Cheers to Six Years! Brew York to Host Birthday Bash at New State-of-the-Art Brewery

Rachel Auty
3 min readMar 1, 2022
Founders Wayne Smith and Lee Grabham

Innovative Yorkshire brewery, Brew York, is about to mark six years in business with a very special public event at their new production brewery. Brewing commenced at the £2million state-of-the-art production facility a year ago and they continue to invest in a significant growth strategy to increase production capacity towards 5 million pints a year . The 65,000sq ft complex at Handley Park in Osbaldwick — just 10 minutes up the road from the original site at Walmgate — will play host to Brew York’s biggest celebration to date.

Now — for the first time and to celebrate six years of trading — the site will open to the public on 8th & 9th April for a special beer festival spread across the vast indoor and outdoor floorspace. Leading breweries from across the UK will be pouring at the event — including Buxton Brewery, Thornbridge, Siren, Vault City, and Full Circle — alongside street food, music and special entertainment for all the family. Brew York’s resident kitchen partner, Yuzu Street Food, will be one of the food vendors at the festival, serving their extremely popular Asian-inspired street food from their food truck. The festival entertainment will include the Brew York monthly ‘YouTube Live Tasting’ during the Friday evening session, which guests can get involved with for free. There are limited tickets available.

Co-owner and Head Brewer Lee Grabham is proud of the new site and is looking forward to welcoming their customers and local community: “After the rollercoaster of the last two years, we are really looking forward to showing people the Osbaldwick site in person. We’ve missed having our loyal and supportive customers in our venues, and we now want to share with them our positivity, ambition, and the innovation we are so excited about. It also feels amazing to be able to host several of our great brewery friends at the brewery for the event. We’re just really looking forward to opening the doors and having a long overdue celebration!”

The new Osbaldwick site has enabled Brew York to address escalating demand, both domestically and internationally. As part of the expansion, several new jobs were created increasing employment to 70 across the business, and the team invested in new kit and technology to improve efficiency, quality and consistency. This included creating a large cold store, and obtaining a grain silo and mill alongside a reverse osmosis machine, which strips all mineral content from the water to create a ‘blank canvas’ for brewing. This further improves general quality and enables the production of new styles of beer such as Pilsner which would not otherwise be possible using York’s mains water supply.

The Osbaldwick investment quickly enabled output to double from 880,000 pints a year at the Walmgate Brewhouse to current levels of 1.7 million pints. With two new 200 hectolitre external fermentations vessels set to be installed outside in March this year the total production capacity at the site is an estimated 5 million pints a year.

The original Brewhouse site at Walmgate also remains in full operation as a smaller-scale brewing facility.

Co-founder and Managing Director Wayne Smith adds:

“We’ve pushed on with plans despite the challenges of recent times, and I’m incredibly proud of what the team has achieved. The new site really is a sight to behold for anyone who has an interest in beer, brewing and general production, and it will be a really proud day for us on the 8th April when we finally get to share it with more of the people who matter so much to us and to the next chapter in Brew York’s story.”

For tickets and more info visit brewyork.co.uk/sixth-birthday-brewery-bash (limited tickets are available).

This article was commissioned with Raucous Agency by Brew York in February 2022.

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Rachel Auty

B E E R & A R T S | Director at Raucous Agency Ltd | Marketing, PR & events consultant | Engagement strategist | Yorkshire lass | Founder of Women On Tap CIC