Category: Breweries

Loxley Brewery rebranded during the first Covid-19 lockdown. Their ‘numbered’ cask ales now have names, which comes as a shock to most but it really does make things easier – they promise! 

The micro-brewery started out in 2018 just casking ales, and soon expanded their knowledge and started bottling too. When the bottles proved popular, they had to build an on-site bottling plant!

You’d think there was a story behind the numbered cask ales, but really their isn’t, they just didn’t know what to call them and so aptly named them with numbers! This proved popular and made a lot of customers laugh – it really was a talking point. But as bottling commenced, they were inspired to name the bottled ales after local history and folklore surrounding harrowing tales and gruesome legends once told about murders and tragedies on Loxley Common and surrounding areas. Revill, Lomas, Halliday, Fearn & Gunson the bottles were named…and now so are the casks!

Handy guide to know Loxley Ales:
Wisewood One – Revill 
Wisewood Three – Halliday (no relation to our good friend James!)
Wisewood Four – Gunson
Wisewood Seven – Lomas
Wisewood Eight – Fearn 

Wisewood Two, Five & Six were scrapped prior to the name change as they were the least popular brews. Renaming the beers also made sense so that the numbers didn’t jump! 

So – where did the names come from?

Halliday – Thomas Halliday built a Cave House on the Loxley Common.

Revill – In the evening of 30th December 1812 Mary Revill was murdered in the Cave House, which stood lonely on Loxley Common.

Lomas – Marys husband, Lomas Revill, a game keeper, hadn’t come home that night. He had been seen in the local inn and was found the next morning in the gamekeeper’s cabin.

Gunson – The surname of the chief engineer with the Sheffield Waterworks Company. John Gunson engineered the Dale Dyke Dam which burst and flooded Sheffield in 1864, killing many people.

Frank Fearn was hung in 1782, for the murder of a watchmaker. He told the watchmaker a story of a pocket watch club (where customers would save weekly towards the cost of a pocket watch) in High Bradfield. En route, Fearn clubbed and stabbed the watchmaker to death on Kirk Edge Road and hid his body in a nearby copse.

*Bottle delivery available – visit http://www.loxleybrewery.co.uk/shop/ to place your order OR VISIT The Raven Inn / The Wisewood Inn for a proper pint!’*

Hannah Hebb 

Whilst many pubs are closed and in Sheffield we aren’t generally allowed to meet friends & family we don’t live with, it being a tier 3 Covid alert area, you may be choosing to enjoy beer at home. That doesn’t have to mean supermarket booze though, a number of our local breweries sell beer in bottles, cans and minikegs and some will even deliver to your door if you order enough!

For those that do small pack but don’t deliver, don’t forget your friendly independent beer shop may sell it (including some that deliver such as Hop Hideout, Beer Central or the Beer Stop at Dronfield).

There are also some pubs (and also the Archer Road Beer Stop off-licence) that can sell you fresh hand-pulled cask beer to go in carry out cartons.

Here is a list of breweries based in Sheffield or close by that we know deliver to addresses in Sheffield:

• Abbeydale
• Acorn
• Ashover
• Bradfield
• Brampton
• Chantry
• Crosspool Ale Makers Society
• Don Valley
• Drone Valley
• Eyam
• Fuggle Bunny Brewhouse
• Geeves
• Grizzly Grain
• Heist brew Co
• Kelham Island
• Little Critters Brewing Company
• Little Mesters Brewing
• Loxley
• Neepsend
• Peak Ales
• Sheffield Brewery Company
• Stancill
• St Mars of the Desert
• Thornbridge
• Triple Point
• Welbeck Abbey

Intrepid Brewing aren’t delivering but are operating a brewery shop on an ad hoc basis, check their Twitter feed for opening hours.

Abbeydale Brewery normally host Funkfest at the brewery in September, showcasing beers from their “Funk Dungeon” project along with other sour and mixed fermentation beers from guest brewers. With the Covid pandemic this hasn’t been possible, so they are taking it to people’s homes with limited edition Funkfest beer packs available to order from their website from 5th October and local bottle shops selling suggested guest beers. This will run alongside online tutored tastings and video tours of the brewery over the weekend of 30th October to 1st November!

Neepsend Brew Co have brought back a tweaked version of one of the beers from their back catalogue, Tabaldak is a New England style beer brewed with plenty of oats, wheat & dextrin malts and big flameout and dry hop additions.

