The 2016 CAMRA Cider Pub of the Year competition has now opened for nominations. Anyone in Sheffield can nominate Sheffield pubs that promote real cider and sell a good quality range, the deadline to nominate pubs is 30th November and this can be done online by logging on to
www.camra.org.uk/cider-poty-nominations.
Sheffield CAMRA branch will then judge all the pubs entered in our area and pick the best one to put forward to be judged in the Yorkshire county round, which is the route into the national competition.
The previous few years the Sheffield winner has been the Harlequin on Nursery Street -will their ongoing efforts be offer decent cider go rewarded or will a new cider hero be found?
Shakespeare’s on Gibralter Street were presented with their Pub of the Month Winners’ certificate on the 8th September by Sheffield CAMRA Vice Chairman and beer festival organiser Louise Singleton.
The presentation night was made into ‘a bit of a do’ with a huge choice of great beers, buffet and entertainment.
New owners at real ale live music favourite
The New Barrack Tavern pub on the city’s Penistone Road has new owners. Husband and wife team Kevin and Steph Woods, who have run the pub for 12 years as managers, have bought the business to become independent and totally ‘free trade’.
“We’re indebted to the vendors, Castle Rock Brewery, for their confidence in us,” says Kevin. “We came to Sheffield to manage this pub in 2004. We had already found our new vocation in the licensed trade while doing one-off shifts in pubs in other towns. And what with Steph’s addiction to Sheffield Wednesday and our daughter Rebecca’s early swimming passion, this has proved to be a good decision. Sheffield welcomed us, and we couldn’t be happier.
“On arrival in the Steel City, our aim was to bring our daughter up, enjoy ourselves, and build the pub up as a community place for our neighbourhood, football fans, and for those looking to enjoy live music, comedy and real ale.
“Thankfully our efforts have been rewarded with 12 consecutive listings in CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide and, most recently, Sheffield CAMRA’s pub of the month award,” he says.
Kevin is convinced Sheffield deserves its title of England’s real ale capital. “Now that we’re free of tie, we can broaden our real ale and cider range, make ourselves available for more local suppliers and reflect even more strongly the preferences of our wide customer base.”
Colin Wilde, Castle Rock Brewery managing director, and former Tapton School old boy, says the couple deserve the opportunity. “Over the years, they have developed the business and expanded their customer base to make the New Barrack Tavern the CAMRA award-winning pub it is today. At a time when we’re told 29 pubs a week are closing, this is an example of what can be achieved by people dedicated to serving the public well,” he says.
The New Barrack Tavern was given a £35,000 makeover in February. The new lounge replaced a derelict Victorian shop and outbuilding. This has already proved its worth on busy days at neighbouring Hillsborough Stadium and when the pub holds its regular music, comedy and real ale days.
Graham Percy
Steel City’s latest brew
The Light At The End Of The World sold out before the casks were filled – in fact when the last cask was filled there wasn’t so much as a pint leftover for ‘quality control’! Look out for it at the Shakespeare and at the Steel City Beer Festival (well when the festival’s named after the brewery it’d be rude not to…), and the festival special
Chasing The Dragon which has added Komodo Dragon Chillies in the cask! The main brew will also be appearing at Nottingham Beer Festival (7-10 October) along with the chilli (Scotch Bonnets this time) and lime version
Death In Fire, and a week later Wakefield Beer Festival will have a kiwi-fruit version. The final part of the unholy trinity of chillies is the Ghost Pepper version,
Her Ghost In The Fog, which will be bottled and exclusive to Beer Central and Cotteridge Wines of Birmingham.
Meanwhile, the ‘away collaboration’ at Landlocked,
Stone Sour, is also out. There should be three different versions at Sheffield beer festival: the ‘base’ version which is a ‘straightforward’ lactic-mash sour beer, a version primary fermented with brettanomyces, and a version primary fermented with ‘normal’ yeast then reseeded with brettanomyces. Hopefully they should all taste very different despite only the yeast being different, and will provide an interesting contrast when tried side-by-side.
