Steel City 50 cask ale – CAMRA Sheffield & District

The festival will feature around 200 different cask beers, and it is intended that all will be available from the start of the festival on Wednesday 21 October. Some will be served on handpump, some by gravity and some direct from brewery bars themselves.

The beers will be located in the Upper Hall, the Marquee and the Guest Bar to the right after entering the museum. The latter will host beer from three breweries, a feature which proved very popular last year. These breweries are Black Lodge, Ticking Clock and Trig. It is hoped that staff from these breweries will be on hand to talk about their own beers and breweries. Cask beer will also be available in the Millowners Arms within the museum complex.

A feature of the festival is that we try to obtain cask beer from all current breweries that fall within the CAMRA Sheffield & District branch area, so expect to see about 16 Sheffield-area breweries represented with a cask beer.

As well as local beers, we are hoping to get a number of beers from Derbyshire microbreweries, some from the North East of England and some from Kent breweries.

St Mars of the Desert, a well-respected keg-only brewer in Sheffield has returned to Thornbridge Brewery to brew a collaboration cask beer on the Union system, and we hope to have a cask of that.

Three special beers are in the pipeline for this year. The first is in support of this year’s festival charity, Support Dogs, and the proceeds from the sale of this beer will be donated to that charity. The second marks our 50th beer festival, and the third is in memory of CAMRA stalwart, Alan Gibbons.

We also have two firsts for the festival this year.

We have held a homebrew competition, and the four finalists have already been chosen. The finalists’ beers are being scaled up and produced commercially by four local brewers – Blue Bee, Duality, Little Critters and Little Mesters.

In addition, for 2026 there will be a Women on Tap bar, which will be celebrating women in brewing by featuring seven different beers (three cask and four keg), all brewed by women at nearby breweries. Some of these brewsters will be on hand to talk about their beer as well as their experiences in the brewing industry.