The Half Pint Marathon is back this September with a number of pubs and bars across the city serving two charity beers. Pick up and register a collector card and enjoy a half of either beer in every participating pub and you can claim a copy of the exclusive Half Pint Marathon artwork designed by Will Reah (“Willustration”) featuring the participating venues. The two beers are Run Free (4.5% session IPA from True North Brew Co.) and Run Wild, a 4.7% Session NEIPA from Heist Brew Co.
For every half pint of the special beers sold a donation will be made to Sheffield Mind, a Sheffield based charity which provides support to people with mental health issues. Sheffield Mind Business Development Manager Lindsay Doyle-Price said “Sheffield Mind is delighted to be a part of the Sheffield Half Pint Marathon again this year. The ongoing support of True North Brew Co. and the support of Heist Brew Co. this year, means a lot to us. Not only does this annual partnership generate much needed funds to support the work we do in the city, but by engaging local people in the campaign the teams are helping raise awareness of mental health and the work Sheffield Mind does to support people with mental health needs”.
Venues participating in the Sheffield Half Pint Marathon 2022 are:
The Bull’s Head in Ranmoor is under the new management of Sam Hall who is running the pub with an outlook of “simple things done well”. Sam is aiming to welcome locals to a friendly community pub. He usually has a traditional bitter and a lighter beer from regional brewers and local ones including Abbeydale and Bradfield. There is live music most Friday nights and the pub boasts a south facing terrace and beer garden.
After a good few years of whispers and ideas, The Bar Stewards, The Crow Inn, and Shakespeares Ale & Cider House have decided it’s about time to shout about the area of which they stand as (sort of…) the three corners and have formed “The West Bar Triangle“. The three pubs will be launching what they hope will be an exciting initiative that promotes the area and all of its local, independent businesses while coming together to put on a regular good old knees up – starting with a launch festival from 2 to 4 September that will see the bars put on simultaneous tap takeovers across cask and keg, featuring some of the UK’s best breweries. With other bits and bobs to be confirmed, this looks to be a smashing weekend to kick off a fantastic local partnership.
Firepit Rocks on West Street closed during August for a refurbishment.
With Magic Rock Brewing of Huddersfield now under new, less controversial ownership the annual Cannonball Run event returned to some bars in Sheffield. This saw three versions of their Cannonball beer on bars alongside each other – Human Cannonball (9.2% ABV West Coast DIPA), Neo Human Cannonball (9.2% New England DIPA) and Super Human Cannonball (10% Imperial IPA) at the Dark Horse in Banner Cross and Abbeydale Tap on Abbeydale Road.
Time for another mention of the Tunnel Tap at Totley Rise shops which has been a long time coming with the conversion work from a shop/office unit into a neighbourhood bar, August saw staff recruitment taking place and shopfitting work including building the bar and fixed seating, it is now expected to open early September, keep an eye on their social media for announcements!
Some of you may have noticed the Three Tuns in Sheffield City Centre closed, the pub is owned by Star Pubs & Bars (part of Heineken) who lease it out to an independent local operator with a tied supply contract, they are currently looking for a new long term tenant and in the meantime intend to reopen it with a licensee on a short term deal according to reports in the Sheffield Star newspaper.
The Antics Improv comedy troupe have been doing some free gigs in pubs alongside their main ticketed shows at the Lantern Theatre. 18 August saw them perform at the Dorothy Pax and they have a show at Grafters Bar on 1 September.
The winners of the Yorkshire Pub and Club of the Year awards have been announced. Pub of the Year is Heaven & Ale in Barnsley whilst Club of the Year is Hanging Heaton Cricket Club in Hanging Heaton (near Dewsbury).
Hop Hideout based in Kommune in Sheffield City Centre, reports the recent hot weather led to a boom in sales of craft cider and perry from their shop’s fridges. Popular brands included Purbeck Cider, Artistraw Cider and Olivers.