The next brew, a home collaboration with Bridestones, is a tribute to Nightmare on Elm St creator Wes Craven, who passed away last month. In a pun worthy of Abbeydale, the guys have created a milk stout named
Craven d’Ale. As well as lactose, the brew also features a generous quantity of malted oats and plenty of Bramling Cross hops. For a full breakfast stout a few casks will have coffee added to become Macchiato.
ACV update
Sheffield and District CAMRA have piloted a national CAMRA scheme which encourages branches to nominate pubs in their area as Assets of Community Value (ACV). We nominated eleven pubs, ten in Sheffield and one in the Derbyshire Dales. Derbyshire Dales have approved our application to list The Red Lion (Litton) as an ACV.
However, Sheffield City Council, who also received the applications in late June responded with a series of further questions. They have since stated that decisions will be made by 24th.October. The ten pubs are a mix of heritage, suburban, city centre and rural. Once Sheffield has ruled on these applications, we will review our position and may submit more pubs for ACV status.
Currently only two Sheffield pubs, the Castle (Bolsterstone) and the Plough (Crosspool) have ACV listing. In our wider ‘district,’ the Red Lion has joined the Angel (Spinkhill) and the Anglers Rest (Bamford). Once a pub is ACV listed, planning permission is required for any change of use or demolition.
The ACV listing scheme is open to all CAMRA branches. Each branch can use this assistance to nominate up to ten pubs/month. The branch provides basic details, then CAMRA nationally, complete the paperwork, check ownership, obtain ground plans and paid the fee. After checking the details and adding more information, the branch then submits the completed documentation to the appropriate Local Authority. Four workshops are planned for CAMRA branches.
These will discuss how to access CAMRA’s Support Service and will also hear from other Branches leading the way with ACV nominations. Sheffield CAMRA will be represented at the first workshop which is in Manchester on 3rd. October.
Nationally, Communities Pubs Minister Marcus Jones has presented the first ‘Badge of Honour’ to an ACV-listed pub. To date, more than 800 pubs have achieved ACV status. The first new badge – declaring ‘This Pub Matters’ – was presented to Tina Massie of The Red Lion, Knotty Green, Buckinghamshire, at the recent Great British Beer Festival which was held, in London, at Olympia. The initiative is a joint venture between the Campaign for Real Ale and the Department for Communities & Local Government.
More information is available at:
CAMRA – List your Local
CAMRA – Nominating as a CAMRA branch
Sheffield City Council – Assets of Community Value
Derbyshire Dales District Council – Community Right to Bid
Listing for post-war pubs?
Historic England seeks details of pubs that could lead to them getting listed status: Heritage body Historic England is seeking details of the nation’s pubs for a research project that could lead to more getting listed status. It particularly wants to hear about pubs built or rebuilt between 1945 and 1985 as part of a new thematic review. The project, which could last up to two years, could then recommend additions to the 11 post-war pubs that already have listed status. Historic England said: “Currently, post-war pubs are a severely threatened building type, with many being converted to other uses or demolished altogether. Through this project we are aiming to help people understand and appreciate these buildings, and hopefully to help protect them.”
The buildings nominated need not be still used as a pub and could have been closed, altered or even demolished. Historic England said the information would help ensure “the knowledge of post-war pubs across England is as complete and up-to-date as possible”. Currently just two post-war public houses are listed in their own right – the former Lord High Admiral in Pimlico, London, which is now in use as an Argentinian restaurant and Jack Straw’s Public House in Hampstead, London, which replaced an 18th century pub destroyed during the Blitz.
Another eight post-war pubs are currently listed as part of wider development schemes: The Shakespeare – part of the Barbican Estate in London; The Pimlico Tram, Westminster; the former Crowders Well – part of the Barbican estate in London; The Earl George, The Link, The Scottish Queen and The Parkway at the Park Hill estate, Sheffield; The Pride of Pimlico in Westminster and The Cock Tavern at Smithfield Market in London. Suggestions can be emailed to
jo.bradley@HistoricEngland.org.uk.
