The “District” bit of Sheffield & District branch is the part in Derbyshire which includes Killamarsh, Ridgeway and a big chunk of the Peak District National Park, predominantly the Hope Valley, out as far as Millers Dale and Edale. As with the Yorkshire pubs in Sheffield, a number of judges go out and score the two pubs that came out top in the members vote to pick an overall winner, which gets put forward into the North Derbyshire entry round of the national competition. Our District winner is the Old Hall Hotel in Hope. The venue combines a pub, restaurant, tea room and bed & breakfast accommodation with the bar offering a range of cask ales plus an extensive selection of scotch single malt whiskies.
Our festival secretary Jess Cawley, reports on his visit:
“Located in the Hope valley the Old Hall public house located in the picturesque village of Hope and nestled below Lose Hill that’s at one end of the famous Lose Hill ridge. The first mention of the current building was a rebuilding in 1703and forms the current “Old Hall” pub that became a listed building in 1984.
Internally the pub has a traditional air with oak panelled walls exhibiting a welcoming and convivial atmosphere. A lunch-time meal was French Onion soup and a beef sandwich, both of which went down well. There were a good half dozen real ales to choose from with Theakston “Old Peculiar” a well known favourite. My Theakston’s Best was very palatable.
The pub runs a beer festival on bank holidays and was frequented by tourists and locals alike. Facilities were fine and there is an extensive menu, reasonably priced”.
Join us for the award presentation on the evening of Tuesday 29 July. Regular trains run from Sheffield to Hope and bus 272 also goes there.
On Tuesday 11 March, 8pm at the Sheaf View in Heeley was the calm after the storm with the pub having been packed with Sheffield United fans enjoying a pre match pint, they were replaced by a bunch of CAMRA members and locals as we presented Dom and the team with their Pub of the Month award!
Sheffield & District CAMRA’s Phil Ellett presents Dominic Durham with the March 2025 Pub of the Month award with members of staff looking on! Photo: John Beardshaw.
Three B’s Micropub was established in Bridlington in 2020. Since opening it has won many awards both from CAMRA and other bodies. Following on from its success the pub is moving to a new site within Bridlington this spring. The new location is 2, Wellington Road, YO15 2BG. The map below shows the new pub location. The new site will feature 5 handpulls (from 4 at the current site) plus craft keg taps and a large beer fridge. The biggest asset the new pub will have is a large beer garden with seating for around 50 people at maximum.
It is hoped the new location will be open by around the end of April, in the meantime it will continue to trade at its current location on Marshall Avenue. Check out the pubs social media for updates.
Can you believe it’s been 20 years since the first brew was crafted at Watt House Farm, marking the birth of Bradfield Brewery?
What started as a side project to supplement the declining income from our dairy farming quickly became a success. As brewing took off beyond our expectations, we soon found ourselves at a crossroads—there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to juggle both dairy farming and brewing. With a heavy heart, we made the tough decision to stop milk production and focus entirely on our growing brewery. As the saying goes, we’ve never looked back!
Fast forward 20 years, and we’re now brewing over 100,000 pints of beer each week! With a dedicated team of 25 at the brewery and another 20 at our brewery pubs, the beers keep flowing – fresh from grain to glass.
Our farming roots remain a huge part of our identity, and we love celebrating this through our beers. Farmers Blonde, which became our flagship ale, was named after the Blonde d’Aquitaine breed of cow, and many of our other beers follow the same theme.
While we embrace new trends and innovations, our brand is all about keeping cherished traditions alive – meeting friends at the pub, pint in hand, and having a natter. Our session ales are the perfect companion for these moments – a true taste of tradition.
From all of us at Bradfield Brewery, a heartfelt thank you to everyone – our suppliers, our hardworking team, and of course, our loyal customers near and far. Your support means the world to us. Cheers to the next 20 years!
We’ve got some exciting things in store to celebrate our 20th anniversary, we’re celebrating firstly by paying homage to our very first brew Farmers Bitter with a brand new brew, Farmers XX Best! This new 4.6% abv beer for Bradfield Brewery has been Brewed with Maris Otter amber and chocolate malts, giving a full bodied and complex mouthfeel, complimented by a robust bitterness and dark fruit flavours from the hops. Available in cask & 330ml bottles from the end of March, this new brew is the first of more exciting things to come for 2025!
Due for release from Abbeydale Brewery this month, Dr Morton’s Rogue Apostrophe (4.1%) is back to irritate the grammatically minded amongst us. An easy drinking pale with Pacific Gem and Azacca hop’s, combining to give flavours of tropical fruit’s and berrys. Joining it on bars throughout April is Through the Hopback – Cascade, a 3.9% pale ale and a hop we can’t quite believe we haven’t showcased in this series before! Citrussy grapefruit in abundance on the aroma, with a gentle spicy character and a smooth bitterness.
