After months and months of hard work and planning we are absolutely delighted to start talking about the new Wiper and True brewery to you: the people who have drunk our beer and supported us over the years. It’s a massively exciting time for us, as we expand the amount of beer we can produce whilst putting sustainability at the heart of our growth plans. The project is still in its early days and we don’t want to jinx anything/give away too much at the moment, but it’s time for a quick update, and an open invitation to come along with us on our journey to building the most sustainable brewery we can.
Quick links:
Keep up with all of the news on our new site via our new accounts below:
Instagram: @wiperandtruetaproom
Twitter: @wiperandtruetap
Facebook: @wiperandtruetaproom
Old Market, Bristol: a new home with historic roots for Wiper and True
Lots of you helped us hunt for new premises earlier this year. We owe a huge thank you to everybody who put us in touch with estate agents, sent us photos of warehouses on their commute home, asked friends of friends of friends and generally pulled together to lend a hand. In the end after a monster search around the city, we eventually found our dream location in Old Market, Bristol, on the somewhat uninspiringly named City Business Park. Currently the site might not look like much; it’s a fairly bog-standard nineties industrial unit. To us, though, it represents a very exciting, very shiny new future for Wiper and True, with all the room we need to make the best beer we possibly can, without limitations. Location wise, it’s right next to the legendary Trinity Centre, an inspirational live music venue that aims to empower communities via the arts. It’s also just a five minute walk from Bristol legends and our good friends Left Handed Giant’s main brewery site, shared with the brilliant Newtown Park - and less than twenty minutes walk away from loads of Bristol’s other wonderful breweries.
Garton Brewery, less than 100m away from the new Wiper and True site
Unbeknownst to us when we signed for the building, the new site is also just across the road from a historic Bristol business, Garton Brewery. An award-winning beer manufacturer in the 19th century, Garton Brewery was led by Charles Garton, the great-great-grandfather of one of our own founders at Wiper and True: Cesca Garton. Cesca had always known that her family had been involved in the Bristol beer scene, but only recently found out the extent of these brewing roots - and their proximity to our future site. When this all came to light, we were even more certain that Old Market was the rightful next home of Wiper and True.
Space to grow
Most excitingly for Wiper and True the new location represents S P A C E. 28,000 square feet of it, to be exact. Over five times as much space as we currently work with in our St Werburghs brewery. Space to double our current brewing capacity with the installation of a spanking new, custom made, top-of-the-range 4,000 litre brew kit built to our exact specifications by German experts BierKnowHow. Space to set up a top of the range new Leibinger canning line, complete with EIGHTEEN heads that fill 5,000 cans an hour. For context, our current canning line has two filling heads, and just about manages 1,200 cans an hour, if we ask really nicely. The bigger footprint of our new premises means more than just brewing capacity and shiny new kit though; it also means that we can increase the quality of our beer, and continue our mission to constantly tweak, refine and improve our beers. We also have room for a cold store, meaning our beer is being stored in the optimum conditions, a sizable warehouse on site, whereas our current setup entails making multiple forklift trips a week between the brewery and distribution centre to shift beer up and down. For the first time in several years we’ll also have our whole team housed under one roof, in a shared office that brings everybody together - something we feel will propel Wiper and True even further forward in 2022 and beyond.
Sustainability at the new site
Sustainability is already a big part of our mission at Wiper and True in St Werburghs, affecting everything from our chosen energy suppliers down to the cornstarch labels on our cans - not plastic, as people often assume!. As we grow our business, we will uphold our existing measures whilst also setting ourselves a strict and ambitious set of sustainability targets that will keep us focused on establishing and running the most environmentally friendly brewery we possibly can.
As we plan and build the new site we are working with independent sustainability experts Eunomia (and others) to develop a holistic sustainability action plan that considers all aspects of our environmental impact, including scope 1, 2 & 3 emissions. One of our biggest goals is to line ourselves up with Bristol City Council’s target of reaching net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, if not sooner. This is a huge project, but one that we see as integral to running a responsible business in today’s climate crisis. Other exciting projects in the pipeline include: working towards a massive solar array for the roof of the building, heat and water recovery systems, Co2 capture and reuse loops, improving our brewing efficiency to reduce energy requirements, and running parts of our brewkit on methane generated by our brewing waste. All that alongside applying for B-Corp status; we’re keeping ourselves busy. Watch this space for further updates as our plans develop.
The Taproom
The new building fun isn’t only for us, though - oh no. One of the parts we’re most excited about is welcoming you lot into our new taproom. You’ll be able to drink the freshest pints of Wiper and True in the city, just metres from where they were brewed. We’re excited to be working on the taproom build with the phenomenally talented Kyle and his team at Studio B, a small, independent studio in Bristol. It was important for us to partner with a local business on the job for many reasons; we want to work with people who aren’t just exceptionally skilled designers, but who also know and love our city, who are passionate about beer and brewing in Bristol, and who know how much this project means to us and can help bring it to life. Moreover, Studio B are rigorous about choosing local suppliers and contractors and sustainable materials. This is essential for Wiper and True, as we are aiming to reduce the environmental impact of our build as much as possible as we strive to create the most sustainable brewery we can. We’re only at the early stages of our planning with Studio B, but the initial ideas have been truly exciting - we can’t wait to reveal more in the coming months!
Join us for the ride: Social Media
We’d love to bring you all along for the journey as we create our shiny new brewery and taproom. Please do follow us on your favourite social media channel; we’ll be sharing big exciting milestones (HELLO NEW BREWKIT) and little behind-the-scenes glimpses of what’s going on. Find our new accounts below:
Instagram: @wiperandtruetaproom
Twitter: @wiperandtruetap
Facebook: @wiperandtruetaproom