Jack Cater, who had the Railway on Bramall Lane before Covid, is back in the pub game with another Railway Hotel – the one on Penistone Road North in Wadsley Bridge. As before expect a selection of real ales and additional craft options on keg.
Back in 1968 a comedy band called The Scaffold, which included Paul McCartney’s brother Pete and poet Roger McGough had a number 1 hit with “Lily the Pink”.
We’ll drink a drink, a drink
To Lily the Pink, the Pink, the pink
The saviour of the human race
For she invented medicinal compound
Most efficacious in every case
What may on the surface appear to be a novelty drinking song is in fact based on a real person and her real product.
Lily the Pink is based on the American businesswoman Lydia Pinkham (1819-83) who produced her own vegetable compound from 1875. This was said to contain black cohosh, unicorn root, life root, pleurisy root and fenugreek, preserved with 19% alcohol. This was originally marketed as a “woman’s tonic” for menstrual and menopausal symptoms.
This vegetable compound became very successful with her local community, then further afield. Branding played a major part in the compound’s success and Lydia Pinkham’s face was used in all the branding. Indeed she is the first woman whose likeness was used in her brand.
Over time the list of complaints Pinkham’s vegetable compound claimed to be able to cure grew. It was even marketed as an aid to fertility and marketed under the strapline “there is a baby in every bottle”. Lydia Pinkham was one of very few people at the time who was speaking openly about women’s reproductive health, then a taboo subject. She even published pamphlets about menstrual and menopausal health and also encouraged women to write to her to ask questions they were too embarrassed to ask a doctor.
However, doctors and the medical establishment did not approve of Lydia Pinkham and dismissed her as a quack, which might be considered understandable given that her compound was claimed, among other things to prevent faintness, flatulence, insomnia, depression, the cure of kidney complaints and even ovarian cancer. In 1922, it was described as a “valueless preparation kept on the market for about fifty years by means of lying advertisements and worthless testimonials.”
After Pinkham died in 1883 her family took over the business and continued to promote her image. During prohibition, the alcohol content rose to about 40% and people turned to Pinkham’s medicinal compound in order to get intoxicated.
As far back as the 19th century, the alcohol content and claims of cures for feminine issues provoked mockery in the form of bawdy drinking songs. Lilly The Pink by The Scaffold is a highly sanitised version of those early drinking songs. Some sample verses from the 19th century are below.
Mrs. Jones she had no children,
And she loved them very dear.
So she took three bottles of Pinkham’s
Now she has twins every year.
Lottie Smyth ne’er had a lover,
Blotchy pimples caused her plight;
But she took nine bottles of Pinkham’s–
Sweethearts swarm about her each night.
Oh Mrs. Murphy (Oh Mrs. Murphy)
Was perturbed because she couldn’t seem to pee
Till she took some of Lydia’s compound
And now they run a pipeline to the sea!
And Peter Whelan (Peter Whelan)
He was sad because he only had one nut
Till he took some of Lydia’s compound
And now they grow in clusters ’round his butt.
The company continued in family ownership until the 1930s and after World War II the US Food and Drink Administration intervened and the company made significant changes to the tonic and its alcohol content, as well as the claims being made about what it could cure. Lydia Pinkham Herbal Compound is still on sale in the United States. It is no longer alcoholic but may well still be most efficacious in every case.
The next of our Hopback cask only series is on the way, this time showcasing the Chinook hop (4.0%). Chinook doesn’t get much opportunity to shine solo, more commonly being used in a blend of hops, so we’re really pleased to be giving it a moment in the spotlight in this refreshing pale ale. Like a breeze through a forest of pine with a lovely, pithy grapefruit character alongside.
And also available in cask only, Dr Morton’s Safety Beer (4.1%) featuring the Aussie combo of Galaxy & Vic Secret hops is always a crowd-pleaser of a pale ale, with a tropical melange of passionfruit, mango and pineapple on the palate.
