What a year 2022 has been!! As the year began, we were still working from home but we didn’t let this stop us as we had big plans for the year ahead and COVID or not, we were going to make it a year to remember.
January saw the release of our low-alcohol beer, Early Bird, which was a special release and quickly sold out. We also started on our journey to explore Single Hop beers and the Quiet Storm series was born. There has been an iteration of this beer every month this year and will continue on through 2023 as we are really pleased to have sourced some exciting new hop varieties to showcase!
In February we launched the ‘Year Of Beer’ for the second time as 2020 only lasted 2 months before COVID put paid to our ambitious plans and the On Trade was all but shut in 2021. Year Of Beer is a cask beer sign up where we release a brand new or ‘bring-back’ cask beer every month. Venues are invited to sign up to ensure they get a cask of what has become a very exclusive scheme as we only brew a single batch of the beer, so when its gone, its gone! This programme has been hugely successful and will continue in 2023.
2022 saw our second music themed collaboration in as many years. We teamed up with Rock City, the famous music venue in Nottingham and created an IPA aptly named ‘Rock City’ and it was launched on the same night that Bloc Party performed in May. This collaboration follows in the footsteps of our ongoing partnership with the iconic Leadmill venue in Sheffield to help support their plight to avoid being evicted by their landlord. #wecantloseleadmill continues to receive support so please sign the petition.
Come the summer time and we were fortunate enough to once again be invited to the Firestone Walker Invitational in Paso Robles, California. James and Alan from our Field Sales team headed over and had the time of their life!
Every July we celebrate the birthday of Jaipur, still our flagship beer and responsible for over 40% of what we produce annually. This year was the beers 17th Birthday, our baby is nearly grown up!
August was a BIG month for us. Peakender returned after 2 years of cancellations and guess what? It was the best Peakender yet! We can’t wait for Peakender 2023 and tickets are already on sale, so if you enjoy live music, great beer and a family friendly vibe, head to www.peakender.co.uk to get your tickets.
The year came to a close with the second year of the Thornbridge Advent Calendar. We jammed it full of 24 different beers and 3 items of merch, which at the time of writing this have been incredibly well received so far! Plans are already under way for the 2023 version which promises to have some incredible beers in it!
2022 has been an epic year and it was helped by brewing some amazing collaborations with the likes of Elusive, Neon Raptor, Pomona Island, Double Barrelled and Overtone to name but a few! As well as these great collaborations, we won a plethora of local, national and international awards for our own beers including ‘Best Flavoured Beer’ in the World at the World Beer Awards and a Gold Medal from the European Beer Challenge for Necessary Evil Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout. We also won Best Lager up to 5% at the International Beer Challenge for Bayern and we were awarded ‘UK Best Brewery’ at the International Beer Challenge.
Last but not least, none of this is possible without the ongoing support of all of you wonderful customers who continue to show your loyalty to Thornbridge, it is greatly appreciated. We hope we can continue to enjoy your ongoing loyalty in 2023, through what is likely to be the most challenging year the hospitality industry has ever seen. Rest assured, we will do our very best to keep producing beers that come with the same quality, value and consistency that you come to expect from us.
Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year from all of us at Thornbridge.