Fen Violet is the first in a new cask only range for us, with artwork inspired by vintage botanical prints and lithographs. This one will be a 4.3% pale ale with Vic Secret and Columbus hops. We’re expecting lovely aromatic qualities in this one, with gentle herbal notes of marjoram in the background and some fruity tropical flavours up front.
And from our Brewers Emporium we have a couple of exciting new specials on the way too. Cherry Bakewell Stout (5.0%) is a new special in our Salvation series, featuring the enticing combination of ripe, juicy cherry and flavours of frangipane. And from our single-hopped Obsession series, look out for Citra NEIPA (6.5%). A rockstar of the hop world, Citra is famed for an intensely citrussy character. Expect a potent, zesty aroma and a lip-smacking lemony flavour, smooth and fruity with a juicy finish.
The Wetherspoon chain are hosting their Spring real ale festival from 5 to 16 March, featuring a range of 30 beers which include some special one off beers that are a collaboration with 5 different international breweries.
As International Women’s Day falls during the real ale festival, all 5 collaborations are with female brewers (or brewsters to use the correct term!).
The international beers are Wallaby (Penny Red, Australia), Estuary Session Ale (Land & Sea, Canada), Chocolate Porter (Birra Perugia, Italy), Antipodean (Brew Moon, New Zealand) and Hey Pal (Terrapin, USA).
Among others, the festival line-up also includes Boudicca (Brains), Persephone (Brewster’s), Vienna (Harviestoun), Beerhart (Mad Squirrel), Gulpa (Redemption) and Alpha Female (Rooster’s).
Marketing manager Jen Swindells said: “The festival is a great celebration of real ale.
“It will allow us, over a 12-day period, to showcase a selection of superb value-for-money beers, including those from brewers as far afield as Canada and New Zealand, as well as those closer to home.
As none of the pubs have as many as 30 guest ale pumps you won’t find all the festival beers on the bar at the same time, they will be offered on rotation, however the 10 branches across Sheffield will be co-ordinating their festival launch so all 30 will be on somewhere in Sheffield on day one – see the table below for their intentions!
Richard, Simon and Briony attended the House of Commons for drinks on The Terrace in the company of MP’s and Lords. The event was organised by the Music Venue Trust as it was the launch of their Annual Review. They used this opportunity to discuss the difficulties in their industry and the very serious problems that Grassroots and pubs venues are facing in Sheffield and nationally.
You can download the Music Venue Trust’s annual report, which highlights issues impacting the viability of venues that include high energy prices, unfair business rates, VAT on tickets as well as drinks, planning policy and more.
A point is made that grassroots music venues, like pubs, are more than just a business and it is important that we don’t lose them – they provide easy access to live music, community cohesion, cultural exchange, a platform for artists and a social space to meet new people and share great times.
From Big Brewing to Local Brewing: What Place Does Sheffield’s Beer Industry have in the City Today?
Dr Nick Groat and Prof Phil Withington from the University of Sheffield give an update on their project, Place, Craft and Alcohol in Historical Perspective, which is exploring the many histories and meanings of alcohol in the city with the help of CAMRA members.
We’re developing a picture of the changing place and importance of alcohol in Sheffield both historically and since the emergence of new trends in brewing and beer marketing often labelled with the term ‘craft’. A key feature of this work is discussions with brewers, distillers, retailers, and consumers about their own experiences of – and views on – the city’s alcohol economy, including their take on the ‘craft’ alcohol movement.
We’re in the process of building a collection of about 20 longform oral histories, and at SC48 last October we recorded the thoughts of 62 visitors and spoke to many more curious enthusiasts about what they thought ‘craft’ means today and what they would like to see change in the city to support the industry.
We also hosted two events – Craft in Conversation with broadcaster Pete Brown and Pints of Interest: Pubs as Social Landmarks with a panel of landlords and pub-goers – which provided plenty of opportunity to hear views on these matters. The conversations highlighted that while there is some consensus that ‘craft’ is now a controversial label in the context of the brewing industry, the term nevertheless represents an ethos that values attentive, experimental, skilful, and locally orientated brewing practices. Moreover, many people still used ‘craft’to describe brewers in Sheffield offering beers that they regarded as distinct from other major breweries. Others suggested ‘independent’ as an alternative label, emphasising the importance of beer producers that position themselves outside of large corporations. By sheer coincidence, YouGov published the results of a survey the week after SC48 which overwhelmingly showed how consumers felt “misled” by seemingly small, independent ‘craft’ brewers which were really owned by multinational brewing conglomerates such as Heineken, Anheuser-Busch InBev, and Asahi. The survey suggests that ‘independent’ is an equally contentious identifier and it will be interesting to see how much of an impact that new initiatives such as the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates’ (SIBA) “Indie Beer mark” will have on how these terms are used in the future. For now, it seems that ‘craft’ is one term among several which people use to identity high-quality and skilfully brewed beer outside the monopoly of the global corporations.
