In Search of Space...

Micro Brewery in neglected blog shocker! Yes that’s right, another brewery swept up in the day-to-day mire of keeping the wheels turning, and everything else that comes with it… But here we are today, to pen a little update on where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.

The last few months (or just 2019 in general) has been nothing short of bonkers, and there’s still such a long way to go. Apologies if our social media content hasn’t been up to it’s usual silly best but the days have been long, and other things have got in the way. Here’s a little recap of what we’ve been up to: Collaborations: Brews with Kees, De Molen, Brewdog, Brew York, Bad Co. Events: The opening of our York Tap Room (the Fossgate Tap), North Bar, Tap and Bottles, Beer Central festival, Bristol Craft Beer Festival, Edinburgh Craft Beer Festival, Nottingham Craft Beer Festival, Brewdog Castlegate, York City of Ale, Bath Hotel, Beer Town, House of Trembling Madness, Northern Monk Refectory, all in the last few months! All this on top of our usual supply of new and interesting beers including Bamboozled Again! (white stout), Off the Grid (IPA), Stuck in a Metaphor (Citra session pale), I talk to the wind (raspberry and vanilla sour), Hypersleep (Azacca IPA), Circle Game (Simcoe Cryo IPA), Gravedigger’s Biscuits (espresso martini stout), Milk Foley (Strawberry pale), Powerful Sense of Dread (maple choc stout). Our York taproom collaboration with Cameron’s Brewery, The Fossgate Tap, has gotten off to a flying start! We’re thrilled to finally have a permanent outlet for our beers. We’ll have some mega events planned there over the next few months. Keep your eyes peeled.

The main challenge recently, doing all this and keeping on top of the beers we need to keep producing round the clock: Namely, DISCO KING. We’re so happy with how much demand there is out there for our signature pale. We’ve got to keep the kegs coming, so we’ve hired a 4000l tank to double brew Disco King into, so we can keep making the other stuff and everyone is happy.

Our cans have continued to prove popular. With two new beers being released every six weeks, the aim is to keep the beer we have in stock fresh, and we’ve successfully had only two beers in stock at a time since we started canning last August. We’ve loved seeing our beers pop up all over the place… people taking a few cans on holiday with them being our favourite! We’ve also recently expanded the reach of our beer, and are now regularly exporting to 5 countries around Europe, as well as finally making tracks to get our beer into the big smoke through selected distributors.

Somehow all this has been taking place whilst looking to relocate our site from Kirkbymoorside to Knaresborough*, take on a new brew kit, acquire new fermenters, expand our team, and kick start what we’re calling in house, Turning Point 2.0: Taking everything we’ve learned in our first couple of years and putting it into action to make our brewery as efficient and productive as possible. We want to make a smooth transition from one site to the next, which is easier said than done, but we’re pleased to report that everything seems to be moving along as planned. The Endgame: “There has to be a reason for all this?” I hear you cry… Well the good news is, there is! The new kit will take a bit of strain off Luke and myself (Cameron) and allow us to brew 2-3 times the volume in a single brewday. This will mean we can keep up with demand far more easily. At times we’ve been brewing the same beer twice or more in quick succession, or frustratingly not having enough of a one-off brew to go around. You can expect our cans to be easier to get hold of, and for our beer to start popping up in new parts of the UK and beyond. We’ll also finally have space to ramp up our barrel ageing, which is something we’ve dabbled with but not had the space to go nuts with.

The new site which is three-ish times the size of our current place, also means we can be much more comfortable in a larger space, and do things like, I dunno, brew beer and package beer, maybe even clean casks/kegs at the same time, without tripping over each other in a fairly small room. About a year ago (if not longer) it became fairly clear that we were going to quickly run out of space at our Kirkbymoorside home. We looked into options to make a better use of our space, including a potential mezzanine storage floor, moving our hopper/auger upstairs, waterproofing a whole new area of the brewery and building an outdoor cask/keg store and many other back of a fag packet ideas, but when we found the perfect site for us, our plans to eventually move were brought forward. So, that’s where we are now. Keeping up as best we can, with one eye on an exciting future at our new home, and a lot of gratitude to everyone and anyone reading this for helping us do what we love to do. Hopefully more updates to follow once we can share a little more with you.

We’re just about to head down to London for a fun weekend of events and festivals. When we return, the madness continues! Peace, Love, and Warp Speed. Team TP XX

*Yes it is the brewery you think it is 😉