It's time to talk about Autumn. Time to reflect, recuperate and reset.

Oct 6

6 min read

Long hot days, warm evenings, great music, sport, community vibes and celebrations galore. Summer 2026 was a rush like no other…

…and it was busy. No seriously, it was like, really really busy. Going in to May we laughed at each other. I don’t know whether it was an excited laugh or a nervous laugh. We knew we were going to be hellishly busy and we weren’t really quite sure how we were going to get through it. Crucially though we knew that our busiest Summer yet was just what we needed to kick on our tiny little brewery further than it had ever been before.

Over the early summer we hit food festivals, village fetes, weddings, private parties, birthday parties, music nights and football screenings. The sun as we know was shining brightly in the sky, the thirst for beer was at peak levels and, for the first Summer ever not only were we paying to attend event, we were getting booked to provide bars at private events and putting on events ourselves. We hit record day after record day, made new friends, spent time with old friends, got ourselves out there in the lovely summer sunshine and genuinely had a total blast doing it. It was absolutely mega it really was.

We sold lots of beer of course. In reality, as I tend to do, I underestimated the demand and had to play catch up wherever possible to make sure our pumps didn’t run dry of our own beer. It didn’t always work and we have lessons to learn there but the overwhelming sense of satisfaction that demand was outstripping supply of your own beer is massive I can tell you.

What’s more satisfying though is being able to introduce the beer to so many more people than we’ve been able to before, talking them through the beers and seeing that nod of approval after the first swig. Honestly, you just can’t beat that feeling.

Not only that but getting involved in more community events this year has meant we’ve been able to contribute directly to the community whilst doing what we love doing the most. At the last count the total was close to £1,000 in pitch fee’s, donations and profit shares. It may not seem a lot but when you compare it to our small turnover it’s a big chunk of cash for us that I’d much rather see going into the community than some fat cats back pocket.

All in all. An incredible Summer really.

Well, I say incredible. Whilst that all sounds rather la-di-dah there is naturally, as there often is, a downside to all of that loveliness and this is the part I’m afraid where I have to get real with you.

Yeah yeah I know I mention this literally all the time but it is easily forgotten (even by myself) in the thick of it all. Me and Azzie work full time jobs too and I have to remind myself not to forget that. Now more than ever.

I was looking at the ‘stats’ earlier today. Between May and July there are 26 weekend days. 13 Saturdays, 13 Sundays. When I then ran through the events we covered in that period I realised just how busy we’d been. Baring in mind Monday-Friday we’re ‘doing the day job’ we also had events across 20 of those 26 weekend days. The other six? Brewing and packaging of course. So that’s every week day taken working the normal job and every weekend day taken working the side job. That’s just physically being at the events too. It doesn’t factor in all the evenings spent packaging beer, cleaning beer lines, prepping bars, scrambling to the wholesalers before they close (they ain’t open supermarket hours!), sorting out POS, accounts, beer duty returns, general admin and getting the social media in either. Christ.

When I look back on it now I do wonder how the hell we managed it all. What I can tell you is this. It did nearly completely break us. In hindsight it was a totally foolish thing to do.

I realise I’m only talking about May-July. Late July did bring with it a break and into August things were much quieter with just three event days (though they were three of the busiest trading days we’ve ever had – by a long margin too!).

By mid August though we were reeling. Very very tired. It wasn’t fun anymore and that is just grotesque. It’s meant to be fun. That’s the whole point, right? I think genuinely starting to understand what burnout felt like too. So we needed to walk away, just for a week or two. Reflect on the success, have a think about the future and get ourselves ready to go again.

The challenge with that is a big one though. Stop for a moment and you fall behind. Such is our tight brew schedule that just one missed weekend can really mess us up. We won’t have the beer we need to see us through. That and events get booked up and your audience for the next few months has gone.

That’s exactly what has happened and it is with that I come on to our Autumn plans.

We did, briefly and for the second year in a row, flirt with the idea of opening a taproom and growing the brewery a whopping tenfold. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since we started up three years ago and we always said year three would be the big moment where we would have to decide what was next. We found the premises we liked in the location we liked and we found the brew kit we would need to get us to where we wanted to go.

With a good summer under our belts we had funds to help us get there too.

So what did we do? Well, nothing as it turns out. Ultimately there were too many hoops to jump through to get the premises and not enough time to arrange for transportation and storage of the brew kit. The premises was let and the brew kit was sold.

In the few weeks we took to pursue both we fell further behind on the brewing and more and more events were booked up.

So where does that leave us now? Well, with a quiet Autumn/Winter season ahead of us by the looks of it. Do you know what though? I’m all in for it.

Quieter weeks have allowed more much needed recouperation, more time to reflect on where the brewery goes next and crucially more opportunities for that all important family time. Really, it’s been a total joy and if there is more of that to come over the next few months I’m there.

Does that mean we’re shutting up shop for now? Absolutely no way mate.

We’ve spent the last four weekends brewing up more stock. More of that will be going into keg than usual as we look to see about getting it into to pubs and bars in the local area. Some of it is going into can too ready to be sold on the webstore in the lead up to the festive season and beyond.

We will have beer at the Leamington Beer Festival in October, over at our friends Windmill Hill Brewery and don’t forget you can pick up Meon Pale at Lower Clopton Farm shop and you can grab a can whilst enjoying the Quiz at The Pavilion in Meon Vale on the last Friday of each month. We will see about restocking at Stratford Garden Centre too in the lead up to Christmas.

We are also using the time to plan too. Plan for what is to come in 2027. For now this may not be a grand plan to open a taproom or bigger brewery (just yet anyway). All being well though we will be adding a third unitank to the brewery towards the end of November, increasing our brewing capacity to once per week if needed and ready to hit brewing hard early in the New Year. We are also looking to see if we can increase our serving output capacity on bars too to ensure we are properly stocked and able to serve more people than ever before. There is also the events we want to serve at of course and we’re actively planning in dates and booking events whilst we’re at it.

So, whilst a warning shot that it may not seem like we’re being very active this Autumn (and we are really trying to take it easy, we need to!) the reality is out little brewery is bubbling away, making plans for what we hope will be our biggest year yet in 2027.

More to come!