Category: Breweries

The weather may be getting colder but things are heating up at The Sheffield Brewery Company this November. The mash tun is steaming and the fermentors are in full flow as release several new beers this month to quench the thirsty people of this beautiful city. Our first autumn special, Bessemer (3.2% ABV) – a smooth and highly seasonable bitter – is a perfect for a quick lunch time pint on a rainy autumnal day. But the brewing madness doesn’t stop there! Celebrating the release of a salmon draft into the River Don, we’ve brewed up a very special draught beer for the occasion. To mark this momentous occasion, The Salmons Return is a Dark Rye IPA made with all the best kind of hops (Mosaic, Rakau and Ahtanum) and is our penultimate beer in our Ten of the Best range. As you are aware, this year is the 10th year we’ve been established as a microbrewery in Sheffield. Incidentally, we will also be brewing our 600th gyle this November. Well, you can’t miss an opportunity like that to brew a special 6.00% IPA, can you?! Ten Years and Six Hundred Beers will be a short run India Pale ale available in cask and bottles, hopped with a variety of lush hops, including Mosaic, Centennial, Chinnok, Rakau, Cascade and whatever else we can think to chuck at it. Also, this November, as a local independent business, we are proud to be serving Sheffield Brewery beers and local gin in the Winter Gardens and Millennium Gallery for the MADE 16 Festival’s aftershow event. MADE is the UK’s premier business event for entrepreneurship, offering an experience to educate, inspire and motivate early stage entrepreneurs and established business owners. Finally, our award winning Sheffield Porter, hoppy Seven Hills and malty Millowner’s Ale will be available in 500ml bottles just in time for Christmas. Details to follow at www.sheffieldbrewery.com

We’ve been busily brewing more new beers over the last month. Mosaic IPA (5.5%) is the latest in our series of single hopped IPAs and was brewed (and dry hopped) with a fairly silly amount of the the wonder hop, Mosaic, for big tropical, pineapple and blueberry notes. After the success of Manna, our mango infused tropical pale ale, we thought we would have a go with another fruit – this time oranges in Mandarin (4.3%) brewed with German Mandarina Bavaria hops and curacao oranges for big citrus bitterness and bags of orange aroma and flavour. Our latest stout saw us experiment with coffee and the result is Coffee Oatmeal Stout (4.8%), a seriously smooth oatmeal stout brewed with coffee from a local supplier with loads of roasted, coffee and chocolate notes. We also found time to fit in a rare repeat brew of Triton (4.5%), a pale ale tipple hopped with Citra, Cascade and Chinook with a brand new 4.6% American Red Ale coming up next. At the time of writing, our return collaboration with Hopjacker Brewery (a 6.7%ish Lemon and Earl Grey IPA hopped with bags of Centennial) brewed at the Dronfield Arms was freshly pitched and we we’re looking forward to trying it at the Steel City Beer Festival. By the time you are reading this the Wellington on Henry Street will finally (after one or two delays!) be open showcasing a range of our beers and we should have brewed our 100th gyle. Expect something 6%+ with one or two hops in it! Citra. Mosaic, Amarillo and Centennial have been put aside for this one… Gavin

CAMRA members are being given a rare chance to go behind the scenes of Stancill brewery during a special open day which is due to take place next month. Offering a chance to go behind the scenes at both the brewery, the special event will give members the opportunity to take part in a guided tour of the brewery, meet head brewer Dean Pleasant and learn some of the secrets which have helped to establish Stancill Brewery as one of the region’s fastest growing breweries. Meeting the Horse & Jockey Wadsley on Sunday 27^th November at 2:00pm, the special event includes transport to and from the brewery, two pints of Stancill Beer, as well as chance to enjoy a buffet which will be hosted at the pub. The event will be led by Adam Hague, who will share with visitors the history of the brewery, which can be traced back more than 200 years, as well as giving vistors a chance to find out how the different varieties of Stancill beers are produced. The open day being hosted by Stancill Brewery is one of a number of events taking place throughout November. Every Friday evening the Horse & Jockey will host live music and street food, as well as hosting a family fun day on 5^th November to coincide with the visit of Ipswich Town. A full range of events can be found via at: https://www.facebook.com/horsejockeyS6 The pub has recently entered into a partnership with Huddersfield-based Magic Rock, and as well as providing a comprehensive range of Stancill’s core range of eight beers and two seasonal specials. A variety of Magic Rock’s US themed beers will also be available. A 20% discount on all Stancill beers is available. Matt Weigold, Events manager, Horse & Jockey said: “Our brewery trip is a unique chance for CAMRA members to go behind the scenes of a working brewery and following the journey of the raw ingredients to the finished product available on the bar. The brewery has come a long way in just three years, and we wanted to give CAMRA members a chance to find out more about the work that’s been undertaken during that time. ”Since launching the Horse & Jockey, we’ve had a lot of interest in our range of beers, with many people asking about how they are produced. We wanted to thank CAMRA members in particular for their incredible support since we opened the doors of the pub and felt a special open day would create the perfect opportunity to find out how we transfer the raw ingredients to the beer enjoyed in pubs.” Tickets for Stancill Brewery’s open day can be purchased from the Horse & Jockey.

