Looking to the future

It's even almost 8 weeks since we last posted a blog, so we thought we would let you all into what we have been busy doing in that time.

We are now much more comfortable operating under our 'new normal' in the taproom, which has been fully booked out every single weekend since re-opening. Thank you so much to everyone who has come down and enjoyed a few beers! 

We have put a charity initiative in place in our taproom too - every month we will be choosing a charity to support. Our first month saw us achieve our goal of raising over £5,000 for a memorial for the victims of the Forbury Gardens attacks. Thank you for your help in hitting this - we are in dialogue with the council and the funds will be transferred over imminently. 

We are also now one day away from our Bank Holiday Beer Bash - we have completely sold out, so again thank you! We have some incredible beers pouring, so we look forward to welcoming you. An extra thank you to those who are attending on Sunday - we launched Sunday tickets as a 'pay what you want' scheme, with all the funds going towards the Michael Jackson Foundation for Brewing and Distilling. This charity has been chosen for August's charity initiate and it is very heart warming to be able to support such a great cause with the help of our wonderful customers. 

In terms of where we are as a business, we have a fair bit to update you on too...

Those of you who have been to the taproom recently may have noticed that we are also now using the unit next door. We have decided that to support the growth we are currently achieving, and are aiming to achieve long term, that we need more space! So we now have both unit 2 and unit 3. 

 

The plan for unit 2 is to put down another brew floor to support our growth plans for more tanks. This will gradually be implemented as we produce more beer. We will also be beginning our barrel ageing program here - something that, due to its very nature, will not truly come to fruition for a longer period of time, but it's something we have always wanted to do and feel like now is the time to get to work on it. We'll also be building a separate bar area, where we will be serving barrel aged and mixed Ferm beer.

At the moment, Unit 2 is proving very handy for storage, although we will be using it this weekend's event too. We've installed some speakers and a large projector screen, so it's all ready for everyone coming down this weekend for the event. It's also very useful to be able to adequately socially distance our tables. Those of you who have been down can hopefully vouch for that we are extremely cautious about COVID guidelines and are doing everything in our power to make our venue as safe (and fun!) as possible.

In terms of production, we have been very busy in expanding our resources too. 

We have recently taken delivery of this bad boy:

The Spinbot 5000 has landed! 

Created by Jay Lesher, in collaboration with BrewFab, this little beauty is going to be a lot of fun! It allows us to 'spin' our beer over an adjunct of choice, recirculating it from tank to spinbot and back. This means that we are able to extract more intense flavours from our adjuncts in far less time. Our first beer to use the spinbot is about to land too, and we didn't hold back... We've gone for a Pina Colada sour. 'Palm Trees and Power Lines' will be available very soon.

Soundtracks in the brewery whilst using include (but are not limited to)

• Dead or Alive's 'You Spin Me Round'
• Kylie's 'I'm Spinning Around'
• George Michael's 'Spinning the Wheel'
• Roxy Music's 'Spin me Round' 

We also have taken delivery of a not-so-shiny, but equally exciting new toy.

Our 10BBL Foeder has been made from American Oak is here and ready to be commissioned! We're really excited to get to work with this awesome piece of kit. Keep your eyes peeled for some Foeder beers in the near future.

On top of this we have 5 new tanks arriving from SSV too!

We've also grown as a team here too. We have added in Lamb to our sales team. She will be covering North London - so any pubs/bottle shops up that way, you can probably expect her to be popping in to say hi to you soon.

Finally, we also are pleased to announce we have been selected by Brewdog as one of the breweries they want to showcase as part of their Up and Coming Festival this year. We only opened our doors back in November of last year, so to be chosen for this amongst some incredible other breweries really is quite humbling! We're really grateful to Brewdog for the opportunity - we will have four beers distributed throughout their bars in the UK. The beers we have put forward are:

• Life is a Rollercoaster - 7.8% All Mosaic IPA
• Curbside Luau - 5.3% Hawaian Fruit Punch Sour
• Palm Trees & Power Lines - 5.7% Pina Colada Sour
• You Do The Math - 6.0% DDH IPA w/ Strata & Bru-1

Those of you who frequent Brewdog bars - keep an eye out! We're really pleased with these beers, so it's cool we will have them dispersed throughout the UK for more people to try.

And that just about covers it. Well done to those of you who are still reading all the way down here. 

And I'm sure we'll see some of you at Phantom Oktoberfest too... 👀