When they refer to themselves as, "the bad boys of British brewing", BrewDog are not being entirely serious. Indeed, it's this tongue-in-cheek tendency to irony and silliness that has often got them in trouble with the more traditional side of the brewing industry.

James Watt and Martin Dickie, however, are certainly not your typical craft brewers. For a start off, they're just 26, neither of them has a beard, and they call their beers things like Punk IPA. They also favour a chippy, lippy marketing style which, rather than emphasising the hand-crafted, artisan qualities of their beers, is funny and confrontational. Said Punk IPA comes with the warning: "We don't care if you don't like it."



In the sedate world of real ale, where beers are usually named after rare birds or steam trains, this is heady stuff. It has also brought BrewDog into conflict with the self-appointed moral guardians of the British brewing industry, the Portman Group, who have repeatedly criticised the Scottish company's supposedly irresponsibly named and packaged beers. "I haven't been too upset," chuckles Watt. "They've done a lot more good for us than the marketing company we use."

Such slick branding is not the only way that these rabid beer enthusiasts want to break away from accepted beer practice. Instead of what BrewDog see as samey 3% and 4% traditional English bitters, the duo are on a mission to brew stronger beers, often inspired by what they consider spikier and more interesting international brewing styles. Their Punk IPA, for instance, tips its crisp, wildly fruity hat to the more florid Bohemian lagers.

Now BrewDog are opening up another new front, with Beer Rocks, an experiment to create a collaborative, democratic beer online. Basically, it works like this: for the past few weeks (stage five of the process starts this Saturday) BrewDog have been posting videos on their blog, in which Watt, Dickie and head brewer Stewart Bowman suggest different ways of developing a new beer. The drinking public then vote for their favourite idea at each stage of the beer's development. It's not a unique concept - reading the Appellation Beer Blog I stumbled across Flying Dog Ales' Open Source Beer Project - but, with its video blogs and voting process, BrewDog's Beer Rocks takes the idea to a new, as they pun it, "web brew point oh", level. The results so far are:

1) Beer style - winner: black IPA.

2) Malts and ABV - winner: a combination of Pale Marris Otter, Amber malt, Black malt; strength, 6.5%

3) Hops - winner: Cascade and Centennial

4) Special stuff - winner: a blueberry and oak chip infusion

5) Beer name and packaging - vote now!

BrewDog claim to have been, "inspired by the passion, knowledge and enthusiasm of craft beer drinkers". More circumspect observers may think that - as they've ended-up brewing a 6.5% black IPA infused with blueberries and oak chips - the voters have been taking the Michael (Jackson).

Watt is unfazed. BrewDog will produce and bottle 2000 litres of this still-to-be-named brew, come what may:

I guess coherence has gone out the window a little, but that was always going to be part of the project. It'll be fun to see how it all comes together. It's definitely going to be a saleable beer, but, at the same time, it's going to be an experimental, progressive, connoisseurs' beer. It's not going to be for someone who drinks Budweiser.

Fans will be able to buy the new beer through the website in about six weeks' time.

It isn't the first time BrewDog has taken such an interactive approach. Last year, after buying a mixed case of prototype BrewDog beers, drinkers could vote on which to put into production. As well as the winner, Chaos Theory, BrewDog are about to launch the runner-up, Zeitgeist. Interestingly, the Zeitgeist website will feature a blog (each six-pack will contain a one-off unique user code) where fans will be able to post messages, photos and video. Again, according to Watt:

We're a small company and, in everything we do, we want to take something new to the table. A key thing in marketing is shortening the distance between ourselves and the customer, and we want use new technology to make the customer feel closely involved in our business. It's exciting to actually be involved in the decision making process, and then drink the beer.

All of this throws up some interesting questions. In the web 2.0, post-X Factor world we now live in, where people refuse to consume passively, where people want to have their say, a vote and to interact, will initiatives like Beer Rocks (and Walkers' Do Us A Flavour competition) become commonplace? And is that a good thing?

Is it not enough that we have to buy and eat things, that we now have to design them ourselves? As for the beer dimension to this, is this precisely what the staid real ale world needs, a bit of youthful excitement, irreverence and marketing savvy? Or does it all smack of heavily-hopped hype?