We’ve become aware today that Honest Brew has written an “open letter”, which is now being brought to the attention of various journalists by their PR company. There are a few things in this letter than strike us as a bit odd, so instead of simply ignoring it we thought we’d put the record straight.

At Beer Hawk, we care very deeply about making great tasting beer available to everyone. We work with some amazing independent breweries, and we also work with some amazing breweries who happen to be owned by a larger company. We prefer to obsess about the quality and taste of the beer rather than their corporate ownership structure. 

While we started out as an independent company, we were acquired by AB InBev at the start of this year. We’ve never made a secret out of this, we posted the news on our blog and even had a live Twitter Q&A on the day to answer any questions from our customers. The change in our ownership hasn’t changed our values, nor has it changed how we obsess about the world’s best beers.

In fact, the change has enabled us to do a better job of hunting out the world’s best beers. We have been able to secure a warehouse five times as large and employ twice as many people. As a result, we have added 300 new beers to our stock and reduced delivery charges by nearly 30%, making all our beer even more accessible to beer lovers. 

Honest Brew is clearly entitled to their opinions about corporate ownership. We have a different opinion, and that’s OK. What’s not OK is the claim that we have tried to pass off the Honest Brew “Howler” with our own Beer Bullet.  When Honest Brew started to send beer in a cardboard box two years after we’d done it, we didn’t even think about it, we don’t really think us using a cardboard tube is a story worthy of a press release.  

Let’s be clear, we wanted a way of reducing delivery costs for smaller purchases, so we went to a company that specialises in “distinctive luxury tubes”. They make a surprisingly large range of cardboard tubes and suggested that we could use the telescopic cardboard tube, which they sell as a standard item. We took this standard item, clearly branded it Beer Hawk, and came up with a name that seemed to work for us in “Beer Bullet”. We’re really pleased with it – take a look. 

So, that's what we think... that's us... Chris and Mark... just being honest.