Our biggest beer festival of the year, Hop City, is due to take place this April. We’ve sold a lot of tickets, and we know that you’re as excited about the event as we are. However, first and foremost to any beer festival is the health of our community.

COVID-19 has taken a bigger toll on the world than we could have imagined. In last month’s Hop City meeting, we were discussing food vendors, volunteers, and the ways in which we were going to make this festival our best one yet. In today’s Hop City meeting, due to the current state of the nation, we had to make the difficult decision to cancel the event.

We could have carried on monitoring the situation for a few more weeks, however as it’s changing across the globe on an hourly basis, the likelihood would have been us being forced to cancel a week or even a few days before the festival, which would be much worse. It wouldn’t be fair on the ticketholders, breweries or volunteers who have committed to attend. Making a call now allows us to make alternative arrangements that will benefit everybody.

If you’ve already booked travel, we do have other potential plans in the pipeline that we’ll be able to provide an update on soon. We’re also hoping to get some cans of beer from international breweries to put into Hop City Party Packs that would be available online – if we can get the beer across. Our importer is currently working on an hour-by-hour basis due to the impact of what’s happening across the globe. Despite the uncertainty, we will work together to do everything that we can to get the beer to Leeds. If you can’t come to Hop City, we’ll do our very best to bring Hop City to you.

If you’ve already bought a Hop City festival ticket, you will receive a full refund. If the situation shows sign of improvement over the next few months, we’ll look at hosting a one-day Hop City festival in the summer.

We are beyond gutted. However, we’d be more gutted if we potentially put your health at risk. We wouldn’t be doing our best by our communities near and far if we were to go ahead with the event. However, we’ve got our finger on the pulse, and we will do everything we can to bring you the Hop City experience on a smaller scale.

As ever, we thank you for your support. We know our behaviours as a society will change for a number of months. We encourage our community to continue to champion your local beer retailers and breweries. These will be testing times for the industry that we have built together, by continuing to support the businesses that are most exposed, we stand the greatest chance of them remaining in good health.

If you have any questions about the above, please contact us via drink@northernmonk.com.

If you’re interested in hearing about the additional measures that we’ve put in place at our tap rooms and production facilities, we’ve included some points about the precautions that we’ve introduced below.

PRODUCTION SITES

We are taking precautions to ensure that our internal and external communities are as safe as possible.

Single-use gloves are to be worn at all times, that are disposed of and refreshed at regular intervals. Hand washing and sanitising is a necessity each time the gloves are replaced.

Hand sanitising stations have been installed at all points of entry and exit at our production sites.

Hand washing and sanitising is a necessity after accepting the delivery of any goods.

All members of staff working on online shop orders wear disposable gloves at all times, and all cans sent via online orders will be sterilised with an antibacterial wipe before packing. When you open the box, you can be sure that the contents are fully sanitised.

It is a necessity for our delivery drivers to sanitise their hands before and after every delivery drop.

We have minimised any non-essential meetings and visitors.

REFECTORY SITES

We want you to feel comfortable visiting our sites and enjoying our beer. As a result, we have implemented the following measures in both LDS & MCR:

In the interest of social distancing, we reserve the right to refuse entry in instances where our sites are operating close to capacity.

We will be diligent in ensuring all surfaces are disinfected as regularly, and as thoroughly, as possible. This includes door handles, tabletops, bar areas, toilet facilities etc.

All Refectory staff are to wear disposable gloves when collecting glassware.

Our Refectory teams have been provided with additional hand washing facilities, and will use these as regularly as possible.

We strongly encourage customers against sharing glassware at any time.

Glasses will not touch the beer taps when pouring.

Tissues and antibacterial gel will always be available to customers.

Aside from the points above, both sites will continue to operate as normal.