Four Priests thanks and update.

[chopps]

Merry Christmas to you all! I just wanted to say thanks to everyone here on the forum for your offers of support, feedback and messages throughout this year. It’s been a long and difficult slog. Honestly, I have never worked so hard and have been mentally and physically ruined for periods of time, but we kept going and we now have something that seems to be working. And I love it!

We built a 2BBL brewery in a warehouse.
Working Sat, Sun and Weds nights only.
We brewed our first gyle in April.
We have brewed 27 times so far
We sold 12,500 pints through 17 pubs
We created 4 core beers.
Our beers were at 7 beer festivals
We won Best Beer in Festival once
We increased capacity to 5000 pints/month
We got in the CAMRA 2022 Guide
We featured in 3 US beer podcasts
We made 76 Youtube videos…
that have been watched 104,000 times,
for 14,500 hours,
by 2,000 unique viewers every month.

With so many breweries closing down right now, it feels like our super-lean, debt free, no-frills, DIY, part-time model was the right call, but only time will tell.

We are not taking an income from the brewery yet, but it’s not costing us anything either - the last time I had to spend my ‘own’ money on anything was in April. And that’s OK, for now we reinvest all funds and upgrade equipment to improve our processes and buy ingredients and materials in advance.

In 2023 our plan is to start bottling.
We will start with local delivery and brewery collection, moving to web orders and UK delivery shortly after. We will focus on our 4 core beers with one more to add. All bottle conditioned to begin with.
When we can afford a means of bulk carbonation we can move to bright bottling and maybe canning. This will depend on funds. I don’t intend to borrow anything so it will take time to build the cash needed.

Thanks again for your kind words and support.
Love to you all, have an amazing 2023.
Andy

ps. if you have no idea what I’m going on about, see Chopps Scales Up... Four Priests Brewery

 

[Griff097]

Nice one Andy and congratulations of the first year, I think your wise with the no debt model and keeping it part time for now, in these uncertain times, look forward to the vids going forward and in another year we can toast your continues success :)

 

[samale]

Well done @chopps
Great following you

 

[crowcrow]

Congratulations!

 

[The Baron]

Keep it up Andy as you say so many struggling until we get through the financial issues but running part/time and lean will see you through

 

[Gerryjo]

Excellent stuff and another brewery I've watched start from scratch and progress.Keep up the fine work @chopps and keep posting the vids.