On Saturday 31 May, members of the Sheffield & District branch headed all around the city and its surrounds to complete the Sheffield Pub Survey (Last one was done Feb 2023). The purpose of the event was to take a snapshot of the range and cost of real ales and hopefully confirm Sheffield’s rightful status as the Beer Capital of the UK.
Groups on various different routes set off at midday and met up at the Red Deer in the City Centre. From here, those that could still make it, headed out to other areas and pubs which had not yet been surveyed. As during our last two surveys the weather was extremely good.
158 Pubs were surveyed (27 more than last time), with a respectable 629 beers recorded. From this data 376 unique beers were identified from 149 different breweries. We believe these figures maintain Sheffield’s claim to be the Beer Capital, offering the widest choice of cask ales. For the 138 pubs which were surveyed in person (rather than using data available via social media) an average of 4.34 cask ales per pub were available for sale on the day. Only slightly down from 4.6, the last pre-COVID figure. For the 79 pubs which were surveyed both in Feb 2023 and May 2025 there was a small drop of 1.5% in the number of beers available.
The average cost of a pint of real ale was £4.13 (up 50p/13.8% compared to Feb 2023). If Wetherspoons and Samuel Smiths are excluded from this data the average cost per pint was £4.44 (up 54p/13.8%). With no beer duty increases since the last survey, prices are up 6% per year which represents an above inflation increase (average inflation being around 4.5% per year over the 2.3 year period). The cheapest beers were Green King’s Ruddle’s Best and IPA at £1.79 a pint. The dearest was a 5.7% Big Hoppa by Little Critters at £6.50 pint.
Again this year local breweries dominated the pumps with Abbeydale having 62 recorded beers, followed by Bradfield and Thornbridge both on 44 beers each.
Beer availability wise the top spot this year was Abbeydale’s Moonshine available in 28 of the pubs surveyed, with Bradfield Farmer’s Blonde second in 26 pubs and Thornbridge’s Jaipur third in 16 pubs. Sharp’s Doom Bar, third place for many years has dropped down to 7th place.
A special thanks to everyone involved in going out to venues and gathering all the data to make this survey possible.
It wouldn’t have just been just Sheffield and District members, I was going to help survey with the Chairman, Crystal Peaks and Handsworth, but I had Shingles. I hope everyone enjoyed the survey and themselves.