Well I hope everyone enjoyed the Sheffield Beer Festival, and it is an event that certainly deserves all our support! We’ve got plenty to tell you this week including the re-launch of the Devonshire Cat! Some of you may have noticed that it has recently been closed for a refurb.  Well we are very excited to let you see what we have done with it and as we go to print, we plan to re-open W/C November 14th, but this will all depend on the builders finishing on time! In terms of our beers, we have a cornucopia of new specials to talk about, starting with ‘Frolicker’, part of our Beer Heads series, and this is a Sorachi Ace Session IPA at 3.9%.  Plenty of this mega hop in a very drinkable beer. Expect lots of tropical and citrus fruit flavours notable coconut and lemon. We also launch a new series called ‘Animal Vengeance’! Various animals have had a bed time with us humans, so now it’s payback! Starting with ‘Bear Hunter’ this 4.1% pale will be suitable hoppy with plenty of Mounthood and Azacca. We’ve teamed up with local electro-rockers 65 Days of Static, to brew a very special beer to commemorate their upcoming album release. As we go to print, the name of the beer is TBC, but what we can tell you is that it will be a 5.0% Belgian style Cherry beer.

Over the last two years we have released lots of beers in our Lost Treasure series, and like all good things, some have to come to an end. So we give you the last Lost Treasure beer, ‘Flor De La Mar’ a 4.2% pale beer single hopped with Centennial with some extra dry-hopping for good measure! We also have the last of our Birthday beers to release which we’ve given Black Mass the birthday treatment. Instead of ramping up the ABV like we did with the Brimstone, or doubling the hops like we did with Deception, we have done Baby Black Mass, a 4.8% stout with plenty of coffee! As a final nod to our 20th birthday year, we have decided to have all our core beer artwork redrawn, and we will reveal all in next months issue!

The first of Christmas beer will be launched as well toward the end of the month, so look out for Abbey Christmas, Slay Bells, Dr Morton’s Damn Good Stuffing, Dr Morton’s Paranoid Snowman and a Christmas Pudding Beer to get your mitts on! We are also hosting a special beer and food pairing at the Showroom on November 26th, tickets available directly from the Showroom and it sounds like they are selling very fast indeed! Cheers and Beers! Team Abbeydale

It’s been a while since we’ve contributed however we’ve been busily brewing lots of tasty beer and there’s plenty to catch you up on… General Manager, Claire Monk, is now back at the helm after having a little boy in February. It doesn’t seem like five minutes ago that it was Christmas and we were wishing Claire well in her maternity leave. With the festive season in mind we’re getting well ahead on prep for our bottled beers and mini-kegs, the latter of which proved to be incredibly popular last year. We’re more than happy to take Christmas orders for 36 pint boxes of beer- if this is of interest please forward your request to: info@welbeckabbeybrewery.co.uk Lady A our super-special Abbey ale, brewed in the style of a Belgian dubbel with abbaye yeast is available once again. This is the second and final batch and the version we matured in red wine barrels underneath the Abbey itself. The 5^th Duke of Portland was a rather elusive character and commissioned the tunnels to be built so that he could move around his lands without confrontation and in secrecy. The Welbeck Estate’s series of underground tunnels are famed around these parts and it’s suggested that one reaches as far as Worksop. Lady A takes its name in honour of Lady (Ivy) Algernon Gordon-Lennox, artistic visionary and founder of the Harley Foundation;  intended to “encourage creativity in all of us” and ensure that the public could have access to visual arts.  Lady A (the ale) drinks with figgy, rich, plum-bread tones; balanced out neatly with light banana esters and a hint of sherbet. Red wine aromas and flavours come through on the back-palate giving way to a highly satisfying finish. This ale is almost as complex as the history that lies behind it. At 7.1% it’s certainly not in line with our usual brews and with this in mind is available in 330ml bottles and for a limited time only. Monthly Specials for October will be hitting a bar near you soon with Cubitt’s Voyage, Ernest George and Let’s Get Fiscal all ready to go. The latter is a 5.3% hard-hitting New Zealand IPA, brewed as part of our ‘Brewer’s Choice’ range with this month featuring the choice of our long suffering accountant Helen. Ernest George sees a return as part of the Welbeck Favourites range and this deep ruby libation promises hints of roasted coffee and rich dark chocolate whilst being fairly easy drinking at an ABV of 4.2%. Finally Cubitt’s Voyage is a light, zesty, refreshing 3.5% pale, full of citrus fruit provided by New Zealand hops. As ever you’ll be able to try our ales all over South Yorkshire and the Midlands however you’ll always find a good selection available at our very own micro-bar, Portland House, on Ecclesall Road, Sheffield. Portland House has recently seen a change in management and I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to Amie and George, General and Assistant Managers’ respectively. Please do pop down and say “hi”. We have a regular series of events on offer at ‘PH’ and excellent tasting evenings provided by the good folk at Starmore Boss who supply us with a most excellent array of spirits and expertise. The future looks very bright for our little boozer and we hope that you’ll continue to support us in these changing times. Notable events in the calendar include a ‘Meet the Brewer’ night featuring Claire Monk, the mastermind behind all things ‘WAB’. We also have a (fast selling out) Gin Tasting evening in early November. To book please contact Portland House via telephone or the Facebook page for more information and event details. Hannah Bolton, Assistant Manager.

