#09 First Year of Trading
Source House was created back in 2020 and was officially registered as a business in October 2021, ready for Christmas trading. Unfortunately however, some of our AWRS licence forms required for trading were lost in the post and so our first sales had to be delayed! This brought us into ‘dry January’ of 2022, the worst possible timing for our first sales, making the experience so much more daunting! Luckily for us the brewing community has been absolutely amazing and supportive from the start, with local businesses and breweries like Adventure Beer, Linear Brewing and Totally Brewed assisting us along the way. We sold our first batch of beers to our friend Ant at Adventure Beer and it all quickly sold out in a matter of weeks. Nothing like what we had originally imagined!
2022 has also been the year in which we first started experimenting with hydroponic systems. We started growing our own hops traditionally in our back garden back in 2020 and the yield has been incredibly poor from the start. With the uncertainty and sometimes extreme British weather it has made it a lot harder for them to grow reliably outdoors. So this year we decided to experiment with new techniques of growing - hydroponically. It's all very new for us as we had little to no experience with this growing technique, but as with anything new, a lot of research and Youtube channels will do the trick! We built our first Dutch Bucket System, an ideal hydroponic system for growing plants with deep root systems and therefore more prone to root rot, such as hops. As we decided to build our own system and keep it low cost, we had to be creative with the things we used. From plastic storage containers to toilet overflow outlets, anything we could get hold of from our local B&Q to build this system helped to keep the costs down. The hop yield from our first year of growing hydroponically was surprisingly good, enough for us to experiment with in a Hop Stand. Fingers crossed the hop harvests will only get bigger and better from here!
Our first hop harvest - look at those beauties!
The incredible speed of growth from our hop plant has led us to expand our hydroponic system to grow our own leafy greens and vegetables too. With the NFT (Nutrient Film Technique) system we built ourselves, we managed to produce so many vegetables in such a short amount of time, it led us to the start of our food charity initiative. We have since been providing our hydroponically grown vegetables and leafy greens to local food banks including the Friary and Muslim Hands, supporting our community during these worrying times. We have even designed and built hydroponic systems for our employer’s offices at Leonard Design Architects to get the staff involved in growing our own vegetables.
Harvest from our home hydroponic system…vegetables packaged and ready for transport to our nearest charity centres!
Work-in-progress NFT system in our employer’s office - can’t wait for 2023 when we get this going!
With our limited brewery connections, and a spot of luck, we managed to hold our first beer tasting session this year in collaboration with Castle Rock Brewery. Castle Rock have been really supportive of us and were kind enough to agree to host the session at Barley Twist, with a range of Castle Rock and Source House beers on the tasting list. We were given the opportunity to host the session for our work colleagues from Leonard Design Architects who’ve been extremely supportive of our journey. The tasting session started off with a range of Castle Rock’s core range and Pilot project beers, followed by some of Source House’s core range and Beta series beers, ending with a mini ‘pub quiz’ to finish the evening.
The Robin Hood Beer & Cider Festival 2022 is also a highlight for Source House's first year of trading. When we were approached to provide our beers for the festival, we were extremely excited and nervous at the same time. With only a couple of months of trading experience we would have never dreamed of being involved in such a big festival alongside some giants in the brewing industry! There was still a lot to learn and refine to get the beers ready in time, but it turned out to be absolutely brilliant to be involved and well worth the effort. It definitely won't be our last festival and we are looking forward to hopefully more to come in 2023!
To sum up our amazing first year of the business trading we decided to brew our first Mocha Imperial Stout with a limited edition, hand-crafted leather label and wax seal for a more refined and special touch. Extra love and attention has gone into this Imperial Stout from the fresh espresso and vanilla vodka soaked cocoa nibs, to the intricate details on the labels and our first attempt at wax sealing. Our label tags are hand crafted from recycled off-cuts of veg tanned leather and hand-embossed with our very own Source House logo. They have been designed, as with all our other labels, to be removable but also reused as a keyring. A statement beer to round off this amazing year!
All in all, 2022 has been incredible; we’ve learnt heaps, produced 8 different beers, done 2 interviews, made some amazing friends in the industry, partnered with some inspiring businesses and above all… had fun doing it all!