Well, we might not have been able to hold the normal festival but the second weekend in October saw the next best thing. The Steel City Beer & Cider Festival went On Tour with 44 venues across the city putting on numerous events, Tap Takeovers, brewery tours and general fabulous beeriness!
All the venues did us proud, putting on over 300 different beers and ciders for visitors to try.
Our Pub Heritage Officer Dave Pickersgill kicked off proceedings on Thursday evening with a book signing at The Crow Inn for the latest edition of Sheffield Real Heritage Pubs. Fully updated with new pictures, copies are still available from local booksellers, or via the CAMRA website. Other signings were held at the Rising Sun, Bradfield Brewery and local bottle shop Beer Central.
Abbeydale brewery followed with a Talk and Tasting at the Rising Sun and then Tap Takeovers at the Dog & Partridge and Millowners Arms. The Tap Takeovers came thick and fast as Heist Brew not only featured the Mad Scientist brewery but also had their Head Brewer come over from Hungary. The Bear featured Three Hills brewery and also had a Meet The Brewer session.
For some venues the taps were based on a theme instead. Shakepeares had a range of Milds, Kelham Island Tavern were offering beers from various Berkshire breweries and Pangolin Craft Bar had an Irish Beer Showcase.
Other takeovers were Wilde Child at the Itchy Pig; Saltaire at the Riverside; our neighbours at Drone Valley Brewery were in the Red Deer; Portland House had a selection of beers from Shiny; The Crow had Bristol’s Arbor brewery on the taps, the Rutland featured Buxton, as did the Hillsborough Tap; the Forest had a number of their own beers from Toolmakers; the Industry Tap had a huge selection of 21 different beers; Two Thirds brought in some Brew York beers and Perch served up their own Dead Parrot beers as well as putting on some excellent music from the bands originally booked to play the festival. A little further out of town, St Mars of The Desert were featuring their two SMODfest beers.
Our friends at Triple Point brewery put on a massive range of their own beers including a couple of new ones, and also treated our Festival sponsors Arnold Laver to a personalized brewery tour and beer tasting, which I’m pleased to say led to a couple of new converts to the delights of Real Ale.
The Ecclesall and Fulwood Ale Clubs were launching a new beer brewed in memory of Head Brewer James Eardley who sadly passed away recently. Shining Light is a delicious 4.9% Pale Ale made to James’s own recipe.
Local brewery Neepsend were doing brewery tours in conjunction with Factory Floor, and also brewed two special beers for their own pubs, the Wellington, Blake Hotel, and the Sheaf View, who we were delighted to see reopen after their recent arson attack. The Sheaf also had festival favourites Sunshine Pizzas in attendance keeping everyone fed.
There was more live music taking place at the White Lion, Toolmakers Brewery, Dorothy Pax and morris dancing at the Wisewood. A Sunday afternoon session by Steve Delaney at Portland House, proved so popular they intend to continue with music on Sundays for the foreseeable future.
The festival committee managed to get round all the venues at various times, and had a thoroughly enjoyable time. A well-earned reward after the hard work putting it all together.
Thanks to all the venues and breweries who supported us, and all the visitors who came out to make it a success. I’m sure we kept everyone’s appetite for Real Ale going, and next year we’ll be back in the Kelham Island Museum, better than ever. Cheers.
Dan at Heist Brew Co – “A record weekend for us, beating even our Oktoberfest celebration last
week!”
Lance at Portland House – “We had a great weekend down at Portland House. The Shiny Brewery
beers went down a treat and we had a lot of new faces in there leaving five star reviews on the bar.”
Nick at Pangolin Craft Bar – “It was a great weekend, and our best Thursday night since opening”
This friendly micro-pub is a converted gift shop and offers five real ales along with a number of craft beers on keg taps. Many of the bar snacks are of a Porcine theme with pork scratchings and pork pies involved, hence the humorous name!
The Itchy Pig is currently open selling beers to take home from 3pm to 5pm Tuesday to Sunday with home deliveries available locally those days from 5pm to 7pm (orders and enquires by email orders@theitchypig.co.uk).
