Steel City are still ‘between hosts’ but thanks to Bang the Elephant brewery kindly hosting, the long-awaited ‘Men of Steel’ collab is out very soon.
The beer is a collaboration with Ukrainian brewery Ten Men along with Bang the Elephant and the Crow Inn, as part of Ten Men’s ‘100 Collabs’ project (https://tenmen.beer/100-collabs/), to raise funds to rebuild their brewery after the original fell to the Russian invasion.
The brew is a fruited sour based on the Ukrainian drink Uzvar, a variety of kompot, and after fermentation saw Dave and former Steel City business partner Gazza, Crow manager Ellie, and label artist Lewy join Nigel and Michael at Bang the Elephant for a very scientific (ahem) tasting session involving a few litres of the base beer and a few glasses of apple, pear, plum, cherry and apricot juices/purees and trying various combinations of dosage rates.
Once the optimum ratio (top secret, obviously!) was ascertained, the fruits were added to the two conditioning tanks, while one was also dosed with Madagascan vanilla and lactose to make a smoothie version.
Both versions will be launched at the Crow as part of Sheffield Beer Week on Saturday 8th March. Cans will be available from various retailers including Beer Central. All profits from the brew will go to Ten Men’s fundraiser, link here for further donations https://tenmen.beer/brewhub/.