Thornbridge Brewery are celebrating Jaipur IPA’s 15th anniversary with a special dry hopped edition, the return of Jaipur X and a gift pack available to order online.

Little Mesters is the new brewing company that have taken over the brewery attached to Mitchells Wines shop at Meadowhead, along with the upstairs tap room. Check out their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/littlemestersbrewing/.

The 5,000th brew has kick started a return to the seasonal ale calendar for us at Bradfield Brewery. After the great success of our 5K brew and keen interest in our seasonal ale availability from both the pubs and our fans at home, we’ve decided that the rest of the seasonal ale lineup for 2020 WILL go ahead!

So next up is Farmers Jack-O-Lantern, a popular Autumnal seasonal ale, lightly hopped and amber coloured at 4.5%. This will be available from 5 October in nine and 18 gallon cask with the five litre mini kegs to follow shortly after.

While there may not be any remembrance event gatherings being held this year, it will not stop us commemorating our fallen soldiers with our Farmers Poppy Ale. 10p from every pint sold of this fruity golden ale is donated to the Royal British Legion and will be available in nine and 18 gallon casks from mid-October, with five litre mini kegs available shortly after.

And then before we know it… the ‘C’ word. I’ll just leave that there.

Jackie

Whilst we’ve been busy running the Covid curveball gauntlet, we didn’t forget an all important milestone! Mid September has seen our 5,000th brew take place and we hope you’ll agree, that’s something to celebrate.

Now usually we’d all be saying ‘let’s raise a drink together to celebrate!’ but let’s face it, we shouldn’t really be encouraging crowd gatherings at the moment so we’ve thought of a different way to mark the occasion.

This momentous brew will be celebrated with a 24 hour brewathon which will begin on 22 September, and we’ll be blogging along the way for all to enjoy! Brewers Sam, Bruce and Kieran will be doing five consecutive brews starting at 5pm on the 22 September and finishing at 5pm on Wednesday 23 September.

With our seasonal calendar being turned upside down, we had planned for a brand new brew in May this year, using our very own, home grown hops. Not wanting these hops to go to waste and with the milestone brew coming up, it lended us the opportunity to go forth and deliver!

So with our homegrown hops included, the 5K brew was brewed using five different hops, five different malts, courtesy of our new malt supplier, Paul’s Malt, and if you’ve not guessed it, the beer is 5% ABV.

A well hopped and nicely balanced IPA, the 5K is available in cask from the 21 September and will be available in five litre mini kegs soon.

Follow us on social media to check out the 24 hour brewathon!

Jackie

Triple Point Brewing‘s latest beer is “270 Degrees”, a 6.6% ABV West Coast Pale Ale bursting with Citra, Cascade and Centennial hops.

Abbeydale Brewery recently celebrated the 24th birthday of their Moonshine Pale Ale.

Thornbridge Brewery have also been celebrating an anniversary, it is 11 years since they opened their Riverside brewery in Bakewell, which was quite a step up from the little microbrewery in an outbuilding at Thornbridge Hall!

True North Brew Co launch their version of cask Stones Bitter at the Riverside on 3rd September at 5pm. This is the first time in around 20 years that the beer has been brewed in Sheffield and the event will have a bit of a retro feel to it!

Grizzly Grain Brewing have brewed what is intended to be an annual seasonal beer, brewed with fresh green hops grown at Heeley City Farm within 24 hours of being picked!

Sheffield Brewery Company reopen their on site tap room on Friday 18th September. It’ll be table service with payment by card and they plan to open every Friday from 4pm to 11pm and Saturdays from 1pm to 11pm.

The latest seasonal special is “Overseer”, an IPA combining a trio of US hops in the kettle and ever greater volumes dry hopped for an even more powerful hop kick and flavour. And if that wasn’t enough, they have left the beer unfined and unfiltered to help retain the big hop flavour so whilst the beer will be hazy the flavour and hop character won’t be.

Tapped Brew Co, the Sheffield Tap’s in-house brewery, took advantage of the Covid Lockdown to refurbish their brewery equipment and have brought their furloughed staff back to start brewing again with Sheaf Street Pale being the first off the stocks. Another good reason to visit the award winning Tap again.

Malcolm Dixon
CAMRA BLO for Tapped Brewery