On Saturday 9th.November, 39 of the many volunteers at SCBF45 had a day out. This year we went to Harrogate.
An initial hour long stop at the recently opened Roosters Brewery and Taproom was followed by a few hours in Harrogate. Roosters were founded in 1993 and quickly developed a reputation for brewing ground-breaking, hop-forward pale ales that showcased (then) new hops from the USA. Earlier this year, they relocated to Hornbeam Park in Harrogate. Their taproom is open Wednesday – Sunday and is well-worth a visit.
We then moved into Harrogate and small groups visited many of the venues on our pre-prepared list – plus a few extras. For example, the ‘Disappearing Chin’ micropub. A good day was had by all – personal highlights include Cold Bath Brewery Tap, the Harrogate Tap and Major Toms. Key beers included Silent Assassin (Roosters), Harbour Little Rock IPA (Little Ale House) and Nightjar Zolo (Major Toms Social).
We hope to see you on the SCBF46 day out!
I’m Polly, I’m 23, and I’ve been a member of CAMRA for three years. This October’s 45th Steel City Beer Festival was the sixth I’ve attended, but the first I’ve volunteered at. As luck would have it, a week off work coincided with the setup of the festival, so I thought I’d give it a go.
Over the course of a week I helped with everything from glass washing to stillage assembly, pulling pints to putting up bars. I even helped taste test the beer to make sure it was ready to be served!
Would I recommend it? Absolutely. Over the course of the festival I met dozens of new people, learned plenty about what it takes to set up a festival, and most importantly had a tremendous amount of fun.
If you have the time and the interest, helping out at a CAMRA event is a great way to spend a few hours, days, or even a week! 
Kelham Island Museum was the setting once again for the annual Steel City Beer & Cider Festival which took place over 4 days in October. Over 6,000 visitors attended, drinking almost 20,000 pints of beer and 3,000 pints of cider. Thanks to help from our friends at Abbeydale Brewery we managed to keep the Keykeg bar open for the whole festival this year, which certainly proved popular. In fact additional supplies had to be brought in on Saturday morning to ensure we kept the taps flowing.
The usual excellent range of food stalls provided a wide range of hot and cold food, and moving one of the stalls round by the Engine Room, and adding more seating made the marquee area a lot more inclusive, giving a better overall feel to the courtyard. Saturday also saw a charity cake stall run by the Seven Hills WI, featuring cakes baked using beer and cider.
Drinkers were entertained by another top quality choice of live music, featuring rock bands each night, plus the usual Saturday afternoon spot by the Loxley Silver Band, and a return appearance by the ever-lively Kelham Rapper, who could be seen performing their sword dances several times on Saturday at various places around the festival.
Wednesday night sees a lot of the local trade visit, and is the night we run the Champion Beer of Sheffield Award, this year sponsored by Beer Central. Each local brewery is invited to submit one of their beers for the competition which is blind judged by teams of selected tasters.
The results, which announced during the evening were as follows.
3rd place – Vanilla Stout by Bradfield Brewery
We also ran a special event featuring a talk by renowned beer writer Roger Protz. This covered the history of India Pale Ale and included 6 tasters of IPA’s from the festival selection. 22 people attended the talk and feedback was excellent. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it and we will be looking to add additional talks and tasting sessions to the festival in future.
This year’s charity was Burton Street Foundation, who provide various support services for people with learning disabilities and their families. Through collections of cash, unused tokens and donated glass refunds, we are pleased to say that over £2000 was raised for this excellent local charity. Thanks to everyone who donated.
And of course a final mention to our volunteers, all 200 of them! We can’t thank them enough for giving up their free time to come and help make the festival the success it is. It’s a lot of hard work, but everyone enjoys being part of it and it’s nice to see so many faces back again each year. Extra thanks are also due to the volunteers who helped on the last Sunday. What takes four days to build is dismantled and put back into storage in just 10 hours. It’s a herculean effort and the team were rightly treated to a free buffet and free drinks at the Rutland Arms 2 weeks later. This is an area where we could definitely use more help next year, so if you’re feeling up to it, get in touch.
Planning for next year’s festival begins in January, and if you fancy being part of our team, please contact one of the committee, either via the emails listed in the front of Beer Matters, or in person if you see one of us out and about at any point. We’ll be only too happy to let you know what we do, and to find a way you can get involved.
See you all again next year. Cheers.
Paul Crofts 
Don Valley Brewery, who operate the Blind Monkey pub in Walkley, have launched a new Wheat beer called ‘Teenage Dirtbag’.
Lost Industry brewing are holding a 4th birthday celebration at their tap bar on Sidney Street on 7th December.
The Brewery of St Mars of the Desert are opening their tap room in Attercliffe every Friday and Saturday until Christmas now, 2pm-8pm.
The Out & About X Blue Bee collaboration beer launched at the Kelham Island Tavern on 19th November. It is a chocolate orange stout called “Stout and About”.
Triple Point have brewed a black liquorice beer called Hidden, a 4.4% ABV dark beer, in support of the Sheaf & Porter rivers trust who will receive a donation for every cask and keg sold.
Drone Valley Brewery found themselves out of action as a result of flooding mid November. 
