After raising quite a substantial amount of money for a local charity, the Blue Ball Inn at Worrall was nominated as Community Pub of the Year and progressed through to the final 50. They were invited to attend the ceremony in London where the finalists would be assessed and a shortlisted to five. The Blue Ball made it through to the final but were pipped at the post by the Dog & Parrot, Eastwood, Notts. Carl and Emma who run the Blue Ball said they thoroughly enjoyed the experience and whilst disappointed not to win thought the Dog & Parrot were worthy winners.
Whilst in London Carl and Emma took the opportunity to meet with their local MP, Olivia Blake, at the Houses of Parliament. They petitioned Olivia about the level of support publicans currently receive in the light of the hike in energy prices and how this had affected the pub trade. Whilst accepting the points Olivia made about support to the brewery trade made a strong argument for this to be cascaded down to pubs or a more targeted support to pubs rather than just breweries.
Since taking over the tenancy of Blue Ball, just prior to Covid and lockdown, they have very much concentrated on improving their cellar, their beers and developing a community focussed pub. The pub we see today is very different to on the one Emma and Carl took over, with regular local community group activities, such as local business club meetings, held in the pub, supporting and sponsoring local activities and soon hoping to host a local produce market in their car park on Saturday mornings.
All of this coupled with award winning Timothy Taylor’s ales on cask makes for a great offering for anyone wanting to enjoy a warm friendly atmosphere, some great food on Friday evenings and a great pint of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord or Knowle Spring.
Abbeydale Brewery are celebrating this week, with their popular beer “Black Mass”, a 6.66% Black IPA, taking home a top prize at the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) Independent Beer Awards 2023.
Brewers Christie McIntosh and Jamie Memmott collect Black Mass Bottle & Can Overall Champion Award
Sheffield based Abbeydale Brewery, most famous for their Moonshine pale ale, received the accolade of Overall Champion of the bottle and can competition for their Black IPA at the beer trade association’s national finals, held at BeerX, the country’s largest brewing industry event, in Liverpool last week. Brewer Christie Mcintosh, from Abbeydale Brewery, said: “Black Mass is a joyous, strong, bitter, fruity dark ale. Winning the National as a Black IPA is pretty wild – we won the Speciality IPA which we were really pleased about, but to then go up again and win the Overall Gold is just amazing.”
Award winning cans of Black Mass (and hops!)
The award, judged by a panel of industry peers and experts, recognises the very finest in UK brewing. SIBA Chairman Richard Naisby congratulated the winners on their huge achievement and said: “Judges had a tough job separating the pack as the standard was extremely high once again. The winners from the SIBA competition are officially the best independent craft beers in the UK, something brewers should be extremely proud of.”
Abbeydale brewer Christie McIntosh. Photo credit Mark Newton
Abbeydale Brewery are well known for producing a huge range of beers, blending innovation with heritage and reflecting these values across their beers. Black Mass, a 6.66% Black IPA, has been part of Abbeydale Brewery’s permanently available beers since the business was founded in 1996, and the team believe it to be one of the world’s first and longest standing beers of this style in existence. Sales Director Dan Baxter says of the award: “Black Mass has been with us since our very beginnings as a brewery, and we’re absolutely thrilled that it’s being recognised as being at the very top of its game. It’s classic and familiar, yet simultaneously unique and boundary defying, and a true favourite of many of the team here!”
Abbeydale Brewery cask beers. Photo credit Mark Newton
Responding to the Budget, CAMRA Chairman Nik Antona said:
“The Chancellor has made a welcome move to increase the draught duty rate discount to 11p, which will help pubs compete with the likes of supermarket alcohol. However, the lower tax rate is not coming until August, and we must hope that as many pubs as possible will be able to keep their doors open until then.
“With many parts of the licensed trade struggling to make ends meet, and consumers tightening their belts, hikes in general duty rates are the last thing breweries need, so it’s right that general duty rates have been frozen until the new system is introduced.
“With support for energy bills being extended for households, licensees will be devastated to hear that help for them will end on 1 April. This was a make-or-break Budget for pubs and social clubs, and the future of many businesses is now at risk, with an imminent cliff edge in support and rocketing energy costs on top of the other pressures facing the licensed trade. Communities will lose their local pubs because energy support is ending.
“It is also bitterly disappointing not to see the extension of help for pubs and breweries with the burden of business rates. With current support schemes due to end in 2024, these rates bills can be the difference between continuing to trade or having to close for good. The Government urgently needs to reform the whole business rates system to fix the issues with this unfair system and help to protect our pubs.”
