As we approach the half way point of this year, a year which has been full to the brim with moving, selling, brewing, building and planning, we’re taking a little look at what we’ve achieved so far and what the rest of this year holds for Balance.
A new home
We started off the year with a new home. A very empty arch on Sheffield Street just under Piccadilly Station, full of potential and the rhythmic heartbeat of trains moving on the tracks above. It didn’t take us long to move in with our little family of 24 barrels, three cages of bottles and several van loads of accumulated stuff.
Since then we’ve grown our little family considerably, with a grand total of 110 barrels, a rather enormous 5000 litre capacity foudre (basically a huge wooden vat) and a steady output of new beers. We’ve been steadily filling all of these new barrels with our base beer as well as a few experimental and interesting bases which will come to fruition going into next year.
This expansion of our barrel store means that our capacity has increased dramatically and going into next year we’ll be able to bring you even more of a variety of beers. This brings us very neatly onto one of the most exciting things that will come out of this year, the taproom.
The Taproom
We’ve dreamt of the day that we can open our doors and welcome people into a place where we can share our passion and serve the beers that we’ve spent so much time and effort creating. That day is rapidly approaching!
In August we will be able to welcome you all into our very own taproom. Designed as a space where time moves slow and the focus is on savouring the subtleties and nuance of beers which have fermented and aged in the barrel store at the other end of the arch. We’ll have four taps of our beers and the occasional guest beer (or cider) plus a wide selection of our beers, natural wine and guest bottles to drink in or take away.
We’ve got big plans for our taproom and we’ll be hosting all manner of events from meet the brewers/blenders/cidermakers to supper clubs to art and photography showcases. We want to share everything that has inspired us with all of you and build a community as we go.
Keep an eye out on socials for a more specific date for the opening and we’ll see you there!
Our Beers
With all of this beer that we’ve tucked away over the last few months, we’re going to be able to realise some of the ideas and projects that we simply haven’t had the volume of beer to bring to life.
A big part of this is going to be focusing on working with local producers, chefs and foragers to create unique collaborations playing with the ephemeral and transient nature of seasonality and ingredients. We’ve begun this journey through beers such as our mushroom collaboration with Polyspore and the first of our foraged series using locally picked mugwort and pineapple weed. Much more of this to come!
We’ll be going into much more detail about these beers and collaborations as they come to light and we’ll share our thoughts and experiences from working with our peers across the food and drinks industry.
We’ll keep you up to date as best we can on new developments, beers, events and more as we go through this year and beyond and we’re really excited to share what’s behind the curtain…
Stay funky,
Will