See you in 2024!
Another year of interdimensional brewery activity done and dusted! As we take a break before we enter our EIGHTH year (stop the clock for a bit maybe?), we wanted to take a moment to reflect on 2023 and thank YOU, our wonderful drinkers and supporters.
It's been a year of steady growth and refinement. Everything from our equipment, recipes, events, branding, sales, and general approach to how we do things… We've basically left no stone unturned this year in our pursuit of making our beer the best it can be, and the brewery the best place it can be to work. It's also been the first year we've had to juggle managing our pub, The Falcon, alongside the brewery.
Our first major event of the year was Imperial March, a pub crawl around York to seven venues each serving one of our dark/imperial/barrel aged beers. The main difference this year being that the last stop of the “March” was our very own Falcon, which was a lot of fun, and helped introduce our drinkers to our lovely little pub!
Other notable beery events of our own making were the launch of the Custard Sessions beers, featuring a new beer in Death Matter Custard (with Northern Monk). We've previously done Dark, Darker, and Death. Where do we go next? Next was the first Disco Kingdom event, showcasing 4 beers building on our core classic, Disco King. The nationwide launch of these beers was one heck of a party, including a sneak preview night at The Falcon. More recently, our Pulpatine Singularity launch at The Falcon was a special one indeed! The final chapter of the Pulpatine collaboration with Emperors Brewery, with Damien in attendance was a spectacular night of barrel aged stouts, and Star Wars tomfoolery.
Throughout the year we held tap takeover events at 22 different venues, not including those mentioned above! It’s something we love to do, and will continue to do next year, with plenty already in the pipeline. A similar story with beer festivals, we have attended and poured at plenty this year, with lots already booked for 2024.
This year's approach to the brewery Taproom followed the same format as last year, and we think we've hit the sweet spot in terms of how often to open, and how much time we can commit to transforming the brewery into a welcoming space. This year we were particularly lucky with the weather, and so we enjoyed a run of gorgeous summer weekends! We look forward to the return of the Taproom once the sun comes out to play.
This year we brewed 34 brand new beers. One of which was the newest addition to our core range, Astral Voyage. We’ve always enjoyed dabbling with lower ABV pale ales, with names like No Post on Sundays and Rainbow Road, but we wanted to make a beer that would fit in with our existing range and that we could make all year round. We also made our pilsner, Nova, gluten free. Of our 34 new brews, 9 were imperial strength or barrel aged, something we will continue with next year even as the duty changes make these beers tricky to produce… watch this space for a big one early next year!
In 2023 we covered a wide range of styles; as well as the usuals, we brewed mild, bitter, braggot, fruited beers, and lots more! We are always looking for ways to try new things.
We’ve continued to experiment with collaborations, both here at TP and at spectacular breweries around the country: we collaborated at home with: Heist, Hive Mind, Black Iris, Vertigo Beers, Salt, Northern Monk, Brew York, and Roots. And on the road at Play, Azvex, Northern Monk, Abbeydale, and Fierce. It’s always going to be a big part of what we do, there’s nothing like a great day out at another brewery, working on a recipe/brew together and of course finishing that off with a few beers at the end of the day.
It has been another great year for our subscription can club, Disco Royalty. Our loyal base of customers who get 6 beers a month, and each new beer we do. It is one of the best ways for us to interact with our wonderful drinkers, so why not sign up and see what you’re missing? ;)
Towards the end of the year we started to supply Disco King to ASDA, something we have been working towards for a while. This has been going really well and has certainly seen us find our way to a much wider audience!
As always it is worth repeating that we couldn’t do what we do without our wonderful team here at Turning Point. We are grateful to get to work with such dedicated and committed individuals who have helped make our brewery something and somewhere we are really proud of.
And of course, to you (presumably if you’re reading this we can safely assume you drink our beer at least sometimes, otherwise, why have you made it this far?!), for keeping us going, making what we do possible, and inviting others to join our little world of hops, great music, and occasional space travel. A sincere thank you to you all for your continued support, and we’ll see you very soon, but for now, a beer. Cheers and Merry Christmas!
Team TP
xx