This issue, unsurprisingly, extends to where alcohol is bought and consumed. In our conversations to date, local independent establishments have been repeatedly noted as a valued asset in Sheffield (and more generally across the country), with several pubs in the city repeatedly mentioned as ‘good’ places to spend time buying and drinking exceptional beers and ‘craft’ alcohols. Indeed, there seems to be a growing, albeit dispersed sense that the proliferation of micropubs and bottle-shops, together with independent and quality breweries and eateries, plus the unique heritage of the city and region, are distinctive and attractive enough to be a driver of the city’s service and tourist economy and a key feature of Sheffield’s image nationally and internationally. This is not to say, of course, there isn’t also room for big chain-owned pubs selling well-kept ‘real ales’ at affordable prices – people felt that in a city as large and diverse as Sheffield the one was not exclusive of the other, with many people appreciating the basic reliability of craft-orientated chains. It was clear from talking to people that locality and independence in brewing, and the values often associated with craft, do not necessarily translate to where beer is drunk.
The other main component of our project has been mapping Sheffield’s pubs, breweries, and other alcohol establishments to better understand the place and impact of the industry on the city’s many neighbourhoods over time. To date we’ve recorded 1022 ‘historic’ pubs in Sheffield: it’s exciting to map such a large and important feature of the city’s heritage and to visualise its changing dimensions. We’re also mapping Sheffield’s contemporary ‘alcohol topography’ to see where and how it sits alongside the historical geography, paying especial attention to places which align themselves to a ‘craft’ ethos. We hope the maps will serve as a useful tool for Sheffield’s growing independent alcohol sector, linking it to the city’s rich and powerful heritage, and to this end we plan to use the dataset to produce a series of maps and trails targeted to specific areas of the city. The datasets and maps will be available digitally later this year.
Place, Craft, and Alcohol is a collaborative project by and for people interested in beer and Sheffield. We’re always on the lookout for people to speak to about the place of alcohol in the city and its neighbourhoods (past and the present) and what that place will or should be in the future.
If you’d like to talk to us about your experiences and memories of Sheffield’s intoxicating history and/or your views on alcohol’s role and place in the city today and in the future please contact n.groat@sheffield.ac.uk or scan the QR code below to get in touch.
Various events are coming up at the ‘Quin. They are participating in Sheffield Beer Week (see our beer week feature for details) but they aren’t stopping there!
Thursday 20th March – not beer, but still brewed! the Harlequin is holding a sake tasting in collaboration with Starmore Boss. Look out on social media for details.
Friday 21st March: Beer tasting and meet the brewer with 3 Sons, over from Florida. Makers of Epic American beer, 3 Sons are over for a Collab with Emperor’s and Bang The Elephant and are popping up to Sheffield for an evening of frankly ridiculous beer. Details to follow.
Live music is now a regular feature again at The Harlequin. Keep an eye out on our social media (Facebook and Instagram) or look out for posters in the pub to see what’s on.
Steel City are still ‘between hosts’ but thanks to Bang the Elephant brewery kindly hosting, the long-awaited ‘Men of Steel’ collab is out very soon.
The beer is a collaboration with Ukrainian brewery Ten Men along with Bang the Elephant and the Crow Inn, as part of Ten Men’s ‘100 Collabs’ project (https://tenmen.beer/100-collabs/), to raise funds to rebuild their brewery after the original fell to the Russian invasion.
The brew is a fruited sour based on the Ukrainian drink Uzvar, a variety of kompot, and after fermentation saw Dave and former Steel City business partner Gazza, Crow manager Ellie, and label artist Lewy join Nigel and Michael at Bang the Elephant for a very scientific (ahem) tasting session involving a few litres of the base beer and a few glasses of apple, pear, plum, cherry and apricot juices/purees and trying various combinations of dosage rates.
Once the optimum ratio (top secret, obviously!) was ascertained, the fruits were added to the two conditioning tanks, while one was also dosed with Madagascan vanilla and lactose to make a smoothie version.
Both versions will be launched at the Crow as part of Sheffield Beer Week on Saturday 8th March. Cans will be available from various retailers including Beer Central. All profits from the brew will go to Ten Men’s fundraiser, link here for further donations https://tenmen.beer/brewhub/.