As we near the 2019 Steel City Beer & Cider Festival, it seems like the 500th edition of Beer Matters is a good opportunity to look back over the festival’s history.
1975 – 2018
The first festival was a single day affair, held in September 1975 at Sheffield University’s Tapton Hall of Residence and featured around 25 beers. The following year saw a move to the University Lower Refectory and by 1981 had become a 2 day festival featuring 60 beers from 40 breweries including Hartleys, Mitchells, Oldham, Paines and West Riding. Cider and bottled beer had also been introduced, and the admission price of £1.00 included the glass and the first drink!
The 15th Festival in 1989 saw a move to the Students Union of Sheffield Polytechnic. Admission was now £2.00 and an extra day had been added. In 1993 the Festival returned to Sheffield University, but this was for one year only as the Lower Refectory was then closed for redevelopment. So 1994 saw us back at what was now the Nelson Mandela Building of Sheffield Hallam University.
There we remained until 2001 which saw the move to St Phillips Social Club, Netherthorpe. No longer tied to University vacations in 2003 we moved to October enabling us to attract the student audience.
After 6 years at St Phillips in 2007 we were again looking for new premises due to the impending closure of the Club. We eventually settled on Darnall Liberal Club, but this proved to be too far out of town. The festival’s success was also hampered by the discovery of an unexploded WW2 bomb that delayed staff and visitors from attending! Initial plans for moving under canvas in Endcliffe Park fell through, so the first tented festival was held at Cemetery Park in 2008. After 3 successful years we were finally defeated by the weather. Whilst the punters cheerfully coped with the mud in 2010 after torrential rain the day before opening, the conditions for take down proved too much for the volunteers.
In 2011, we moved to the International Sports Hall, Ponds Forge after managing to get approval for an ambitious budget, as a substantial increase in attendance and turnover were required in order to cover the venue hire. It turned out be unseasonably warm for the beginning of October, we struggled to keep the beer cool and the punters stayed away. Despite a substantial loss, with a modified budget we managed to obtain approval for two further years before we had to call it a day.
So 2014 saw yet another new venue for the 40th Festival. The move to Kelham Island Museum proved a huge success and continues to this day.
2019
So what does this year have in store? An excellent choice of beer of course. Over 300 beers including around 50 keg beers, over 40 real ciders and 2 bottle bars featuring continental beers. Last year we introduced the Sheffield Beer Of The Festival award and will be repeating this again on Wednesday evening.
We are particularly excited that world-famous beer writer Roger Protz will be joining us at the festival and hosting a tasting session based around his new book on IPAs.
Another improvement for this year is the introduction of rinsing points where visitors can clean their glass between drinks. No more heavy stout foam remaining in your glass when you fancy a pale ale for your next beer!
We have our usual array of live acts, booked by the irrepressible Saxbob, and a great variety of food stalls, with extended vegetarian and vegan offerings this year. There is also a welcome return of the Sheffield WI who will be hosting a charity cake stall on the Saturday. In addition to this we have our ever-popular Tombola stall, traditional pub games and CAMRA merchandise desk selling books and t-shirts.
No article on the beer festival would be complete without a word of thanks to our dedicated and hard-working volunteers. Each year they arrive to set everything up, man the bars, run the various desks, do whatever needs doing to ensure the festival is the success it is, and then dismantle everything and put it back in to storage for next year. We cannot thank them enough for the time and effort they give. The festival simply would not happen without them. As a thank you, this year we are running a free staff trip to Harrogate, and as an extra reward for the Sunday take down volunteers we have a free buffet at the Rutland Arms. If you fancy joining our happy band please visit our website Sheffield.camra.org.uk/festival to get more details on volunteering. We can guarantee that you’ll enjoy it more than you expected.
Finally, don’t forget to look out for our festival beermats around the locals pubs. As we have done for the last 3 years, the festival side of the mats are all different and once you collect all 12 they fit together to form an image of the festival poster.
See you there.
Steel City Beer & Cider Festival, 16-19 October 2019, Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield.
Paul Crofts & Alan Gibbons 