Moving on to our Brewers’ Emporium releases, Pathfinder from our hazy pale ale series (4.5%) makes a return this month, albeit with an all-new hop blend of Amarillo, Loral, and experimental variety HBC 586. Soft and juicy, with fruity flavours ranging from mandarin to mango and grapefruit to guava.
And we also have a couple of seasonal releases on the way! We’ve made our first ever Festbier, and gone as classic as we can for Oktoberfest (5.0%), creating a balanced, clean and crisp beer with a rich, bready aroma and a delicately spicy noble hop character. Full bodied yet uber quaffable! And finally, our pumpkin spiced beer Pilgrim (also 5.0%) is back towards the end of the month! Probably our most divisive beer, but we love it, and we’re very excited at the prospect of it gracing bars again throughout spooky season.
Welbeck Abbey Brewery have some super specials lined up for the summer months and are brewing for both cask and bottled beers, with in-house bottling continuing to prove a success.
Nightingale will be available in cask only and has started shipping to pubs and bars, so keep your eye out for this proper English IPA appearing in your local. Named for a beautiful mature woodland spot right at the heart of the Welbeck Estate, this 5.5% IPA is as British as they come; packed full of English Goldings and UK Cascade hops, which give herbaceous notes, and balanced with honey-sweet caramalt.
Another cask-special to look out for is Watermeadows. This 4.5% lager-style pale ale is the perfect summer-time sup, with subtle meadow-fresh hop notes and a crisp, dry finish from European hops. Named for the Carburton Watermeadows, a low-lying grassland area near Welbeck, home to an array of rare and wonderful wetland wildlife.
In bottle, as well as cask, you can expect to see two new specials: Fiery Fox and Farrier. Fiery Fox is a classic pale ale with a twist; brewed with the addition of both fresh root and ground ginger.
Welbeck Managing Director, Claire Monk, says “Ginger beer is a quintessentially British non-alcoholic drink. Whilst it’s a refreshingly crisp drink without the ‘beer’, we think it’s much better with. The heady aroma of ginger and sweet biscuity taste make for a drink as smooth and sophisticated as the Welbeck night-time visitor; the wily fox.”
Farrier, which is available in minikeg as well as bottle, is a dark red ale, with rich caramel tones. This is one for the Red Feather lovers out there, and anyone who likes a dark beer. At 5.5% it has all the bitter-sweet and nutty flavours of Red Feather but packs much more of a punch into every glass. Horses have always played a huge part in the history of The Welbeck Estate and this beer evokes an equestrian, countryside feel that’ll have you reaching for your riding crop and boots.
If you want to know where and how the magic happens, you can see for yourself on one of the Wednesday night brewery tours that run through to September. Book online via Eventbrite and for just £10, you can enjoy a full tour of the brewery, two free-pints and the opportunity to ask Claire anything you like about how her award-winning ales are brewed.
And don’t forget, if you live outside of Welbeck’s local delivery area you can now order from their core range via the Best of British Beer website.
If there is one thing beer likes, it’s labels. Not a week goes by when a new acronym isn’t being wheeled out to confuse everyone, leaving them debating what on earth it stands for. IPA, DDH, TDH, HDHC, you name it we’ve had it. There’s even been a TDHNDDIPA recently thanks to Verdant Brewery down in Cornwall. Yeah, figure that one out if you can! It doesn’t stop there either, as we try to pigeon-hole beer even further into either ‘craft beer’ or ‘real ale’.
Whilst I appreciate the effort to differentiate between what could be an old-school or traditional IPA and a thick and hazy juice bomb, at what point do we just accept that it’s all beer at the end of the day? Much like the tribalism of old where people defended their favourite brand to the hilt, it seems you’re in one camp or the other, whilst disparaging your opposite number at the same time. But why?
I was pretty snobby when I first got into beer, coming from a clean slate and jumping in to hazy beer with both feet from the off. I hadn’t progressed from industrially-produced lager or moved on from cask beer to keg beer, I started afresh on the cloudy stuff. As far as I was concerned, if beer wasn’t yellow, hazy and tasted of tropical juice I wasn’t interested. This is what beer could be and what I’d been missing out on all these years.
