Hello, Happy New Year and welcome to our 2023 year in review!
Last year’s recap was one of our most read blogs of the year, so I thought it would be nice to keep the tradition going and do a little recap of what we got up to in 2023, another pretty momentous year for Bullhouse.
- Bullhouse East won best craft beer bar in the UK at the SIBA Business Awards 2023!! An incredible achievement and testament to the hard work of all of our staff creating a thriving craft beer mecca in the heart of East Belfast.
- In 2023 we sold just over 2350HL, that’s an increase in volume of 59% on 2022, or 280% on 2021! It equates to over 46 pints of Bullhouse being consumed every hour of the year and is testament to the hard work of Mark, Gary and Mark brewing and packaging that volume of beer over the year.
- We produced 28 different beers across 120 batches with Rolling Papers and Road Trippin’ accounting for 45% of all volume.
- We collaborated with Exale, Beer Hut, Modest, North, Kinnegar, The Reporter, Mo Chara, Bailies Coffee, Northern Monk, Rascals, Galway Bay and Outburst Arts.
- We finally commissioned our 30HL second hand brewhouse in March and purchased 2 x 30HL FVs, a mill and an auger in December.
- We were nominated for two awards at the SIBA Business Awards 2023, Commercial Achievement for our work making inroads in the GB market and best UK craft beer bar for Bullhouse East.
- We raised money for Home Start South and East Belfast as our charity partner in 2023, thank you kindly for all of your toy donations at Christmas as well.
- We became an accredited Living Wage Employer, becoming one of only two hospitality businesses in Northern Ireland that are accredited Living Wage Employers.
- We hosted Bullapalooza, a very very very busy weekend street party on Manderson Street in East Belfast.
January saw us start the year with an award nomination for Bullhouse East, for best New Business in East Belfast and an invitation to a black-tie dinner at the Stormont Hotel.
February saw us send our biggest order of the year off to Cave Direct for St Patrick’s Day and curate another beer list for The Dog and Bell‘s St Patrick’s Day event in Deptford.
March came with Beer X and trip to Italy for some Tap Takeovers over St Patrick’s Day.
April saw us invited to the opening of Titanic Distillery and we’ve stocked their products in Bullhouse East since and done a fair few events over the year together.
May saw us head down to Waterford for a tap takeover in Tully’s Bar. We started working with Fourcorners in ROI and we’ve been delighted to be able to do more events across the island as a result!
June was a busy month, saw the return of our good friend Lionel Richie to Belfast and the commissioning of our new canning line as well as Bullapalooza and trade tastings in Manchester and London. We also started working with David and the team at Viti Pizzeria who make the best pizza this side of Naples.
In July we ran the bar at a very busy Eastside Electronics for the guys at The Night Institute.
August saw our mid-year staff do and pouring at Hilden Beer Festival.
In September we made the trek up to Donegal for Errigal Brewing Co’s Oktoberfest and a surf lesson and headed down to Dublin for Rascal’s Rocktoberfest.
In October we headed down to Galway for a collab with Galway Bay and attended Portrush Beer Festival.
November saw James and myself head over to Brau Beviale in Nuremberg to look at Keg Washer / Fillers and bumped into a few familiar faces!
Finally in December we picked up a few new tanks from December and had a very very busy Christmas and New Year at Bullhouse East!
Thank you to all of our team for making this the best year yet for Bullhouse!
2023 was not without it’s challenges, but we’ve had a great year and thank you to all of our loyal customers for buying our beer both wholesale and consumer, and coming to Bullhouse East, we can’t thank you enough!!
Here’s to more great memories in 2024.
