Category: Breweries

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

Nationally, CAMRA uses Brewery Liaison Officers (BLO) as a single point of contact between a brewery and CAMRA, someone who can act as a regular, knowledgeable and impartial link. Someone who will ensure that both the Good Beer Guide description and our information regarding their beers and are accurate. I am BLO for four Sheffield breweries: Abbeydale, Blue Bee, Bradfield and Loxley. Lockdown has affected these breweries in different ways. However, all are still brewing and working towards the future.

Abbeydale

Abbeydale started 2020 on a series of highs: three awards at the Champion Beer of Yorkshire competition held at Rotherham Real Ale and Music Festival (Voyager: Bronze award (Golden Ale), Black Mass: Silver (Stout) and Absolution: Gold (Premium Bitter)). Later in the month, Heresy won the Gold medal at the SIBA Regional Keg Awards.

From late-March, production initially went down from eight brews/week to one brew but has since steadily increased. By mid-May it was back to ~40% of normality. New brews and beer for long-term storage in wooden casks continued to happen. The brewery was able to divert some production originally destined for casks into minikegs, and prioritised brewing beers which could be go into can and KeyKeg in order to make the best use of their new canning line. Their top-seller, Moonshine, was made available in cans and some cask was also supplied to pubs.

From late-March, Abbeydale provided mail-order. A month later, online sales were described as having ‘gone through the roof.’ Over a quarter of staff were furloughed, production staff running the canning line and doing some local deliveries. As pubs reopen, Abbeydale expect cask sales to increase and online sales to fall. However, they expect the latter to remain at a much higher level than was the case earlier in the year.

Not all was positive news. On 22 June, it was announced that the Devonshire Cat would not be reopening as an Abbeydale pub. Abbeydale had leased the premises since 2014. In addition, SunFest (the annual Rising Sun BF in July) was cancelled and there will not be a 2020 repeat of the 2018 and 2019 Funk Festivals. Hopefully, 2021 will see a return of these two popular events.

However, more awards followed in July. The SIBA Digital Beer Awards saw Voyager win a regional Silver medal (IPA) and Daily Bread win both a regional Gold and National Bronze (Best Bitter).

Bradfield

It was a similar story at another of our larger breweries, Bradfield. Some staff were furloughed, and brewing continued in order to replenish bottle and mini-keg stocks. This included Belgian Blue which is usually only brewed at Christmas. From late-March, the Brewery Shop was closed but a well-used local home delivery service became available. When pubs reopened, they were able to divert fermenting beer which was originally planned for bottling into cask to ensure that good stocks of cask beer were available. August sees their planned brewery expansion continuing and their three pubs doing well.

Blue Bee

Blue Bee, one of the smaller Sheffield breweries closed initially, reopening in July. The beer range continues to diversify, hops remaining to the fore.

Loxley

Loxley took the opportunity to refurbish the Wisewood Inn, our April Pub of the Month. The presentation was delayed, finally happening, complete with social distancing, just before the pub reopened on 6 July.

Throughout lockdown, Loxley continued to brew their core range, at a reduced capacity, mainly to fill bottles for on-site bottle conditioning.  Sales were through social media, local deliveries, shops, the Raven and a small amount of cask for another pub to off-sale. In addition, some new markets developed.

The brewery has now started brewing keg beer and are about to add two new fermenters thus doubling production capacity. Their beer range has also been rebranded to match the bottle branding:

• 3.8% Pacific Pale, Wisewood Eight is now Fearn
• 4% Blonde, Wisewood One is now Revill
• 4% Yorkshire Bitter, Wisewood Three is now Halliday
• 4.4% Five Hop, Wisewood Seven is now Lomas
• 4.8% Citra IPA, Wisewood Four is now Gunson

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These four breweries offer a microcosm of what has happened to hundreds of UK breweries: furlough, increased off-sales, lower cask sales, renovation and innovation. We look forward to many more brews from each.

Dave Pickersgill

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As we wistfully leave summer behind, we are winding down to a slower pace with these autumnal specials.

Cathedral Beeches  is a 3.7% pale English bitter. This brew is full of heady herbal aromas from British Phoenix hops, making it surprisingly delicious and certainly more interesting than many of its counterparts. The name of this classic ale stems from an area of woodland with towering Beech trees in which young lovers at Welbeck used to come and carve their names.

Our second offering for September is 43’ South, a New Zealand hopped session pale at 4.3%. There is a little farmstead called ‘Welbeck’ on the South Island of New Zealand. Situated at 43° South, it looks like a perfect paradise. This sessionable pale ale uses Wakatu and Wai-iti hops, grown in New Zealand. The combinations of these New World hops give this pale ale the subtle flavour of peaches and apricots, lifted with a delicate floral aroma.

Finally, we have the next brew in our Found and Foraged range. Pick of the Bunch is brewed with our dedicated community’s hand-picked blackberries. This 4.8% Blackberry pale is subtly pink, slightly tart and extremely refreshing. Thank you to our local friends who have gathered a hoard of hedgerow blackberries for us to brew this September special.

Louise

Loxley Brewery are set to be brewing more beer very soon, as they are bringing more fermenters into the micro-brewery. Since moving all of the bottling equipment over to the new bottling plant (right outside the doors of the brewery) they have created space to brew more fantastic ales, with the hopes to widen their core range and introduce more specials over the next year. If you have recently visited The Wisewood Inn and like your keg ales, you may have noticed a Loxley Brewery keg. At the moment the core range of cask ales are also being kegged every now and then. If this is something which interests the general public Loxley Brewery hope to expand this and create a diverse range of cask and keg ales for all to enjoy. So far, so good.  With the core range of cask ales already on the pumps ‘upstairs’ at the newly refurbished Wisewood Inn, you can also find the ales at The Raven Inn, who are still offering a take out service as well as indoor table service due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.