Help Indie Rabble open our Flagship Brewery Tap

Hi, I'm Dave - one of the four founders of Windsor's newest brewery - Indie Rabble. This crowdfunder has been set up to help us make our brewery taproom - the heart of our new dream, Indie Rabble Brewery - the best place it can possibly be, and help us launch with the kind of bang that'll put us, and the Windsor Beer Mile, on the map.

But first - a little on our team.

We are The Rabble

Working with Alex Rowlands as Head Brewer and Alison Steele on operations and scheduling, Naomi Hayward of A Hoppy Place will be joining this new startup as the creative lead and Dave, her husband and Hoppy's other co-founder as Marketing and Technical lead.

Alex brings 10 years of brewing experience at Windsor & Eton, Thornbridge Brewery and Phantom Brewing Co to the project, in what is quickly becoming the “Windsor Beer Mile”.

A short walk to Windsor & Eton Brewery, this new venture also neighbours recent startup Two Flints Brewery and is just 5 minutes on foot per hop from Windsor’s 2022 gold and silver winning pubs according to Slough, Windsor & Maidenhead CAMRA: A Hoppy Place and The Windsor Trooper, respectively.

The brewery is using a brand new Elite Stainless Fabrications Electric Powered 20HL brewhouse paired with Gravity Systems fermenting vessels to produce a range of beer, with special attention paid to German-influenced Lager, both hazy and bright pale ales, kettle sours and stouts. 

Whilst a faultless execution is critical to Dave as a beer sommelier and lead Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) judge, expect plenty of experimentation too, with truly exciting beers already planned for launch, and more info on our launch collabs below.

Our name. Indie Rabble stems from the love of music, community, beer and good times borne out of the garden of Windsor’s A Hoppy Place outlet. When Dave and Naomi opened Windsor Hoppy, they didn’t really know anyone in the borough. Dave adds: "Even though Naomi and I had lived in Berkshire for by then 6 years. We didn’t have many local friends. Plenty of people we knew down the pub, but not really friends. Hoppy changed everything for us, and gave us many of our now closest friends over a shared love of Punk, Rock, and Metal music, plus beer and food."

Naomi, who sings in local band “Amp Cats” and has a long history of performance adds: “I have also found new audiences for my music, with plenty of sites in Windsor and Maidenhead to have hosted us since we launched our own pub”.

Indie Rabble plans a dedicated music stage featuring regular live music with both professional and non-professional music evenings. 

The brewery will launch with 8 collaboration brews, showcasing a mixture of locally and nationally produced breweries that we've had the pleasure to get to know over our 4 years running A Hoppy Place. All of the styles will be covered, with genuinely exciting lager showcases, beers with huge flavour, matched with east and west coast pales, sours, and stouts.

And it's Ally's job to keep the beer flowing thereafter. With two decades of experience in getting the right product to the right place at the right time from the world of "big fizzy" - Ally will tell Alex what to do, and when to do it.  

Ally is also a lover of rock music. And therefore probably the mediator between Dave and Alex's penchant for doom metal and the reasonable desire of probably every one else who ever visits for us not to play doom metal. This is doubtless very important to you, if you're considering being a part of our crowdfunder.!

And we want you to help make our launch night and beyond as amazing as possible...

This crowdfunder has some simple goals: 

• Help fund our premium taproom, the heart of our brewery, and make it as amazing as we possibly can, with these goals helping us set up a more sustainable brewery taproom, a stage for music, and more.
• Bring in a little bit of money to get some awesome day 1 merchandise out for you all.
• Help us reach out to a lot more thirsty potential Windsor locals and help us market the Windsor Beer Mile.
• Make sure our taproom is as vibrant and full of those Wonderful people as possible early doors by offering beer tabs (With huge savings!) up front, to be redeemed. We want to look like an exciting place to visit from day 1.

The initial target

The majority of our opening funds are going into the brewery, mezzanine floor for grain store, the coldstore, the bar and a brand new toilet block.

What are we missing then? Beer mostly! But that's where our remote collaborations come in. Team IRBC have been brewing all over the country with some of the very best craft breweries in the UK. The initial target helps us recover the coffers after these spendy away days, and bring the beer down to put on the bar for launch.