Pub company Punch Taverns has announced it is to sell 158 of its pubs. The Burton headquartered firm has agreed to sell 158 outlets to New River Retail for £53.5 million. The move is part of the firm’s strategy to sell its non-core pubs at a rate of about 200 a year. Following the sale, Punch will have 2,900 “core” pubs and 550 non-core pubs. New River Retail is a specialist real estate investment trust (REIT) focussed on the UK food and value retail sector. The proceeds will be used to reduce Punch’s debt. It is feared that New River will convert many of the pubs into stores. In November 2013, Marston’s, sold 202 pubs to New River.
Proposals have been submitted to Sheffield City Council to turn The Market Inn, on Wortley Road, High Green, into a business centre, as well as building 14 houses on the surrounding land. And under separate plans developers want to convert The Ball Inn, on Myrtle Road, Heeley, into five apartments, while also putting up a four-storey building with 15 flats.
Under The Market Inn scheme, the pub building will be retained, with the interior rearranged to create several office suites. The Ball would be turned into five two-bedroom flats. The new building will be constructed to the rear of the site, offering 15 two and three-bedroom flats.
Our annual Beer Census started out being known as the ‘Beer Capital Survey’ as it was a competition between Derby and Sheffield to prove which was the real ale capital in terms of beer choice. Sheffield always wins of course and in terms of smaller cities, York and Norwich also beat Derby – although it hasn’t stopped Derby attracting tourists on the basis of it’s pubs, breweries and beer festivals!
Sheffield of course is also known for having a great beer scene with loads of pubs offering a variety of different beers and many enthusiasts make a regular pilgrimage to come and try new beers!
On a more serious note, the beer census takes the pulse of Sheffield’s beer scene, not only recording how many different beers can be found but also the most successful breweries and brands, tracking the average price of a pint and more.
This year we conducted the survey on Saturday 5th September. Whilst we were a little thin on the volunteer numbers again we still managed to run 13 survey routes and visit 145 pubs across the City hosting a total of 730 handpumps.
The number of different, unique cask beers we found was 385 – impressive! It proves that Sheffield is like one big beer festival every day and there must be beers of different styles, strengths and flavours out there catering for everyone!
The most common beers found in the pubs surveyed (it should be noted that not every pub was surveyed due to the limited number of people so we did restrict it to pubs that we know often sell a reasonable selection of ales – this can affect the outcome) were:
1 – Bradfield Farmers Blonde (33 pubs)
2 – Abbeydale Moonshine (32 pubs)
3 -Sharps Doom Bar (24 pubs)
4 – Greene King IPA (14 pubs)
=5 – Greene King Abbot Ale (13 pubs)
=5 – Black Sheep Bitter (13 pubs)
=7 – Timothy Taylor Landlord (12 pubs)
=7 – Kelham Island Easy Rider (12 pubs)
=8 -Tetley Bitter (11 pubs)
=8 – Abbeydale Deception (11 pubs)
The breweries with the most pumps encountered were
1 – Abbeydale (62 pumps)
2 – Bradfield (56 pumps)
3 – Greene King (55 pumps)
4 – Thornbridge (34 pumps)
=5 – Kelham Island (29 pumps)
=5 – Sharp’s (29 pumps)
and finally, the average price of a pint of real ale in Sheffield across those beers where the price was noted was £2.86 with the cheapest being Greene King Ruddles Bitter (3.7% ABV) in the Rawson Spring Wetherspoons (£1.70 per pint) and the most expensive beer noted was £4.20 a pint for Thornbridge Rattlesnake (6% ABV) in the Bath Hotel.
COMPARISONS
The latest survey figures found for other Cities doing the same survey….
Derby – 200 different beers
Nottingham – 334 different beers
Norwich – 254 different beers
York – 281 different beers
Leeds (City Centre only) – 189 different beers
If you’ve just arrived in Sheffield to study at either University then welcome! If you already know you appreciate great beer then you will love it here.