Now whilst I still love a pint of the hoppy custard, I’m no longer averse to a good well-kept pint of cask if I see one. Heck, cask might even be becoming ‘cool’ as breweries more recognised for their juicy numbers brewing and producing beer to be pulled through a sparkler. And yes, cask beer can be hazy for those still stuck in the 1970’s sat at the back. So, with that in mind, where is the line between ‘real ale’ and ‘craft beer’? In fact, is there even a line at all?
Whilst we can try and define our beers by serving method, how they’re stored, their colour or clarity there are of course grey areas in-between. Even CAMRA’s initial definition of real ale was revised as of January 2022, showing that it isn’t possible to give something an exclusive or permanent definition. Whilst the US has a legally-binding definition of craft beer the UK doesn’t, nor is CAMRA’s coined label of real ale. There’s simply too many grey areas to enforce it.
Take recently retired local brewery Five Towns as an example. Malcolm brewed (as far as I’m aware) exclusively on cask. He had, what would be defined as, real ale within some of those casks (bitters and low ABV pales etc) however he also brewed some heavy-hitting DIPAs and stouts, some of which would elsewhere be classed as craft. So does that make it a real ale brewery that dabbles in craft beer? A cask brewery that also does keg? Or, more simply, a brewery that just produces good beer?
They aren’t the only example either, take the likes of Vocation, Brew York, Revolutions and, looking further afield, Kernel as great examples. Breweries who excel in both cask and keg beer, so how do we define or label those?
Of course, there’s no right or wrong answer here but at the end of the day it is just beer. Be it hazy, clear, hoppy, bitter, sweet, carbonated or otherwise, it’s just beer and we can enjoy it in whatever measure and how we please. No sandals and socks needed for a pint of cask and no beard on man-bun needed to enjoy a pint from keg, man or woman can enjoy either, or both, equally.
Stephen Carter, Points of Brew.
You can listen to the Points of Brew via all the usual Podcast services.
We’re welcoming back Alchemy (4.2%) this month! It will have new artwork (due to a revamp of this series by our in house designer, James Murphy), but the same recipe, which is always a popular one – single hopped with Amarillo for notes of juicy orange and tropical fruits. And also in the pale ale corner will be Exodus (3.9%) – at the time of writing, the hops for this one are yet to be decided, but it’s sure to be a light and easy drinking refresher!
And we’re getting back into the swing of collaborations at the moment and have Wanderer – Mountain IPA (6.5%) on the way. This one sees us teaming up with Heist Brew Co – their head brewer, Scott, previously worked for us, so we just had to invite him back for the day! Having visited Heist last year and brewing Battle of the Axes there, we’ve reused the same recipe to see how it works on our kit, rustling up a hybrid between a West Coast IPA and a NEIPA, with Citra, Centennial and Idaho 7 hops. Expect resinous pine sitting alongside notes of black tea, juicy mango and pink grapefruit.
We hope you’ll all be as excited as we are to hear that we’re brewing a riff on our “People’s Champion” New Zealand Pale Ale, and have Dry Hopped Deception (4.1%) coming soon! Our regular Deception recipe, still at the same sessionable ABV, but turned up to 11 with a double dry-hopping of Nelson Sauvin for flavours of white grape, gooseberry and elderflower in absolute abundance.
And finally, there are two new releases from the Funk Dungeon to look out for – Pull of Gravity (5.6%), a graf (apple raw ale, brewed in collaboration with Ascension Cider Co) and Ryes Again (6.0%) – a reimagining of Ryes From the Grave, which some of you may remember was the first ever full release from our mixed fermentation project. A blend of beers aged in barrel for up to four years, fruited with sour cherries, raspberries and blackcurrants. We reckon this one’s pretty special.
