Author: WishboneAde

How’s about this for an idea for Keighley Brewers, Pubs and the town in general…

Brewing is a pretty friendly business and this Keighley Worth Valley Railway Steam & Ale Trail event gets me thinking, wouldn’t it be great if the breweries and pubs of Keighley somehow worked together to bring Keighley back to being a ‘Destination for Beer’, to have a common goal which would help support the local economy.
I’m not saying I know how to do it but would like to see Keighley mentioned with the likes of Huddersfield for its pubs, just look at all the pubs in Keighley and think how good it could actually be, a Real Ale & *Ahem* Craft Beer utopia. I’ll quote the ‘Sparrow effect’ here and how that the introduction of The Sparrow Bar to North Parade in Bradford kick-started a mini revolution.
There are at least 20 historic pubs within walking distance that if all of them served well made independently brewed beer our little town might just start changing.

A pipe dream, maybe… just throwing the idea out there, this is only a blog post after all.

Please share this and Hashtag it #Keighley

After a comment from some folks from London who were really impressed with our brewery prices while drinking in our brewhouse I thought I’d write a little blog about the reasons behind our pricing and the differences between Brewery-served beer and Pub-served beer.


The Brewery Bar @ £2 a pint
Rough & Ready, it may be flipping cold we have concrete floors & wooden seats with pallets for tables, we have 1 toilet and hire in Portable Toilets, we like to keep things simple with the giving of change, our staff get paid in kind, we only serve our own beer with a little Wine & Cider thrown in.

The Pub @ £3 a pint
Comfy Seats, Carpet, Posh bar, multiple staff that are paid in money and not beer, proper toilets, comfy, warm, open fires, a proper coffee machine, regular food service, a great range of beers, wines and spirits to choose from, a posh cash register (EPOS) for tallying up and giving change, pub games.

You can really appreciate the time and effort Landlords put in to make the pub what it is and also see where that difference in price comes from, so go appreciate your pub & Landlord the next time you are having a pint.

Cheers 🙂

*Keg beer: When we get our keg bar built we will sell it for £1 per Third, £3 a pint, for most beers due to the extra time, expense and effort that it takes to put carbonated beer into keg. There will be exceptions to this where a beer is particularly strong or the ingredients or process were more expensive, these beers will be fairly priced accordingly.

Last Monday we brewed our first collaboration with the guys from the Cap & Collar in Saltaire… it is a British Hopped Oatmeal Session IPA, an experiment in using British Hops in the ways you would normally think of using American hops, Upfront and In-Yer-Face.
We brewed, we Dry hopped and it will being going into casks tomorrow and out for delivery later in the week.

This first brew of Collarbone will be available at the Cap & Collar and a few other select places along with our brewery bar.

Each time we open the brewery bar we see a whole host of new faces from outside of Keighley, people finding us for the first time, we even had a minibus load come in from Wibsey (You know who you are!), Bradford City Footy fans passing through on a match-day, people that were heading into Leeds but then thought ‘stuff it lets give Wishbone a go’, and it seems pretty regular that our brewery-drinkers head off to the Cricketers & Brown Cow to carry on after we call time.

Thanks all for coming to see us and do tell your local landlord if you enjoyed our beers, watch out for dates for Friday evenings along with our #SaturdaySessions, Cheers.

Thanks to @BigAdeBrewing for passing this on to us, it seems we were in the top three at Dudley Winter Ale Fest 🙂 Cheers

Put your (Responsible) drinking boots on straight from work and join us from 4.30 to 10pm Friday 1st April, thats next Friday!
No food on site this time so order in your favourite take-away 🙂

Last Saturday was great with both new and old faces in the brewhouse, the food from the Lemon Tree went down really well and we had 7 different beers on the bar across the course of the day. Each time we do this we learn a little more so we will be tweaking our procedure as we go.

Things to look forward to as we slowly get to re-invest will be a Keg Bar we can take to events when its not being used in the Brewery so expect £1 for a Third of a Pint on Keg, by the time the beer is in keg we will have invested more time and money in its production so we think £3 a pint is very fair. Some high abv beers above 7.5% may be a little higher due to the increase in Beer Duty, all pretty exciting stuff.

The next #Saturday Session is 9th April, 12 til 7pm with Spanish food from great guys at The Lemon Tree 🙂

Here you go, check out the tasty Mexican Street Food available at the Saturday Session 12th March.

12 til 7pm

After the January Saturday Session which was pretty darn chilly we are now working towards getting some doors fit to the entrance to the brewery to keep the drafts out and help it stay warmer so when we get more heating we can actually keep the heat in rather than it just going straight out the door!

We took the old knackered roller shutter door down last week in preparation and we are just waiting on a quote coming in for fitting some doors.

So remember to wrap up warm and we apologise if you feel a bit chilly 🙂

For a good deal of our building preparation we have had a friend helping doing all the crappy jobs that none of us really liked, so….
Please welcome Neil (Who doesn’t always look like a Ninja #BeerNinja) to Wishbone, Neil will be on the phones talking beer to you lovely pub folk and when he’s not doing that he will be learning our procedures and become a cog in our little beer making enterprise.

You can catch him on Twitter @WishboneNeil or when we get our email sorted neil@wishbonebrewery.co.uk the works mobile 07867419445 and soon our landline (Once BT get their act together) on 01535600412