Notes/references:
Spending point 40 of the supporting Budget Documentation reads:
Alcohol Duty: freeze rates until August 2023 then uprate by RPI and increase Draught Relief to 9.2% for beer and cider and 23% for wine, other fermented beverages and spirits
Steel City have been on their travels, unfortunately twice travelling abroad to not brew! Firstly Dave gatecrashed the Maltgarden/Emperor’s collab in Poland, unfortunately the brew had to be postponed a couple of days due to a problem at the host brewery, then 3 weeks later the same thing happened for the Alchemik return collab in Sofia, the imperial version of Yellowcake. The joys of contract/cuckoo brewing! The latter did still include a visit to the Sofia Electric brewery and an excellent couple of days on the local craft beer in Sofia and Plovdiv, the beer has been brewed and will hopefully be landing in the UK mid-April along with some other Alchemik goodies.
Back at home, two beers have been produced for the CAMRA national AGM in Sheffield, a coffee vanilla stout named Contains Only Good CO₂, Free From Bad CO₂ and a hoppy pale named Let’s Save Pubs… Can I Have A Discount?. Both will also be available at the Shakespeare at some point.
My previous visit to Cluj Napoca was in November 2017, when my research found little of interest beerwise (both in Romania in general, and especially in Cluj) and on arrival became even less as the one independent brewpub was closed for repairs! Return flights procured for under £20 (out from L**ds, back to Liverpool, both with Wizz and as it turned out both with the same plane), and a decent enough ‘pension’ booked for around £35 for the Saturday night made for a cheap weekend. My research this time (including Dom’s ‘Hopping Around’ report in this august publication) yielded much better results including breweries and multitap bars. I won’t repeat the bars Dom reported but I found two others which proved well worth a visit.
First call was Beer Wall Cafe, a small bar next to a stream, featuring around 8 draught beers and four large fridges of cans and bottles. If you’d told me in 2017 that I’d be drinking wild sours with grapes in Cluj I’d have laughed, but what I had to start in the form of Red My Mind from Addictive brewery, followed by Threesome (fnarr) fruit sour from One Two, and various IPAs.
I then turned to the smallpack… it was like a kid in a sweetshop, I restricted myself to ‘only’ 11 cans and bottles to take away, oblivious to the fact I’d need to drink them before a lunchtime flight home next day.
Later I visited Brewhouse, another small bar in the old town, with 16 draught lines and a small fridge selection. A couple of beers were repeats of ones in Beer Wall, but mostly different. The bar is associated with Blackout brewery and naturally featured several of their beers, including Infochemicals Double NEIPA and Enter Vim West Coast IPA. I also tried their Ragequit chocolate porter, and several guests including Bere a la ClujRosetta raspberry hefeweizen, AcanE01 wild farmhouse ale and UltimaHere for the Hype fruit sour. I finished on the 10% Dystopian Future (not sure if it’s named after the current state of the UK…) imperial dessert stout collab from One Two & Metanoia.
By this stage I realised I’d missed the last tram back, as all public transport pretty much stops at around 2300, so a walk back to my pension and a nightcap of two of my cans purchased earlier.
In both bars smaller measures are available with Beer Wall offering 0.5l, 0.4l and 0.33l for most beers and Brewhouse offering 0.4l and 0.2l. The former unfortunately has ‘ticker tax’ with 0.33l being c80% of the 0.5l price, while the latter is more linear with only around 20p surcharge for the smaller glass… it’s not often I wish to see UK culture abroad, but I really wish everywhere correctly pro-rated smaller measures like here!
The staff in both bars spoke excellent English and were happy to talk about the various beers on offer, as well as craft beer in Romania in general.
Next morning I had a bit of a wander, drank a couple of my cans, then caught a train to Cluj Napoca Est and walked the mile to the airport rather than walk to get the airport bus… at least now you can pay for buses and trams on board by tapping a contactless card, previously you had to traipse round looking for a stop with a ticket machine or a shop selling them.
I then had five beers to drink at the airport(!) before I could go through security, I’ll be very glad when the new scanners are rolled out and the pathetic ban on liquids in hand luggage is lifted! Uneventful flight to Liverpool then a ridiculous train-train-train-bus journey home taking 4 hours instead of under 2 thanks to engineering work on the Hope(less) Valley line and a CBA attitude from certain train companies.
Never did get round to trying the brewpub I’d been denied in 2017…
We’re very happy to be celebrating the most exciting developments in UK hop farming this month, using Hereforeshire grown and harvested Harlequin hops for UK Hop Heathen (4.1%). These fantastic hops, coming out of our supplier Charles Faram’s development programme, produce elegant Mosaic-esque tropical flavours, with a refined citrus bitterness and a delicate, nuanced hedgerow character. There’s a gentle revolution going on in the UK hop world at the moment and it’s really exciting to see the breadth of flavour that’s been quietly in development in recent years – it deserves shouting about!
