Category: Breweries

A number of breweries from Sheffield had successes in the beer of the festival competition at the recent Doncaster CAMRA beer festival with Little Critters’ Raspberry Blonde winning the speciality category, Stancill ‘s Hopollo 11 winning the golden ales category and Triplepoint Debut IPA winning the IPA category. Triplepoint was also overall runner up. Recent specials from Blue Bee Brewery include a Cream Soda Pale Ale brewed with raspberries, lactose and oats; Hit the Ground, a 5.5% Simcoe Cryo hopped IPA and the second in their series of 3.9% Quad hopped pale ales, this time with the Simcoe, Columbus, Belma and Ekuanot varieties. Little Critters have brewed a coconut stout. Toolmakers Brewery are hosting an open mic night in their tap room most Sundays. Check their Facebook page for details. Neepsend Brewery has collaborated with Bullion Chocolate who are based in the Cutlery Works food hall to brew “Gold Standard”, a chocolate milk stout, which launched as part of a paired beer and chocolate tasting evening at the Boozehound bar in Cutlery Works. Abbeydale have brewed a beer in collaboration with Peddlers Night Market. Huckster Cryo is a 6% New England IPA. Heist Craft brewery in Clowne have brewed a beer for Sheffield United FC which will be available in the Blades Superstore at Bramall Lane to celebrate promotion to the Premiership. A special beer is being brewed for Tramlines music festival, however details were yet to be announced at time of going to press.

Happy July! Hopefully by the time you’re reading this it has started to feel like a bit more like summer and a bit less wet and windy! Either way, we’ve got some summertime specials that will get you excited. We’re kicking off July with Pineapple Lodge, a satisfyingly full flavoured IPA.  American and New Zealand hops offer notes of tropical fruits and are balanced with a rich and deep malt backbone from specialty Vienna Malt, giving an almost pineapple-like flavour. Next we’ve got Cathedral Beeches, a 3.7% English bitter full of heady herbal aromas from British Phoenix hops making it surprisingly delicious and certainly more interesting than many of its counterparts. And finally, from our popular Foraged & Found range we’ve got Respect Your Elders!  This 3.9% elderflower extra-pale has been brewed with fragrant and locally foraged flower heads courtesy of our team and wonderful community. Lastly, we’re excited to share that this month we will be launching a new line of craft kegged beers.  Our whole team has been involved in this venture and we will be releasing details in the coming weeks on our social media channels.  Keep your eyes peeled for details!  Now, COME ON SUNSHINE! Jessica.

Hello from the Brewery of Saint Mars of the Desert.  Our first spring has been fab and we keep seeing new faces in the taproom every week.  In addition to our taproom in Attercliffe, you may have seen our beers around town in some of Sheffield’s pubs. Recently we have sent a small amount of beer to Scotland, Leeds, York and Manchester. We have just premiered our new foeder-aged brown stout “Wudu”.  The foeder has recently come to us from Italy via a cooperage in Germany – it’s a 1200 litre former Barolo barrel constructed of oak and it has imparted a good character of its former use in our Wudu (4.3%abv).   People have also been enjoying our line up of hoppy and hazy pale ales, the latest of which is named “Bam Bam” (5.3%abv) with Olicana and Azacca hops.  We were looking to create a mango-like hoppiness and we think we succeeded. Upcoming we have a beer that was made in cooperation with local artist Tom Newell and Hop Hideout at Kommune.  This orange zest pale ale saw Martha zesting for the better part of two days and is called “Endless Toil” which matches the title of Tom’s upcoming show. Look out for limited release cans with for collectable labels, available in hop hideout and our taproom from June 20th onwards. Cheers!  Dann and Martha

Steel City had a brief hiatus in the spring due to Dave swanning off to all four corners of the globe, but are back in business with the latest ‘megacollab’.

Sadly unlike last year the weather conspired to prevent cricket being played so they had to get on with brewing instead, though there was still a barbecue and of course a piss-up in the brewery.

The base beer is a Chocolate Milkshake Stout, with small batch versions to include Coconut, Mint, and Raspberry, plus the fact that The Crow Inn have their own coffee blend meant that a coffee version was inevitable.

No names at the time of press, but with given milkshake element some far-right mockery is likely… A rather fine rum barrel has also been acquired so an aged version will be out later in the year.

