One of those end of year post things

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Firstly, thanks a billion to all our lovely Trade Customers and Drinkers who have kindly supported us in 2025, your goodwill is what keeps us going.

Merry Christmas and wishing you all a prosperous New Year from us here at Wishbone, Adrian, Emma, Paul & Rob.

2025 certainly hasn’t been easy and the outlook for 2026 doesn’t feel particularly rosey with increases in Business rates, though that said we have some better looking Malt prices which will help a little to balance things out.
A few breif stats for those that want to know:

  • Total Sales 2025 were about £10’000 down on 2024
  • Total Volume produced 2025 was 104071 Litres down from 113954 litres in 2024
  • Number of Brews in 2025 were 97 down from 102 in 2024
  • Malt used in 2025 was 20122 kg down from 22600 kg in 2024
  • Hops used in 2025 was 550 kg down from 649 kg in 2024
  • Money in personal bank account, LOL, Savings, LOL!
  • We brewed approx 20 New beers in 2025, stopped monitoring and tidying Untappd for my own personal sanity
  • We raised money for Ukraine and supported Charities where we could with either cheaper beer or donated beer in 2025
  • About 6 more Bounceback Loan Payments to make, being £843.95 better off each month after that will be a bit of a relief

If you take anything from this it is that people don’t have enough money and living costs too much.
Though the other thing to note is that the Beer Duty changes a couple of years back gave the bigger brewers a wage rise so we feel this is now leveraged against smaller brewers as we no longer have any chance of competing on a level playingfeild on price, I mean, we could never compete before those changes but now in a cost of living crisis it made it even worse and the beer range on.

On the plus side there are loads of bars out there that could choose to buy direct versus via wholesaler or big brewer and support smaller and local breweries with a cask or two once or twice a month and it would really help out the small guys. One or Two casks or kegs a month isn’t much to ask and it would bring loads of variety and taste to what can sometimes look all too same-same, especially in Cities.

We see some of our brewery friends have taken on or opened Pubs or Taprooms, this, even more so sounds like the direction of travel we must go. We are trying, the latest updates are on our instagram https://www.instagram.com/wishbonetap/ we are at least ripping more old structure out of the building and clearing out the rubble etc, hopefully we’ll get a drain connection made for a downstairs toilet and clear the rubble out of the cellar in January, I’m still contacting the Trades for quotes in the hope of someone not ghosting me or backing out! We need a new staircase putting in and the old one taking out and the old location in the floor making good then an area at the front needs boxing in and insulating as its always been very open to the elements around the roller shutter door. then after that the current plan is to try do some of the internal construction ourselves as and when time and money allows.