Steel City celebrated their tenth anniversary with a ‘Decade of Bitterness’ event at the Crow featuring beer and cake (cheers Sue!). The anniversary brew Hop Manifesto Reloaded was launched at the event and is now doing the rounds in the usual suspects, and some one-off beers were also available including a tonka version of Stout Wars. Hop Manifesto Reloaded is brewed to the ‘Transatlantic Pale Ale’ style Dave and Gazza made their name with all those years ago, with a UK-style pale malt base and American-style hop additions, when IPAs still had bitterness rather than being brewed to taste like fruit juice #makeIPAbitteragain.
For winter rather than brewing a beer for the season Dave opened three barrels that had been maturing between six and nine months. Firstly, the final instalment of the Burn the Kirsch series is Holmenkollen, this started life in the same way as the Fantoft Edition, a cherrywood-smoked rauchbier with cherries, but then aged nine months in a Bordeaux red wine barrel with more cherries. The result is a deep red brew with soft fruity smokiness cut by sour cherry and wine. Next up is Corvus Corone – the Crow from Bordeaux, this is the sour brut IPA brewed with Kate, Chris and Adam from the Crow and aged in a Bordeaux wine barrel with grapes. The end result is almost like a sour wine, with the sharp acidity complimented by the tart grapes. Finally, The Rum Thieves is the megacollab Lactose the Intolerant chocolate coconut milk stout aged in a 21-year-old [REDACTED] rum barrel, the rum going perfectly with the chocolate and coconut.
The latest brew is a collaboration, who’d have thought it, this time with one of Germany’s most innovative breweries, namely Freigeist. Dave met Sebastian several years ago and a collab has been mooted ever since, and has finally happened. Mein Herz Brennt (German for ‘My Heart Burns’ but also a track by German metallers Rammstein) resurrects a near-extinct style, Berliner Braunbier. As well as being darker than the better-known Berliner Weisse, the Braunbier was historically more sour and had more hops (or indeed, had hops). Being Steel City, this was interpreted liberally to mean lots of Wai-iti and Lemondrop. Part of the batch had blackcurrant added, and some has been hidden away in a wine barrel with goji berries for a few months 
A new pub has opened in Castleton. The Swiss House bar on How Lane is part of a family run bed and breakfast accommodation and open to the public, serving up to four real ales. (Photo Robin Gee).
The former Palm Tree at Walkley has reopened as the Raven under the same ownership as Loxley Brewery and the Wisewood Inn, following a thorough refurbishment. Six cask beers are available, a mix of Loxley and guest beers.
The Shepley Spitfire at Totley Rise has reopened following refurbishment.
If you enjoyed visiting the Millowners Arms at Kelham Island Museum during our beer festival, the good news is it is now open full time as a proper pub! It features 6 real ales on handpump along with various keg beers and canned craft beers -plus of course wines, spirits and soft drinks.
Bar Stewards on Gibraltar Street has reopened following a refurbishment which has added a second toilet and relocated the bar.
The Wharncliffe Arms reopened as a Bradfield Brewery pub on 21 November.
The Dove & Rainbow is hosting a meet the brewer event with Laine Brew Company on 27 November at 6:30pm.
The Ale Club on Ecclesall Road celebrated their 2nd birthday and Hop Hideout, now in Kommune food hall on Angel Street, celebrated their 6th birthday over the weekend of 16 November. Hop Hideout are also extending their weekend opening hours for the duration of the Christmas shopping period.
The Sheffield Tap celebrates its 10th birthday on 28 November from 5pm with some classic beers as well as a new one brewed to celebrate ten years, there will also be cake!
Walkley Beer Company celebrate their 5th birthday on 29 November and the beer line up will include the launch of a collaboration brew with Neepsend.
The Devonshire Cat‘s Black Friday event this year is on 29 November, here it isn’t people at a shopping mall getting stampeded in the rush for discounted goods, it is a celebration of dark beer styles with some rather interesting beers to try!
Peddler Market December event is on Friday 6 (5pm-11pm) and Saturday 7 (2pm-11pm) with the usual format of street food vendors, craft beer and other drinks, makers stalls and music inside and out the warehouse at 92 Burton Road. The guest brewery featuring on the tap wall this month is Gun Brewery.
A small new bar called Berlin Bar has opened in Crookesmoor, no real ale though.
The former Pa’s Bar & Bistro has now reopened as Bar Kelham, serving food and drink starting with breakfast at 9am. No real ale however. 
After a lengthy absence, the CAMRA national Pub Heritage website is now back on line in a much improved format.
Before all of that though, just in time for election week we’re releasing Purgatory (4.1%), a feeling we’re probably all feeling familiar with by now! It’ll be a quaffable pale ale with Citra and Delta hops. And after that I think we’ll all be ready for some Hibernation (4.2%), a hazy pale with Centennial, Simcoe and Cascade hops.
In January, we’ll have the return of the ever-popular Citra hopped Duck Baffler, our most requested Dr Morton’s and becoming something of a new year’s tradition here at Abbeydale! And joining the Brewers Emporium range we plan to release a new version of our Serenity Session IPA, and an as-yet to be confirmed iteration of our Wanderer “weird & wonderful” beer! We’re also really excited for one of our first brews of next year to be a collaboration with Beatnikz Republic. It’s DIPA time!