visit to Copenhagen, it is now primarily associated with being cheap and having a high ABV, as several of the replies noted:

That was my first experience getting drunk when I was 12. Two cans in a field. I went blind. The cognac notes really did come through though.

— Pedro Cabanna (@PedroCabanna) March 25, 2022

However, in recent years there have been attempts by Carlsberg to rehabilitate Special Brew’s reputation and make it a product that can be responsibly consumed. Part of this involved reducing the size of single-serve cans from 500ml and reducing the ABV from 9% to 7.5%.

There have also been efforts, as this copywriting is evidence of, to show Special Brew as a quality lager which can be enjoyed alongside artisanal produce. Indeed, the Waitrose website description for the cans (which cost £8 online rather than the £7.30 price shown in the photo) mentions the drink’s historical pedigree, offers serving suggestions (poured into a straight or stemmed glass at a temperature of 6-8°C), and then that it pairs well with “mature and blue cheese.”

Some of the replies to the original tweet mentioned that, beyond the unsavoury stereotypes surrounding it, Special Brew has its attributes, and that much of the joking and criticism is rooted in “snobbery”:

Why so much snobbery about this? If it was a craft beer people would be falling over themselves to praise it to the skies. Would be a good experiment for Carlsberg to repackage it as a hipster brew and see if opinion changes.

— Bernie Scroggins 💙🇺🇦 (@BernieScroggins) March 26, 2022

However, the sentiment shared by most of those engaged with the photo was that there is nothing particularly special about Special Brew:

Special brews taste like a mixture of turpentine and regret. https://t.co/cXGIhrSzgn

— Kedia Erald (@topsycretin) March 26, 2022