Woodthorpe Hall near Holmesfield is the residence of Dick Shepley and his family, who own much of the surrounding land and have a pub named after them (the Shepley Spitfire down the lane in Totley). Their garden is hired out some days over summer for wedding receptions but on two weekends in October it is given over to cider making. Woodthorpe Hall has a range of three artisan ciders – Owd Barker, Ruby Suzie and Spinning Jenny with the latter being a more sensible ABV than the others – the others once the natural fermentation is coming to an end sees the addition of champagne yeast to the fermentation tank, accellerating the process again resulting in a very strong, lightly sparkling cider with a slightly smoother flavour than just apples. Ruby Suzie is the sweetened version. Each year to celebrate CAMRA’s October Real Cider Month a handful of Sheffield, Dronfield and Chesterfield CAMRA members join the Shepley family, their friends and other volunteers to help with the pressing on the Saturday of the second weekend. It is proper work with heavy lifting, carrying, shoveling, operating machinery and more but also a fun social occasion with volunteers well looked after. There is an afternoon tea break with a table groaning under the weight of a massive array of home made cakes and pots of freshly brewed tea & coffee; cider is available to drink on a self serve basis throughout the afternoon and once work is finished for the day everyone has a drink and chat around the ‘garden heater’ – a shopping trolley containing a bonfire – before being invited into the house for a delicious home cooked supper. We all once again enjoyed our day helping out at Woodthorpe Hall on the 8th October and would like to thank the Shepleys for their hospitality, if you missed out trying the cider that resulted from last years pressing at our Steel City Beer & Cider Festival then you can buy it in bottles from a select number of outlets, one of which is the Beer Stop in Dronfield.

THE APPLE PRESSING DAY PROCESS IN PICTURES

The new special from Exit 33 is called Lightweight. At just 3.8% this pale ale may be small on strength but it’s big on flavour. It has a moderate to high hop flavour, showing a citrusy hop character, the balance being towards the late hops of Chinook & Simcoe. Also brought back for this Month is Citrella at 4.8%.  ‘We are asked for it all the time so we brewed it one last time for this year as both Citra & Ella hops are in short supply’ Last year’s harvest in the States was poor due to bad weather and Ella is hard to come by as one merchant now has a monopoly on all Australian varieties. The return of dark nights’ ushers in dark beers and it will be soon time to release our two limited edition oak barrel aged specials. Nut Brown whisky cask is a robust 6% old style ale heavy on malt flavour and has been maturing in oak whisky hog’s heads since February.  Next up will be 7% Nicaraguan Rum Cask Stout, which is about as good as it gets for stout lovers.  Our regular 5% oat stout smiles at you, this beer is winking!

Heroic beer, with German origins!  Oktoberfest may have been and gone in its hometown of Munich, but for beer lovers across the Atlantic and here in Sheffield, it has only just begun! This October, Stancill Brewery is celebrating all things German with the launch of its heroic monthly special, Hercules. The easy-drinking pale ale features Herkules hops, a new variety which was created through crossbreeding German Hallertau Taurus and Hull Male hops, resulting in a bitter peppery taste with a spicy aroma. Bred at the Hop Research centre in Hull, Germany, Herkules hops are relatively new to the beer industry and are native to the Elbe-Saale region of South East Germany; an area hugely populated with hop farms as during World War Two the communist regime cultivated hop growing, resulting in mass hop farms. Hercules is the first beer produced by Stancill using the new hop variety, resulting in a 4.0% beer which has all the character you might expect from a German beer variety: clean tasting, refreshing with a bitter aftertaste. Prost!