Looking further ahead, September marks the 10^th anniversary of the first ever Steel City brew – where’s that time gone?! To mark the occasion hopefully former partners Gazza and Hannah are going to come along to the brewing of Hop Manifesto Reloaded – a recreation of that first brew, but with the hop content amped up for the 2019 generation (hard to believe that despite literally setting up Steel City to make hoppier beers than everyone else, a decade later that original recipe seems almost balanced!).

There are a couple of July Specials from Kelham Island Brewery.

Golden Axe, 4.2%, is  a full-bodied golden ale. Its light sweetness is balanced with a pleasant bitterness from the Columbus hops and an aroma of tropical fruits is derived from the late addition of a blend of New Zealand and American Hops.

Kelham Islander, 4.0%, sees the return of a favourite blonde but with the addition of strawberry. This refreshingly smooth session pale is crisp and fruity and will wash over your palate like a force of nature.

One of our much loved seasonal ales, Farmers Blueberry Ale will be available again from July, in cask and 5 litre Mini Kegs. This malty session ale is fruity with spicy overtones and at 4.4% abv and is an ideal beer garden or BBQ refreshment. The brewery is once again to be a part of the annual Bradfield Tractor Rally. This event will see over 100 tractors taking part in a road rally around the areas of Bradfield, Loxley & Stannington before parking up at the Nags Head at Loxley for an afternoon of fundraising and entertainment. The chosen charity for this year’s event is Yorkshire Air Ambulance, an amazing charity that relies on charitable donations to enable it to keep saving lives across Yorkshire. Staying with local events and Bradfield Brewery are also providing the bar service for the annual Broomhead Show. This traditional village show takes place on Sunday 14th July and includes stalls from local and family businesses, entertainment from local bands/choirs and musicians, children’s rides, a dog show and food & drink refreshments including Farmers Ales on draught. The team at our other Brewery Tap, the King & Miller at Deepcar have been busy reinstating a kitchen at the pub, with Food now on offer seven days a week. Visitors can now enjoy a menu of homemade traditional pub grub, along with the Farmers Ales still at just £2.50 a pint.

It’s Sunfest month! I’m very excited to be involved in what will be my 5^th festival as part of Team Abbeydale, it’s always such a highlight of our year! So (if you’re reading this before 11^th-14^th July!) please do pop along to the Rising Sun to sample some of the 72 cask and 30 keg beers on offer. It’s sure to be another corker of a weekend! Our charity beer for this year will be launched at the festival and for 2019 we are supporting the James Brownhill Memorial Foundation. We’ve worked with JBMF to create Blue Skies (4.3%), a Mount Hood hopped pale ale. 10p from every pint sold will be donated to the charity, so drink good and do good!

We’ve got a couple of tasty collaborations out this month. Raisins to be Fearful (7.0%) is a smoked fruited Dubbel with apricots and raisins brewed with our pals at Torrside Brewery. We plan to release the main batch this month with Sunfest being one of the first places to showcase it, with a small amount being held back to barrel age and launch at Torrside’s festival Smokefest in November. The second of our releases from our collaborations with breweries from the USA is due to be released too – Greetings from Charlotte N.C has been created with our friends from NoDa Brewing who are based in North Carolina. Expect a smooth and silky well hopped IPA brewed with oats and corn in the grist.

We’ve got two returning favourites coming soon too, both making the most of our incredible hop store – the ever popular Dr Morton’s Duck Baffler (4.1%) hopped with Citra, and Double Deception (4.5%), an amped up version of our beloved core beer with absolute oodles of Nelson Sauvin hops.

And in the Brewers Emporium range we are releasing a new version of our Indulgence dessert inspired pale ale, this time a blueberry and maple pancake beer!

Finally, once Sunfest is over (sad face) we start to look ahead to our next beer festival… Funk Fest! This year our mixed fermentation and sour beer celebration is taking place at the brewery on 7^th-8^th September. At the time of writing early bird tickets for both sessions on Saturday have sold out (still some left for Sunday) but general release tickets are still available for all sessions. Budding homebrewers don’t forget to enter our competition which takes place during the Sunday session too! Head to bit.ly/funkfest19 for more information and to get your mitts on a ticket!

Cheers,

Laura

Triple Point’s Nekter  was named Champion Beer at the recent Barrow Hill Rail Ale Festival following a blind tasting to judge the beers on the opening day. Nekter is a twist on a pilsener lager recipe, brewed with fruity US hops and available as a cask conditioned ale.