Click here to give your feedback
How long has it been since we were gathered at a festival together? It certainly feels like a while.
Well, here at Castle Rock Brewery, we finally broke that three-year hiatus with the much-anticipated return of our Yard Party. In fact, it was so all-consuming that we’ve only just found a moment to properly reflect, almost a month later! At least that’s the excuse…
Our Yard Party does exactly what it says on the tin. We invite our friends, family, customers, and beer lovers everywhere to join us in our brewery yard to celebrate the things we love. Namely, great food, lovely people, amazing local talent, and BEER – lots of it.
After such a long break, we wanted to make this year extra special. We pulled in a huge amount of craft beer and ale, showcasing our favourite breweries from across the country. In the Old Cold Store alone we had 40+ beers on at any one time!
We were particularly happy to showcase our latest Pilot Project beers at the Yard Party. The Pilot Project is a small-scale brewing kit, capable of pushing out limited quantities beer, which makes it perfect for the more experimental stuff. The Yard Party was an opportunity to create some exciting one-offs, and we pulled in some of our favourite local breweries as partners.
The result was an incredible selection from fruited sours to DIPAs, brewed with our friends at Lenton Lane, Black Iris, Blue Monkey and Navigation. As you’d expect, these beers absolutely flew out! However, as a special treat we’ve kept back a small amount which will be available at Nottingham Craft Beer Festival.
Then there was the food. We welcomed Duke & Gray on Friday and Project D on Saturday, so that our customers were never far from a sweet treat. We had our very own Castle Rock Kitchen churning out burgers all weekend, along with Squeaky Beaver Poutine who provided the ultimate beer accompaniment (seriously elevated cheesy chips, with gravy. Canadian-style).
Remember the Maze? Revolution Sounds (the legendary venue’s previous owners) also programmed an all-star line-up of local acts to keep things bubbling throughout the day. Fat Digester, Scott Bugg & The Vital Few, Chloe Rodgers and Motormouf among others all graced our stage to bring hours of fun, music and dancing to our yard. The nights drew to a close with two of our very own DJs on the decks. Thanks DJ Edge (Head Brewer, Jon) and DJ Squid, (Digital Marketing Officer, Nick) for bringing a perfect selection of 90s house and dance classics.
On top of the amazing musical line up, we also welcomed a local graffiti artist, who commemorated the event with a couple of murals. And an illustrator who commemorated the event with bespoke beer labels for punters, who could fill cans with their beer of choice.
We’re sad another Yard Party is over, but we couldn’t be happier with how it went.
And we wanted to thank everyone that turned up. And thank you for your continued support, in those in between years, and in the early days.
Thank you for sticking with us, for bearing with logistical issues, being friendly, being respectful and most of all, being fun.
The Yard Party really is a special occasion for us. It helps unite us with our loyal customers to celebrate good times together. We hope the feeling is mutual.
Until next year.
Team CRB x
Like what you read?
