2024 was a busy year for the club, each month we do our best to meet up regularly. Often, either announcing a challenge or showcasing the beer from the previous challenge. Each challenge intended to push a brewer out of their comfort zone and try something they wouldn’t usually.

January

In an attempt to be all grown up, we kicked off our first ever club AGM at Wiper and True’s Barrel Store to give the members a chance to shape the direction of the club. Starting with the election of a new committee following the decision of Matt to step aside in favour of getting married.

Last night was a great night out tinged with sadness as we send off our much-loved club founder, and man that brought us all together, Matt Hazley. Matt is moving back to Northern Ireland in a few days before travelling the world in 2025. Of course, we only know one way to do a send-off properly and that’s with beer!

Starting at the Swan with Two Necks the group quickly grew, bringing friends together who haven’t seen each other for years. After a few pints had very quickly disappeared we made our way to the club’s home at Wiper and True’s beautiful taproom, where Evs made a surprise appearance. After drinking through their extensive tap list, last orders were called, and the group separated to make their way home.

Another great night out at Wiper and True’s Taproom, and our special annual announcement of the Christmas challenge pairings. Each year, brewers signup to the challenge, to get paired up and random and their challenge assigned. This year they will need to brew something inspired by their assigned Christmas movie.

We all have until the Christmas meetup on the 18th December back at Wiper to present our finest work.

It’s that time of year already - Christmas! Well, at least time to announce the our annual challenge. This year, our theme is Christma Movies!

How does it work you ask? Well, two brewers get paired up and randomly assigned a movie title. Your job is to collaborate and brew something inspired by the film. Maybe the title? Maybe a character, or a line of dialog? Perhaps a scene that has inspired you? Or something incredibly tenuous? Doesn’t matter, work it out together (and explain the connection).

For Collab #16, we visited the Bristol stalwarts Wiper and True at their beautiful Old Market Taproom.

The idea was really simple and fun - we were tasked with designing a beer in the same way that Wiper and True design a beer and then the end goal was to make that beer and then collectively judge it against the design.

Wiper steers away from the overly clunky BJCP guidelines and has developed a set of criteria that they design a beer against. These criteria are much more about how the beer looks, feels and tastes, rather than trying to ram it into a complex style specification.

Our friends at Reading Amateur Brewers invited us to collaborate with themselves and Yakima Chief! What an opportunity!

A squad of HBC brewers hopped on the train to Reading on Thursday 9th March, to meet at Phantom Brewing Co. and get some chat and hop smelling with the legends that are Yakima Chief.

On the night we delved into the details of some experimental HBC Hops that Yakmia will be sending out to us for some experimental brews.

We are almost 4 years old! Crazy to think we’ve grown so much and had so many great collabs over the past few years. We’ve become better brewers through it all and 2022 and early 2023 have seen us bag loads of medals at prestigious national comps!

With age comes reflection though and for a while we’ve been thinking of how we can run HBC a little better and make it more sustainable going forward. We think it’s time to kick off a few changes.