In January we kicked off the year by taking the brewery roof off to crane in two more 30,000 litre fermentation tanks. A milestone development for the brewery which gave us the opportunity to not only supply a higher volume of local craft beer to the Australian market but offer more hiring opportunities to locals within our brew team and encourage more people to embark on an exciting career in the craft beer industry. 

February, we installed a custom Burleigh craft beer bar in the HQ of our friends and national partner, Surfstitch for all employees and visitors to enjoy. 

In March, we helped launch the Gold Coast Laughs Festival by holding a comedy show featuring the likes of Luke Heggie, Gen Fricker, Dusty Rich, Bec Charlwood and Rhi Down at the Burleigh Brewing Taphouse. In beer world, our very own Rowan Hailing was crowned Best New Queensland Craft Brewer at the 2021 Royal QLD Food and Wine Beer Awards. Rowan has been with us for over four years and was internally promoted to Junior Brewer last year. He’s become proficient at running the brewhouse and mastered our filtration processes, including operating the centrifuge – and of course a great variety of related brewing tasks. Rowan has also embraced the opportunity to brew pilot batches on our R&D system and is building knowledge of the recipe development process… we are constantly inspired by his developing passion for both the art and science behind beer and brewing. To end the month, we headed to Canberra for our very first appearance at the annual Canberra Craft Beer & Cider Festival. 

Back home, in April, we teamed up with our partners Gold Coast Film Festival to host three Burleigh Cinema nights and even brewed Margot Mango Triple Axel, a beer in honour of festival patron, Margot Robbie. We also released Burleigh Hop Nectar as part of our limited edition, Brewers’ Notebook series. 

In May, our beloved Burleigh Twisted Palm also took out best Champion Australian Pale Ale at the 2021 Australian International Beer Awards, held in Melbourne. We also headed to Sydney to launch our birthday beer, Burleigh Fifteen Dusseldorf Dunkel as an exclusive beer for GABS festival. 

June was the month of celebrating skateboarding and craft beer. In the lead up to our annual sold-out Burleigh Keg Jump event, we were honoured to have our friend and ex pro skater, Trent Bonham, showcasing his world-renowned skateboard collection as our Artist in Resident. Burleigh Keg Jump was a huge night on the calendar, with 20+ skaters battling it out for the chance to win a prize pool of $7000, including Burleigh beer for a year. Locals, Dani Campbell and Nixen Osbourne were both declared winners in the end, jumping 11 kegs in total. 

Off the back of GABS festival, we announced Burleigh Fifteen as our next Brewers’ Notebook release in July. We then halted operations at the brewery for three days while we took our employees on our annual Field Day– a three-day all company trip to say thanks for all the hard work put in.

In August and for the second time this year – the roof came off to make way for further expansions. We were also proud to finally release our official Burleigh brand video to the world: This is your beer.

September was the month that we launched Burleigh Bighead in a can nationwide, a long awaited event for our no-carb lager loving customers. We also partnered with Gold Coast Music Awards to show our continued support of the local music industry by sponsoring the People’s Choice Award. We also attended Crafted Beer and Cider Festival, on the Gold Coast and Festival of Food and Wine in Toowoomba, held during the Carnival of Flowers in the same weekend!

The month of October saw us hanging out with our mates down the road, Alfred’s Apartment. We collaborated to celebrate all things local. We also acted as the major event partner for their annual sold-out Golf Day event and hosted the launch party for Alfred’s Street Afternoons, a limited edition 500ml tall bottle take-over of Burleigh Bighead. 

In November, we teased the launch of our third Brewers’ Notebook beer, Burleigh Sublime – a Mexican lager featuring the art of local tattooist Laura Marshall on the can. We hosted an offical launch party where our friends and local bands, Social Mongoose and Chutney kept us dancing all night long. Courtenay Mccue, our pal and local talented artist, also completed work on a special Burleigh Brewing inspired mural located at The Backyard Cafe in Nobbys Beach. 

That brings us to December; and the brewery is busier than ever. We’re working hard to make sure Australia is stocked with their Burleigh craft beer favourites over the silly season and well into the new year. We started the month off by announcing the lucky winner of our Win Burleigh Bighead Beer and Gear for a year competition, celebrated the 10th year anniversary of our senior brewer, Sean, and hosted fun events ranging from premiering Cosmic Shift, the Ripcurl x Louie Hynd film to all your festive Christmas parties at our Burleigh Taphouse.

From all of us here at Team Burleigh Brewing, we want to thank you for supporting independent craft beer this year. Cheers to 2022!