Tickets to our Christmas party nights in Docks Academy are selling fast… and already Friday 10th December has completely sold out! We still have limited availability for Thursday 2nd, Friday 3rd and Thursday 9th December.

This will be the first time Docks Academy has been the setting for Christmas party nights. Enjoy mouth-watering festive street food menu from our new Mockingbird chefs plus the very best entertainment in the county all included in the price. Your hostess for the night will be the resplendent Miss Kiki deVille – The Grand Duchess of European Cabaret and the UK’s most sought after Burlesque Chanteuse and Compere. There will be DJ sessions from the grandmaster of the decks DJ LROK and one of the very best covers bands – The Revellers – will bring the Christmas party vibes like you have never seen and heard before.

Tickets are £37.50 per person (+ booking fee). If you’re looking to book for 30 people or more, the booker goes FREE and you’ll receive a FREE bottle of fizz.

Last week we launched our latest WIP Series. This one is the ‘Team Series’ and it was designed to give some of our non-brewery team members their first taste of brewing and create three innovative craft beers.

The Watermelon Salted Lager (4%) was brewed by Docks’ Head Brewer, Mike Richards, our former drayman Anthony ‘Sid’ Sidney and Alex Dunham, a member of our taproom team. A huge amount of freshly pureed watermelon was included in the brew, giving the beer a sweet, light flavour and pink hue. The Belgium Ginger Beer (4.5%) was inspired by monastic brewing traditions, a love of ginger beer and citrus. It was brewed by Rory Lynch, the latest addition to our brewhouse team and Dani Thompson and Caitlin Wallace who work in the taproom. Notes of ginger and citrus harmonise with the Belgian yeast phenolics to create a refreshing, light ale. And the Pineapple, Lemon and Rosemary Hopfenweisse (4.8%) is a really moreish beer made by senior brewer Lewis Birch, with help from Josh Hill and Lauren Bridgewater. It’s full of lemon and rosemary flavours and has a big pineapple finish!

We don’t have many cases of the beers available, so if you would like to try one (or all) of these one-off brews, don’t delay!

A couple of weeks ago, we had Scott with us from Sheffield-based brewery Heist Brew Co, working on a new beer we’ll be releasing next month.

The beer is a DDHDHIIPL which actually stands for ‘Double Dry Hopped Dip Hop Imperial India Pale Lager’ – basically it’s going to be one hell of a big tasty lager. Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to hear when that new brew drops! Back in September, our brew team visited Heist and worked with their brewers to create a 6.5% Buckfast Baltic Porter called ‘Don’t Let Me Die’ – Buckfast tastes like a mixture of berry-flavored cola and cough medicine and it combines well with blackberry to create an immensely drinkable Baltic Porter!

We’ll be getting some cans of ‘Don’t Let Me Die’ in the taproom in the very near future.

At the beginning of the month, we increased our brewing capacity by 6,000 litres when we received delivery of a brand new 60 hectolitre fermentation tank.

Just to put that into perspective, that means we can now make 40% more beer because of the new tank – around 10,500 extra pints a month! Over the last 12 months or so, demand for our beer has grown, thanks to our new line in the Co-op, the success of the container bar in the Fan Zone at GTFC and more recent listings in the Pan Pacific hotels and Beer & Burger in London.

We now have extended our brewhouse team to cope with all the extra brewing we’re going to be doing now the new tank is in-place at the rear of the Church.

We’re just about to begin a run of six back-to-back shows in the Academy which are complete sell outs.

First up there’s the two delayed Lloyd Griffith shows followed by The Sherlocks all before the end of the month. Then in November Tom Stade will be wowing a capacity crowd shortly before the next Red Herring Comedy Club night and the first night of Bouncers.

There are still limited tickets remaining for the second performance of Bouncers (Thursday 18th November) and Stereo MCs 24 hours later (Friday 19th November) before the final Red Herring Comedy Club night of 2021 on Saturday 11th December.

We’re yet to announce three more very special 2021 shows to come before the end of the year but we are just finalising some details. Keep an eye on the Docks Academy website and social media channels for updates!