If you are at the University of Sheffield then two starting points. One is to join the Real Ale Society, the other is to pay a visit to Interval Café Bar in the Union which always boasts a nice selection of ales. Also on campus is the University Arms, a more traditional pub, again with a good beer range.
Over at Hallam University, the Student Union doesn’t do quite as good on the beer front but not to worry, there are plenty of pubs nearby with the Rutland Arms a particular favourite, the Sheffield Tap at the station has it’s own brewery and the Old Queens Head in the bus interchange offers well kept Thwaites beers and reasonably priced food. Also nearby offering real ale is the Howard, Globe, Red Lion, Royal Standard and Roebuck, plus of course lots more as you venture up into the City Centre. Don’t forget there are discoveries to be made off the main drags such as the Dove & Rainbow rock pub on Hartshead Square (down a passageway near Castle Square tram stop/Pizza Hut), Three Tuns on Silver Street Head, Dog & Partridge on Trippet Lane, Red Deer on Pitt Street and the Bath Hotel on Victoria Street to name just a few.
If you fancy exploring beyond the City Centre you may also wish to try a bus or tram crawl. Some favourites are listed below. (more details of pubs can be found at www.whatpub.com and public transport information can be found at www.travelsouthyorkshire.com).
All day travel tickets can prove good value (currently £3.90 for a specific bus operator or £4.50 for any bus or tram. Until 25th October an all day tram pass costs just £3. Alternatively, on buses only, students can travel for £1 per single journey. If you are commuting weekly or longer passes are also sold.
Bus 25 towards Bradway via London Road & Heeley – Beer Engine, Hermitage, Albion, Cremorne, White Lion, Sheaf View and Brothers Arms
Bus 43/44 towards Chesterfield via Dronfield – Coach & Horses, Victoria, Talbot, Jolly Farmer, Three Tuns, Dronfield Arms, Beer Stop.
Bus 52 towards Hillsborough via Broomhill and Crookes – University Arms, Place, Nottingham House, Crookes Social Club, Ball Inn and Punchbowl.
Bus 81/82 along Ecclesall Road – Porter Brook, Porter Cottage, Lescar, Sheffield Beer House Micropub.
Bus 95 towards Walkley via Commonside – Hallamshire House, Closed Shop, Walkley Beer Co and Walkley Cottage (alternatively bus 31 will take you to the Blake).
Bus 97/218 towards Totley via Abbeydale Road – Beer Engine, Cremorne, Picture House Social, the Broadfield, Robin Hood and Cross Scythes.
Bus 120 towards Fulwood via Broomhill, Ranmoor and Nether Green – Francis Newton, Fox & Duck, The York, Ranmoor Inn, Rising Sun.
Blue/Yellow tram towards Middlewood/Malin Bridge – alight at Shalesmoor for the famous Kelham Island real ale trail (Wellington, Ship, Shakespeare’s, Kelham Island Tavern, Fat Cat, Harlequin, Riverside, Gardeners Rest and Forest. Alight at Infirmary Road for the Hillsborough Hotel, alight at Bamforth Street for the New Barrack Tavern and alight at Hillsborough for the Rawson Spring.
So what is CAMRA about and what do you do in Sheffield?
The Campaign for Real Ale nationally has been promoting real ale, pubs and drinkers rights since 1971 and the Sheffield & District branch has now been going 41 years.
Back in the early 70s there were a smaller number of breweries all producing beer on industrial scales, they also owned the pubs which only served their own beers.
These breweries and pub operators were discovering new ways of cutting costs and increasing profits – at the expense of quality and flavour – including using cheaper ingredients and putting filtered and pasteurised beer into kegs and tanks, with then had gas added on dispense to replace the natural sparkle from cask conditioning.
CAMRA’s founders decided that the loss of traditional cask beer – and more importantly the influx of crap beer – was worth fighting against.
Fast forward to 2015 and the issues for CAMRA are different – although there are a few big brands of awful beer, there are a lot of small ‘craft’ breweries producing good quality beer across all the formats – cask real ale plus keg, can and bottle. The issues instead now are more about pub closures and taxation.