Our goal is to open as a bar a little time before the brewhouse is commissioned, and a good chunk of these funds will be to ship down the launch beers and get them all hooked up and flowing for you. 

All beer we brewed, just - somewhere else!

Our bar is going to be very much more than ordinary. We believe in cold chain distribution, in keg cold beer at all times to maintain quality, and in the very best dispense equipment. This all costs. As does the nearly 8000 litres of beer we're buying from our collab brewing partners ahead of launch. 

So we'll be paying for beer with beer!  Or that's the idea! 

By funding a lot of these keg and can acquisitions with "free beer" (via percentage boosts on all reward tiers), as well as access to merch and our launch collab box set, we can then welcome you all in to make the very most of these touches and drink some of the fantastic beer we have already brewed with the country's best breweries.

But we want to do a lot more than simply open our bar and have you there...

Stretch goals

If we break our initial target, a stretch goal of £20,000 will enable us to buy beer serving tanks for the taproom - which is a huge boost to our net zero targets: Avoiding the use of single use plastic kegs wherever possible. These beer tanks will serve our most popular beers, and each beer serving tank fill contains over 16 individual 30 litre keykegs worth of beer, stopping 20 kilos of plastic from potentially going to landfill each and every time we refill them.

Final goals

If we get as far as a final stretch goal of £30,000, we will be able to build our dedicated music stage from day 1, with the money going towards a PA system, sound deadening, and a modular retractable stage able to house a 5 piece band. Music is for all 4 of us our our first love, and we're really desperate to give Windsor a much needed live music venue. You can be a part of this dream whilst still benefiting from wide ranging perks including boosted beer tabs, private parties, brewdays or merchandise... 

We'll have music either way, and have a stage eventually, but this stretch goal would allow us to have this huge feature piece from day 1.

Recipe for Success

As founders of multi-award winning business A HOPPY PLACE, Dave and Naomi are confident in this project's credentials. And in joining with Alex and Alison, we know we've got a team that will knock this out of the park even in appreciably, a tough time for the industry.

In the past 4 years since launching A HOPPY PLACE, the team have had quite the timeline and achieved significant successes.

• Opened Aug 2019
• February 2020 – The pandemic hits. Co-owner Dave quickly launches e-Commerce platform, launches local deliveries

• March 2020 – Online ‘virtual pub’ events and online beer festivals hosted throughout lockdown
• Through 2020 we reopened, closed again, offered ‘substantial scotch eggs’ and generally stayed as open as possible...
• Mar 2021 – Announced as SWM CAMRA pub of the year for the first time, based on the strength of our virtual platform and online events
• Mar 2021 – Announced as SIBA UK Craft Beer Retailer of the year, Single Outlet
• Apr 2021 – Offer made on Maidenhead Premises
• December 2021 – Lease fully agreed in Maidenhead premises, fit out approved in principle
• Feb 2022 - Agree with Alex and Alison to go ahead with plans to open INDIE RABBLE
• Mar 2022 – Announced as SWM CAMRA pub of the year for second consecutive year in Windsor
• June 2022 – Maidenhead bar opens
• July 2022 - Start legal process for negotiation of arch in Windsor for INDIE RABBLE BREWING CO.
• March 2023 - Maidenhead bar announced as local CAMRA pub of the year just 9 months after opening

• March 2023 - Announced as multi category winners at SIBA BeerX: Multiple outlet Craft Beer Retailer of the year, and Online Craft Beer Retailer of the year
• April 2023 - Received keys for INDIE RABBLE arch in Windsor, began fit out

• TODAY - Launching kickstarter to make absolutely sure our Taproom is ready to offer you the very best beer experience from the moment it opens

... August 2023: Planned opening date.

The collabs

We have brewed 8 collabs with some of the most amazing breweries in the country, and all 8 of these will be on draught come launch night. As well as that, we'll be selling a collab 8 pack exclusively via this crowdfunder as a reward. This is the only way to guarantee cans of all 8 beers.

So get on over to the rewards list now, and get your night at ours funded, get your cans delivered, or heck, couldn't it even be both?

Over to you... 

Will you join The Rabble?

Thank you for reading, and coming on this journey with us.