In cask only we have a delicious single hopped Amarillo beer on the way (4.1%), the latest in our Through the Hopback series of pale ales with a citrussy satsuma-esque character and a floral finish. We’ve also got Coronation (3.9%) coming up, seeing as we had quite a few requests for a jubilee beer last year we felt we shouldn’t miss the occasion!
Returning on the dark side is the ever popular Salvation – Cappuccino Stout (5.5%) which uses our own specially roasted blend of coffee from lovely local suppliers Cafeology. Creamy, balanced and rounded.
And finishing off our Brewer’s Emporium releases for the month we have a tasty New England pale coming up – Hinterland (4.5%) is full-bodied, juicy and pillowy soft, with punchy tropical notes of pineapple, coconut and zesty pink grapefruit from the combination of Vic Secret, Sabro and Mosaic hops.
Sheffield Beer Week returns in 2023 for it’s ninth event with a renewed vigour around their key strand, ‘Going Back To Our Beer Roots‘. Focusing on showcasing the brilliantly brewed Sheffield beer from breweries within the City Region. Ongoing core strands include Beer and Food, Community and Heritage; with additional strands including International Women’s Day events and celebrating our access to vital green spaces under The Outdoor City banner.
Sheffield breweries Tapped Brew Co, Little Critters, Heist, Loxley, Abbeydale (look out for their Cloud Peak session IPA with Sheffield Beer Week and Indie Beer Feast!) and True North are already planning special beers for the week, with further breweries to announce more. Tapped Brew Co, housed at The Sheffield Tap pub, are even planning a live brewing day during the week, so watch this space for further details on that! Saint Mars of the Desert and Stancill breweries are hosting open tap days, whilst the rejuvenated Kelham Island Brewery will be highlighting its flagship beer Pale Rider, which started the ‘beer journey’ for many people in the city.
Visit Sheffield’s The Festival of the Outdoors has become a vibrant month of annual activities in March itself and to tie in Sheffield Beer Week is hosting a number of events under this banner. Local historian Dave Pickersgill, editor of CAMRA’s ‘Sheffield’s Real Heritage Pubs’, will be hosting his popular heritage pub and brewery walks. There will be a number of running events too including a trail club organised by Abbeydale Brewery and their Rising Sun pub and Hop Hideout beer shop’s all abilities welcome run social.
As always there’ll be a celebration of great independent brewed beer from across Sheffield, the UK and beyond with venues Jabbarwocky, The Crow Inn, Rutland Arms, Kelham Island Tavern, Sheffield Tap, Heist Brew Co., Stancill Brewery, Brewery of St Mars of the Desert, Craft & Berry, Hop Hideout, Beer Central, True North pubs and Shakespeares Ale & Cider House already planning events. Look out for more venues and events to be added on our website via the 2023 events listing.
On the weekend of 3-4March, to kick-off the week, Sheffield’s craft beer festival, Indie Beer Feast launches. A celebration of great independent craft beer with brewery bars, street food, low intervention wines and fine cider. The beer festival champions and supports The Everyone Welcome initiative. British Guild of Beer Writers’ members and leading UK award-winning beer writers Adrian Tierney-Jones and Pete Brown will be heading up to host pop-up tastings and to judge the Indie Beer Feast ‘Beer of the Festival’. Breweries pouring include Sheffield outfits Saint Mars of the Desert, Heist, Triple Point and Abbeydale. In addition to Manchester’s Sureshot, Liverpool’s Neptune, Lancashire’s Rivington Brewing Co, Birmingham’s Attic Brew Co, Hitchin’s Crossover Blendery, London’s The Kernel, Rock Leopard and Wild Card Brewery, Huddersfield’s Beer Ink, Macclesfield’s Redwillow, Suffolk’s Little Earth Project and County Durham’s McColl’s Brewery. They’ll also award-winning Sheffield beer shop Hop Hideout hosting a bar and bottle shop, in addition to low intervention Italian wines from importers Naturally Wines.
Here are the events that had been announced at our time of going to press to give you some ideas – the latest list and more details can be found on the Beer Week website.
2 Mar, Gardeners Rest – Drone Valley tap takeover and meet the brewer
2 Mar, Pangolin – Sureshot tap takeover and meet the brewer
2 Mar, Sheffield Tap – Neptune Tap Takeover and meet the brewer
12 Mar, Rutland Arms – Brasserie Artisinale Ammonite Bottle Tasting
If you are planning on spending the week using public transport to explore Sheffield and visit beer week venues, you can get timetables and maps from Travel South Yorkshire and buy a weekly Citywide bus & tram pass from Travelmaster. Alternatively one day passes can be bought on board buses & trams or on the First & Stagecoach bus apps. All single rides on buses and trams currently cost £2 (or less for some very short bus journeys).