Remember a few years ago when Steel City blagged a collab at Weird Beard?
Well finally it was time for the return fixture! While Weird Beard has undergone a change of ownership and is currently relocating from up that London to up north, founder Bryan remains fully involved, and came to Sheffield to brew a proper DIPA with actual bitterness – remember them?
Dave and Bryan are both big fans of old skool IPAs with lots of bitterness and citrussy hops, and rue the lack of them these days. The recipe drew on Weird Beard’s ‘Holy Hoppin Hell’ and old Steel City recipes, and features a mix of American and Polish hops.
The result is ‘Russian warship, Go F**k Yourself’, a pale 9.8% brew, bone dry, with high bitterness (126IBU!) and citrus flavours. The brew was Steel City’s second for #brewforUkraine, with profits again donated to the DEC Ukraine Appeal. Between this and the earlier ‘Vlad the Invader’, nearly £1,500 has been raised for Ukraine humanitarian aid.
When I started going to the Rutland it was under the old Reet Ale Pubs management, and was renowned for good beer, great food and legendary parties. When it was taken over five years ago (where did that time go?) by Chris (previously manager of last month’s PotM, Shakespeares) and Kate (previously manager of Three Tuns) not much changed apart from the beer went up a notch, in fact several notches. Two house cask beers are from the local Blue Bee brewery, with a further five handpumps featuring an ever-changing range, always including something dark and often including something slightly (or seriously!) unusual. Keg-wise, the house pale is a rotating Kernel tap dispensing whatever is new and pale from the brewery who started the infamous ‘Bermondsey Mile’, while up to eight more craft taps have a wide range of styles, including dedicated lines for sours and imperial stouts. Cider is not forgotten, with one draught and two regularly changing handpumps dedicated to all things apple (and often pear). Regular tap takeover and meet the brewer events are held, recently including Holy Goat from Dundee and Brewski from Sweden. Following their success with the Rutland, in 2019 Chris and Kate opened a second pub, former PotM winner the Crow Inn on Scotland St, which features a similarly top notch craft beer range as well as seven comfortable ensuite bedrooms.
As well as one of the best beer ranges in Sheffield, there is also an excellent spirit range including a wide array of single malt whiskies and a good selection of rums. As previously mentioned, the food is very high standard, especially the ever-changing specials board, and always includes vegetarian and vegan options. There is also a jukebox with an eclectic selection of music, over which stands a blackboard of ‘recommended music’ and ‘forbidden music’, both regularly updated but the latter quite rightly permanently including Morrissey.
The Rutland was built, in 1936, on the site of a previous pub built in 1902. It has since been opened up with the removal of internal walls. However, it is possible to see the layout of the 1936 pub, with the tap room and servery on the left and the lounge on the right (from Sheffield’s Real Heritage Pubsby Dave Pickersgill, available from Sheffield CAMRA). The pub is decorated with a mix of pumpclips on the walls and ceiling plus a miscellany of props dotted around. Outside is a smallish garden, usually offering a choice of sun (subject to availability, this is Britain after all…) and shade.
Dave Szwejkowski
The presentation will take place on the evening of Thursday 18 August, all are welcome to join us from 8pm for a beer or two!
Pub of the Month June 2022 – Sheffield CAMRA Secretary Paul Manning, centre, presents the Pub of the Month award to Lucienne Mullen and Chris Wadsworth managers of Shakespeares, Gibraltar Street. Following the presentation there was a buffet to enjoy. The weather was kind and the opportunity to sit outside with a pint or two was also enjoyed!Sheffield Pub of the Year – west Sheffield and overall winner – Beer Matters magazine editor Andrew Cullen with manager of the Rising Sun, Garry RaynesEast Sheffield area pub of the year – Paul Manning presents the award to managers Terry and AlisonSouth Sheffield Pub of the Year, the Sheaf View at Heeley. Our branch Chairman Glynn Mansell presents the certificate to Dominic Durham.