Although our campaigning is more focused on pubs at the moment, we are still embracing our heritage of promoting real ale by organising beer festivals, running champion beer competitions, maintaining a working relationship and dialogue with breweries and reporting on the real ale brewing scene in our newspapers and magazines.
In Sheffield we are one of many volunteer run branches (all of CAMRA is volunteer run except for a few paid professional support staff at HQ in St Albans) and publish a monthly newsletter ‘Beer Matters magazine’, run a Pub of the Month and Pub of the Year award scheme, organise an annual Beer & Cider Festival in October, conduct an annual pub survey and more. We also run regular socials included guided pub crawls, brewery tours and more.
CAMRA also incorporates ‘Apple’ who campaign for traditional cider and perry – that is your farmhouse style versions served ‘flat’ and made from nothing more than fermented fresh apple or pear juice – not made from industrial concentrates nor un-natural additives. We have two key cider dates in Sheffield – in October we help with apple pressing at Woodthorpe Hall and in January we judge Cider Pub of the Year.
You can join CAMRA by filling in the form in the back of Beer Matters or online at www.camra.org.uk. Membership if you pay by direct debit is just £24 a year, or less if you are under 26.
So what is ‘cask’, ‘keg’, ‘craft’ and ‘real ale’? And why does CAMRA only support some of them?
Well, Cask and Keg are simply the type of barrel draught beer is supplied in. Typically real ale comes in a cask and other beers come in kegs, although that statement is slightly complicated with the introduction of disposable ‘key-kegs’ that can be used for either.
Real Ale is a term introduced by CAMRA many years ago, the definition is beer that undergoes secondary fermentation in the container from which is served and is served without the addition of external gases to the beer on dispense. It is generally brewed from natural ingredients in the traditional manners and maintains the full flavours and aromas the brewer intended. The process of secondary fermentation actually generates gas giving a freshly served beer a natural sparkle.
Craft beer is actually an American term and doesn’t have a formal definition in the UK – however it is generally taken to mean a beer brewed in small batches from natural ingredients by a brewer that cares. Many real ales therefore can also be considered ‘craft’, however this term extends to those keg beers that are of the higher quality and basically fizzy real ales. The ‘craft’ term is beginning to get abused by some bigger breweries marketing departments though so be careful!
CAMRA’s heritage is to promote real ale and continues to do so. However as the campaigning priorities move more towards pubs, it is not considered worthwhile establishing a way of defining which keg beers are good and which are bad, so they are simply deemed ‘out of scope’ and simply another product on the bar alongside the real ale. Most people soon discover the dreadful bland ones, for example any brand that includes ‘Smooth’ in the name…
Woodthorpe Hall is one of only two artisan cider makers we are aware of in our area, based at the end of a country lane in Holmesfield, near Dronfield.
The Hall is the home of Dick Shepley and his family, he is the man behind the Owd Barker strong Farmhouse Cider, the cider is made from the apple juices produced at his annual apple pressing day where friends, family, business contacts and a few CAMRA members all turn up and volunteer for the day in his garden!
Many of the apples used are windfall from trees in the area, however this stock sometimes supplemented with apples bought in from Orchards in South West England. Owd Barker is certainly not a single variety cider – all the different apples are chucked in together!
The process on the day involves carting apples from trailers and sacks on the driveway in wheelbarrows to the pressing area where they are washed by hand before being pulped and mashed using a series of Heath Robinson esque motorised machinery with the results shovelled into buckets ready to be pressed.
The mashed apples are squashed into juice on the old fashioned apple press, with the juice poured into plastic water bottles (of the office mineral water cooler style) to be transported to the fermentation tanks.
It isn’t all work of course, there is a lunch break that involves repairing to a pub in the village for food and an afternoon tea break happens with coffee and home made cakes then after the days pressing is complete a few social drinks are enjoyed with a few tubs of last years cider laid on for workers!
A small group of Sheffield & Dronfield CAMRA members will be going to Woodthorpe Hall to help with the apple pressing on Saturday 3rd October, email beermatters@sheffieldcamra.org.uk if you fancy joining us.