The Masons Arms, Carson Road in Crookes is now open every day and selling real ale.
Gav and Rhiann are running the pub, opening at 4pm Monday and Tuesday and 12 noon the rest of the week with a full list of opening times displayed in the window.
Sharp’s Doombar, Bradfield Farmer’s Blonde and a rotating guest beer, usually from a Sheffield brewery are available, a similar range to their sister pub the Shoulder of Mutton at Worrell.
There are two rooms and an enclosed outside drinking area which is suitable for families. A pool table and dartboard plus dominoes and other board games are there for customers to enjoy. Quiz night is on Wednesday starting at 8pm with drinks vouchers to be won and a complementary buffet.
We always look forward to March here at Abbeydale Brewery, as it means it’s time for Sheffield Beer Week! This year taking place 6-12 March, there’s absolutely loads going on all around our wonderful beery city, so do check out the events listings and support your local breweries and venues.
We’ve got a special collaboration due to launch for the occasion, brewed in conjunction with Sheffield Beer Week and Indie Beer Feast. Cloud Peak is a 4.8% mountain style cryo-hopped session IPA, packed with the big hitting combination of Citra, Cascade and Mosaic. Soft and fluffy with a crisp, bitter finish. This one will be available exclusively from Indie Beer Feast at Trafalgar Warehouse and Hop Hideout from Friday 3 March in keg, with the first pour on cask taking place at the Rising Sun, Fulwood on Monday 6 March. It’ll then be available in cask, keg and can more widely while stocks last!
Look out later in the month for our other collaboration too, which will be brewed during Sheffield Beer Week and hopefully out by the end of March. It’s the next in our Deliverance series, this time a bold 7.2% West Coast IPA which we’re brewing with Newcastle’s Full Circle Brew Co. Showcasing Galaxy in the whirlpool, before dry-hopping with Idaho 7, Amarillo and Eureka. Pithy and piney with notes of pomelo and pink grapefruit.
In cask only, Citra is up next for our single-hopped Through the Hopback series (4.0%). As the name suggests, packed with citrus character with distinctive lemony notes alongside zesty lime and floral undertones. And we’re revisiting the OG Doctor Morton’s beer! Snake Oilwas first brewed in 2008, and we’d never have predicted what it started! From “newfangled beers with weird pumpclips” to an extensive and entertaining range of easy drinking pale ales. Although the look has more recently been updated we’ve kept a strong hold on the humour and eccentricities this series brings.
We’re also pretty excited that Spring is in the air once more, and so it’s time for our annual release of Reverie, our 4.2% sessionable dry-hopped pale ale. Always a lovely one to enjoy on those first warm(ish) al fresco evenings!
brewSocial‘s new beer in January was Nice Drop, a single-hopped blonde beer. Large quantities of pilsner malt in the mash give a pleasant mouthfeel. Harlequin hops impart tropical fruit notes, and a pronounced bitter finish. February saw Crackin’ Nuts go on sale, a 4% ABV chestnut ale.
The St Mars of the Desert taproom was sadly broken into on Christmas Day and damaged plus items stolen. Community rallied round and helped Dann and Martha get it tidied up. In more positive news they have recently brewed a collaboration beer with Ossett brewery, Amere Biere, a hazy French bitter.
Grizzly Grains launched a couple of new bottled beers in January – The Biggest Dimple (8.8% ABV, a parti-gyle with their Big Dimples Mild), Feste (a strong saison at 9.3% ABV). February saw their first cask beer of the year brewed, using low carbon Chinook hops. They’ve also got a pop up taproom arrangement set up in the brewery now, which saw it’s first opening on 15 February taking advantage of being close to Bramall Lane stadium to cater for pre-match drinks demand!
Loxley Brewery produced a new citrussy, hoppy easy going pale ale in January called First Totem Pole, celebrating an obscure reference to the first ever totem pole having a raven on top!
Talking of Loxley Brewery, they celebrated their fifth birthday with a bash at the Wisewood Inn at the end of February.
Beer Ink of Huddersfield has brewed a Sheffield collaboration to be launched at the Rutland Arms during Sheffield Beer Week. They have worked with Bullion Chocolate and Frazer’s Coffee Roasters to make two special beers. There is also a limited edition blend of the two to create a coffee Mocha Stout!
Bradfield Brewery continue to work through their roster of seasonal beers in 2023 with Farmers Blushed out for Valentines Day with Farmers Irish Dexter replacing it in time for St Patricks Day. Later in March look out for Farmers Plumb Bitter then of course for the World Snooker Championships in April will be CruciBULL Ale.
