Note1 May 2026 · Chelmsford · Radio City Beer Works · 7 Deadly Sins

Radio City turns seven

7 cans, 7 sins, 35 launch venues — and one big Saturday in Chelmsford

Saturday 9 May 2026, Radio City Beer Works marks its seventh birthday with the biggest release it has put its name to yet: seven collaboration beers, one for each deadly sin, brewed in Essex with seven different UK breweries and launched across 35 first-pour venues two days before the main brewery party.

For Chelmsford drinkers, it's more than a birthday event. It's a snapshot of how far Radio City has come in seven years — from local brewery to a name confident enough to pull collaborators from Nottingham, York, Lewes, Norwich, Manchester, Hampshire and Berkshire, and to launch the resulting range nationwide rather than just over its own bar.

The cans go live on Thursday 7 May. The brewery party follows on Saturday 9 May at Radley Green, with all seven beers on tap, four more alongside them, live music, street food, beer pong, table football, and a shuttle bus running between Radio City Social in the city centre and the brewery.

The seven beers

Each beer pairs one sin with one collaborating brewery — not just a neat theme, but a line-up that tells you something about Radio City's own peer group.

• Lust × Black Iris — Nottingham
  Strawberry Vanilla Pastry Sour, 6%
• Gluttony × Vibrant Forest — Hampshire
  Imperial Stout, 8.4%
• Greed × Brew York — York
  DIPA, 8%
• Sloth × Abyss — Lewes
  Hazy Pale Ale, 4.8%
• Wrath × Ampersand — Norwich
  Southern Hemisphere IPA, 7%
• Envy × Sureshot — Manchester
  NEIPA, 6%
• Pride × Elusive — Berkshire
  NZ West Coast Pilsner, 5.6%

There's a nice intelligence to the spread. Sureshot's Envy NEIPA and Ampersand's Wrath Southern Hemisphere IPA bracket the hop-forward spectrum from opposite directions. Greed at 8% and Gluttony at 8.4% are the heavyweights — a DIPA and an imperial stout, the late-evening beers. Lust's strawberry vanilla pastry sour from Black Iris is the mid-session reset; Pride's NZ West Coast Pilsner from Elusive the early-doors palate-cleaner. Sloth's hazy pale at 4.8% is the only one you can comfortably have more than once. It reads less like a random collab dump and more like the arc of a real long afternoon.

The brewery party · Saturday 9 May

The Saturday event is the anchor point: 11 taps, including the full Seven Deadly Sins range, plus tank-fresh tasting, live music, street food, beer pong, table football, and a shuttle bus from Chelmsford city centre.

The brewery sits out in Radley Green, roughly nine miles from central Chelmsford, which makes the shuttle the practical answer for most people. It runs both ways from Radio City Social on Viaduct Road, a short walk from Chelmsford station. Book both legs when you buy — the return matters just as much as the outward trip.

This is the third birthday bash Radio City has staged on-site, and previous years have sold through. This one has more pull than usual: seven new beers, seven guest collaborators, and the kind of crowd that already treats Radio City Social as the natural end point of a Chelmsford Saturday.

The 35 launch venues · cans go live Thursday 7 May

The cans and first pours land on Thursday 7 May across 35 launch venues chosen by Radio City. That matters: this is not just a local release with a few sympathetic stockists. It's a deliberately mapped spread of indie beer venues across Essex, East Anglia, London, the South and the North.

View all 35 launch venues by region →

Three further launch venues have been confirmed by Radio City but not yet publicly named at time of writing. We'll update the venue page as soon as those pours are announced.

Why this matters for Chelmsford

For local drinkers, this isn't just one more birthday release. Radio City have become one of the engines of a craft scene that barely existed in Chelmsford fifteen years ago. The city now has a real beer-mile structure, a serious specialist venue in Radio City Social, and an independent brewery close enough to feel local but ambitious enough to pull in collaborators from across the country.

That's what this release really shows. Not just "seven beers because seven years," but a brewery confident enough to use a birthday as a statement of position.

If you've ever ended a Chelmsford crawl at Radio City Social and felt that it represented the modern version of the city's beer scene, this is the brewery-scale version of the same thought.

If you're going

If you're heading to the brewery on Saturday, book the shuttle. It's cheap, practical, and clearly the intended route in and out. Buses run throughout the day in both directions — outbound from Radio City Social to the brewery, and return from the brewery back to the city centre — so pick whichever pair of slots fits your day. Book both legs at the same time on rcbw.shop.

If you're not making the party, the cans are the main event. From Thursday 7 May, find the nearest launch venue and start there. If you want to track specific beers, PINtPOINT's Beer Alerts can watch for any of the seven sins and flag them when they land on tap nearby.

Seven years. Seven beers. Thirty-five launch venues. A proper statement release from a brewery that's no longer just thinking locally.