On Saturday 30 May, members of the Sheffield & District branch headed around the city and this year further out including parts of the Peak District to complete the Sheffield Pub Survey (Last one was done same time last year). 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 Bath Hotel 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. For the third time in a row, we were blessed with great weather.
191 pubs were surveyed (33 more than last time), with a total of 629 beers recorded. From this data 376 unique beers were identified from 155 different breweries. As we surveyed a wider number of pubs this year we compared the number of beers on sale for the 109 pubs which were surveyed in 2025 AND 2026. This came up with a figure of 4.36 beers available per pub only slightly down from the 4.5 figure from 2025. We believe these figures maintain Sheffield’s claim to be the Beer Capital, offering the widest choice of cask ales.
Our comprehensive 2026 survey across 191 venues reveals that the headline average price for a pint of cask ale in our branch area now stands at £4.46 (an 8.0% increase over 2025). However, a quick breakdown by postcode area shows that surveying pubs further out of town played a massive role in pulling that headline figure up.
The inclusion of pubs in the Hope Valley and Peak District introduced a distinct “tourist premium”: S32 (Hathersage/Eyam) and S33 (Castleton/Hope) topped the scales with eye-watering averages of £5.69 and £5.35 respectively—with individual pints reaching as high as £6.95. Within Sheffield itself, S17 (Dore/Totley) led the city proper at £5.13, followed by the S7/S11 corridor at £4.76–£4.78, while traditional suburban strongholds like S6 (Hillsborough) and S8 (Woodseats) maintained more modest baselines around £4.25–£4.34. Clearly the days of the sub £4 pint in independent pubs will soon be behind us.
Looking strictly at established, urban Sheffield pubs returning from last year’s survey, the like-for-like picture is far more measured: prices across our core city estate rose by between 5.2% and 7.2% (an average rise of 23p to 29p a pint). While this still outpaces general UK CPI inflation (2.8%) as publicans contend with rising wage floors and operational overheads, high-volume national chains kept their increases to just 3.2% (averaging ~£2.60)—widening the gap between corporate value outlets and our independent trade. Beer is clearly going up in price at a far greater rate than general inflation.
As usual local breweries dominated the pumps with Abbeydale having 81 recorded beers, Thornbridge overtaking Bradfield with 45 beers vs Bradfield’s 41. This was no doubt driven by the opening of the Fargate Tap.
As for individual beers on sale the top spot this year was again Abbeydale’s Moonshine available in 41 of the pubs surveyed, Timothy Taylors’ Landlord (a Yorkshire brewed but less local beer) came in second on sale in 27 pubs, with Bradfield Farmer’s Blonde third in 24 pubs.
As ever a very special thanks to all the hard working volunteers who went out to venues and gathered the data to make this survey possible.