Category: Breweries

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.

Like many brewers, Steel City had something of a hiatus during lockdown, being as draught accounts for 90% of our output. However, the opportunity was taken to increase small-pack production, with several bottles being released and more excitingly our first cans. The Shakespeare-led supercollab Collabracadabra was the first beer to be released in can, and sold out quickly, so much so a second batch is on its way, along with the barrel-aged version CollabracadaBA. Brewing restarted on the day the pubs were allowed to reopen, with an old-skool Transatlantic Pale Ale named 106 Days Later to commemorate the pubs reopening (though for many of our favourites it was a few more days until they opened their doors). To continue the theme, the IBUs were set at 106, coupled with flame-out hops Centennial, Rakau, and Lemondrop, with Rakau and Lemondrop again for dry-hop. The bulk of the brew was casked and donated to regular customers, with a small amount being canned. Also out very soon in small-pack are all three versions of the collaboration with Germany’s Freigeist brewery, appropriately enough all related to German metal band Rammstein. The base brew, Mein Herz Brennt is a Berliner Braunbier, resurrecting a near-extinct style. Reise Reise has the addition of cranberries and redcurrants, while Blitzkriek has been aged in a Bordeaux red wine barrel with cherries and redcurrants. Blitzkriek is in cans while the other two are bottled.

Neepsend Brew Co has been shut and not trading through most of the Covid-19 lockdown but are in their new brewery and preparing to be up and running again. Next week sees beer available to the trade, coinciding with some pubs reopening, but the big news is that Neepsend beer is now available in cans and will be sold direct to the public online, as well as via independent bottle shops such as Mitchells Wine Merchants at Meadowhead. Keep an eye on their Facebook page for the latest news!

Here at Abbeydale Brewery, despite challenges to our business and putting in place substantial changes to overcome them, we are doing everything we can to retain a sense of familiarity in the “new normal” we all need to learn to live with. Our brewteam haven’t stopped throughout the lockdown period – although we did quieten down in April and May, we have now increased production again and are getting plenty of lovely fresh beer ready for the proposed pubs opening date of 4 th July. Alongside this, you may have spotted that we were very fortunate to receive delivery of our very own canning line a couple of months ago. We were able to get to grips with this in super quick time, so we’ve got a great selection of cans at the moment, including Moonshine and Absolution, two of our popular core range which were both previously only available in cask. (Our best bitter Daily Bread is being added to this selection in the next week too!) Specials wise, these will mainly be released in keg and can initially whilst we get stocks of our core cask range nice and healthy, but coming up over the next few weeks we have Hop Smash Grapefruit IPA, and a couple of new Funk Dungeon releases too – a Tradition single hopped Bretted pale, and a tart lager. Plus a planned brand new Lost Souls imperial stout, this time inspired by the flavours of a Russian Honeycake! Sadly we have had to announce that we have taken the incredibly difficult decision not to re-open our city centre pub, The Devonshire Cat, as an Abbeydale Brewery pub. It’s been a huge part of who we are over the past six and a half years, and we will miss it immensely. However we’re cautiously optimistic about the Rising Sun, Nether Green, and this will be opening on Saturday 4 th July with a robust plan in place, do keep an eye on their website and social media for further details. We are planning to continue our online shop operation and direct delivery alongside supplying pubs of course, and would just like to quickly take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to all the Sheffielders (and beyond!) who have supported us over these turbulent few months. We’ve gone through literally thousands of minikegs on top of our cans too! We genuinely couldn’t have got through this without you all, and we hope you will continue to stay with us as we all ride out this storm together. Hope to see plenty of you for a real life handpulled pint, from a safe distance of course, down the pub. It’s been a long time coming, and we’ve missed it so much! Cheers Laura, Abbeydale Brewery

Grizzly Grains had arranged to do a collaboration brew with Heeley City Farm for their fundraising beer festival, which of course got cancelled due to the Coronavirus restrictions. However they went ahead and brewed the beer anyway and have bottled it to drink at home! The beer is Belgian inspired and brewed with tons of Heather Honey from the farms own bees, hopped with Amarillo and Mandarins Bavaria for subtle orange flavour and comes in at 6% ABV. The brewery is donating £1 from every bottle of “Honey, I Brew up the Farm”, sold to Heeley City Farm. A second beer is also being released at the same time, Mangopocalypse, an 8% mango DIPA. Both beers will be available to order online along with bag-in-box cask beers for home delivery, their web shop launches on Thursday 28th May at grizzly-grains-brewing.myshopify.com Photos: Sam Bennett, Andrew Pearse and Rachel Gilbert

Stancill have launched a new 5% IPA, “Amazona” which they promise offers a citrus explosion. It is available alongside their other beers in 5 litre bag-in-box to order online for home delivery.