New Year, New Energy … Same Lincoln City

As new year celebrations were taking place across the country, many stopped and reflected on their achievements last year and their hopes for next year. Here at Mitchell Brewing we were very much the same. 2024 was a mammoth year for us, a big breakout year thanks in large to the viral summer which saw ‘Osama Bin Lager’ hit the headlines in 17 countries that we know of, appearances on all UK tabloids, the BBC, Fox News, Yahoo News, Thai TV, Indian TV and the weirdest interview ever on Japanese Radio saw me personally come out of my comfort zone on numerous occasions.

We went from January 2024 only supplying our own pub and 5 other pubs regularly, to the end of 2024 regularly supplying 111 pubs and being used as guests in quite a few others. We utilised social media in a stronger way (particularly Tik Tok) by handing the reigns over to the fantastic Bree. So what does 2025 hold for us? Simply put we don’t know, but what we do know is it will be a sad time, we will say goodbye to Worcestershire in just a few small weeks, making us homeless as we build our new Lincolnshire site. It is nerve wracking to take the huge gamble we have taken but at the same time exciting to build a custom brewery which will allow us to increase our output and bring in house bottling to the table. It will be a year of big transition none more so as we will say goodbye to some of the team due to the move and welcome other new ones on board.

On the field as everyone knows we are very proud to partner with Lincoln City FC and myself and ‘the little boss’ Sansa follow them home and away everywhere. From when I held a season ticket in the Stacey West as a teenager I have known the festive period brings Lincoln a mixed bag but usually not too positive. This festive period has been more of the same! November was tough, we had a lot of travelling and saw a lot of service stations (Chesham, Bristol, Exeter, Wrexham and Crawley) December looked slightly kinder (if not on the pitch, at least on the vans mileage) we visited Rotherham (and gave them 50p for the meter) Morecambe, Huddersfield, Shrewsbury and Bolton. Those away days saw us gain three cup wins but no league wins and more importantly drawing blanks in four of the league games in front of goal.

Going into this weekends away FA Cup tie at Birmingham, we have failed to score in four, we have struggled to create any clear cut chances and we haven’t beaten Birmingham in 113 years, although I will concede we have only played them twice this century. The last time I was at St Andrews, I was a fresh faced 16 year old and we were lining up against the likes of Savage, Heskey, Gronkjaer, Melchiot, Izzet was on the bench. We held strong for the first half and our physicality handled us well. Do I rate our chances this time round? On paper no, on form no, but I feel Lincoln might just go on and nab a victory here and get us back into some sort of form, after all it’s the magic of the cup!