The Mount Pleasant is almost 200 years old, having been built in 1828. The Beer House Act was passed in 1830, but it was not until 1840 that the then owner, A Reuben Rogers, paid 2 Guineas for a licence, having been caught selling ale illegally. Since then there has been a further eight licencees, the present incumbent being Stuart Burrows, who took over in 1993.
The pub is an excellent old fashioned one, with a friendly atmosphere and very efficient bar staff. You can enjoy good conversation without the distraction of music.
Six handpumps are in use and apart from the Tetley Bitter and Gold, the remaining ones are a variety of guest beers. These usually include Blonde Witch and one from the Welbeck Abbey Brewery. Adnams Ghost Ship has also been a recent regular.
There is a quiz on Thursdays which Stuart writes himself and to quote one customer ‘never was there a landlord who knew so much useless information!’ The darts team compete in the Woodseats league and there is also an active fishing club. Stuart also runs a Whisky club where members meet to taste rare whiskies from around the world.
He describes the Mount Pleasant as a public house unspoilt by progress and has written a history of the pub, complete with pictures, which is well worth reading. It will also be included in the 2016 National Good Beer Guide.
Opening hours are 5pm-12pm Mondays to Wednesdays, 5pm-1am Thursdays and Fridays, 3pm-1am Saturdays and 12 noon to 12:30am on Sundays. Bus 20A passes the front door of the pub and bus 20 stops nearby. (Note the 20A is replaced by a new route 18 from 1st November).
Join us on Tuesday 13th October from 8pm for the award presentation evening where all can expect a warm welcome and a cracking pint!
Carole Ware
The Kelham Island Tavern in Sheffield has been named ‘Yorkshire Pub of the Year 2015’ and will now go forward into the next round of the National Pub of the Year 2015 competition.
The Kelham Island Tavern is situated in Russell Street in Sheffield, and has now won the prestigious title for a record seven times, having previously won it in 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012, and 2014. It is owned and run by Trevor Wraith and his team, and is featured in the new CAMRA Good Beer Guide 2016: “Former National CAMRA Pub of the Year, this small gem was rescued from dereliction in 2002. Twelve handpumps dispense an impressive range of beers, always including a mild, a stout and a porter. In the warmer months you can relax in the pub’s multi award-winning beer garden.”
The Runner-up in the competition was the Sun Inn in Pickering. This was the first time that the pub had been nominated for a Yorkshire Pub of the Year competition. Situated in Westgate, it has been run by Rob & Sharon as a free house since April 2010. The pub offers up to six real ales — mainly sourced from small Yorkshire breweries — and two real ciders.
CAMRA’s Yorkshire Regional Director, Kevin Keaveny, said “The standard of the competition was extremely high again this year, but as last year, the judges felt that the Kelham Island Tavern just ‘ticked a few more boxes’ than the other nominations. The owner and the staff of the pub have set a very high standard for the last two years, and for most of the previous nine years”.
Kevin Keaveny will present framed certificates to the licensees of the two pubs mentioned above at some time in the near future, when special presentation events have been arranged.
The eighteen nominations for this year’s prestigious title were visited by individual members of a judging panel. Each nomination was scored against strict criteria that included an emphasis on the Quality of Real Ale and Community Focus. Also considered were Atmosphere, Style/Decor, Service and Welcome, Value for Money, and Sympathy with CAMRA’s Aims.
The other pubs that were nominated were: Brown Cow in Keighley, Old No.7 in Barnsley, Flower Pot in Mirfield, Crown Inn in Manfield, Jacobs Beer House in Bradford, Dr Phil’s Real Ale House in Middlesbrough, Grove Inn in Huddersfield, Three Pigeons in Halifax, Harrogate Tap in Harrogate, Chequers Micropub in Beverley, Kirkstall Bridge Inn in Kirkstall, Beehive in Harthill, Junction in Castleford, Maltings in York, Corner Pin in Doncaster, White Hart Inn in Hawes.
Alan Canvess
