· Hopwise editorial · news · 1 min read
Five years of Hopwise
A note on the shop's fifth anniversary — what's changed, what hasn't, and what the next five years are about.
Five years ago this week, the door of the Hopwise shop in Sheffield opened to its first customer — a man buying a bag of Maris Otter for what would become his first all-grain batch.
In the five years since:
- We’ve sold around 28 tonnes of malt and a stupid quantity of hop pellets
- The learn library has grown from a handful of FAQ cards to over a hundred articles
- The shop floor has been rearranged four times, which seems excessive
- Three of the Sheffield homebrewers’ clubs have set up monthly tasting nights at the shop, which has been a particularly good development
Looking forward, the two priorities are:
- More learn content. We get the same recurring questions every week in the shop, and writing the answer down once and pointing at it is more useful for everyone than answering the same question for the hundredth time.
- Better water-chemistry guidance for the local area. Sheffield’s tap water profile is well-characterised but the practical mappings to specific styles aren’t, and that’s where most homebrewers get stuck.
If you’re a regular customer, thank you. If you’re reading this from somewhere we don’t ship to, please come and visit — the kettle’s always on (in both senses).