Wishbone Brewery – Keighley, Yorkshire, UK

Just a quick post to say its been quite a while since we had Bingley Brewery down at our place, it was 2022 in fact! It will be the usual opening times, open from 12 noon, though guess we’ll stretch out shouting last orders a little later to 8pm 😉 Also if you like Beer from the wood, we will have 4x Wishbone Cask beers served from the wood and the SPBW lot will be here with an award for us!

Bingley will be bringing their bar and beers down to us for Saturday February 28th, they will be serving 5 or 6 Handpulled beers alongside our own 6 Handpulled and 4 keg beers.

Food will be from Loaf & Loaded. I’ll update here once I have the menu.

Yes we know this clashes with Bradford Beer Festival but we figure there is enough diversity of customers that we’ll all make a good day of it.

Bit of a late post as didn’t have time yesterday, Today’s beers in the brewery with Palomino Pizza

And possible changes, depending what we decide when we get in to work.

Open from 12.00 til 7pm today 👍

This week sees us brewing Blonde 3.6% to keep stocks up along with Knock Back Bitter 4%, we have tweaked the bitter recipe to get the colour to be a little darker and reflect the Amber/Bitter tag we gave it.

Also this week we have racked and kegged Pixie Juice 5% and Decade 4%, both Gluten Free beers so we have to wait for the test results to come back before releasing them. They should be available in about a week.

And one we’ve not brewed for a while but tasting rather blooming good as a solid pint has gone into Cask, Blanc Stare 4.1% which is available now.

And before you go back to what you were doing, its our Brewery Bar Day this Saturday 12 til 7pm with Palomino Pizza throwing the delightful dough disks!

This week we are brewing a couple of things, My BFF is an Ai 5% IPA with Ekuanot and Mosaic hops, and Blanc Stare 4.1% with Hallertau Blanc and Nelson Sauvin hops.

Blanc Stare should be available in about a week and My BFF the week after.

Beers coming out of tank soon are Tiller Pin, Pixie Juice and Decade.

Order in the usual ways, cheers

Looking back at the sales patterns for Session IPAs across 2025 it shows that quite a few pubs are reluctant to spend the money on a 3.8% beer versus a 4.5% beer, the amount of hops we need to use to make a damn good 3.8% Session IPA are broadly the same as for a 4.5% beer but Landlords are more willing to pay the money for the stronger ABV when the cost of hops puts the price up. I guess this feels more Bang-for-Buck to drinkers. The results of these patterns of buying are that we have thrown more beer away in 2025 than we have across nearly all of the last 10 years.

We will be tweaking some brews and creating new ones but basing our Sesh IPA’s around the 4.5% ABV mark to see if we can improve the speed of sales.

Beer Quality is of the upmost importance and we want pubs and drinkers to have the best possible experiences.

Cheers

Expect to see a 4.5% version of Social Banter in the near-ish future, all the same hops but more malt.

We are getting back into the groove this week with 3 brews, Tiller Pin brewing tomorrow then we’re onto a Gluten Free stock build with Decade 4% and Pixie Juice 5%.

The Gluten Free beers will be available sometime in the last week of January once the lab test results are with us.

Answers on a postcard!

It was Tiller Pin 4.2% of course.

We started a small brew off with fresh yeast, next week we’ll crop the yeast and brew 2-3 times.

Don’t forget it’s out brewery bar day on Saturday 31st January 12 til 7pm.

Cheers

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.

Its been a while, but Palomino Pizza are now back on the road with the Horse Box along with their base up at Tarn House Holiday Park, Skipton.

We will have the usual 6x Handpulled and 4x Keg beers on the bar and we’re open 12 til 7pm.

All the usual stuff applies, we have sloped and level access but our toilet facilities may not be suitable for those less able. We are family and dog friendly, please be sure to keep both under control, ask us if those dogs need water and we’ll bring you a bowl over. We stock some lovely wines from Martinez Wines, Coke, Lemonade and some juice boxes. Cheers

We are open from 12.00 to 8pm tomorrow for our Christmas bar, entertainment from Haworth Ukulele Group mid afternoon and food from Kangs Punjabi Box.

We’ve quite a beer selection plus softdrinks and Wine from Martinez Wines.

Hope to see you all here for some Festive ‘Cheers’