Category: Breweries

Steel yourself… something’s brewing… Makers Ale 4.0%.

Number four of our top ten reasons we love Sheffield is homage to the city-region’s makers and shakers past and present. Whether you are inspired by the Buffer Girls, Harry Brierley or a modern day craft brewer there is something in this region which excites us as Makers!

In the Making

Three exhibitions form The Year of Making, a major city-wide initiative celebrating Sheffield’s international reputation for innovation and excellence in making. Sheffield is more than just a steel city – its international reputation for excellence and innovation in a wide range of making and manufacture is celebrated in another major new exhibition, Made in Sheffield, open at the Millennium Gallery. Museums Sheffield have invited companies to declare their pride for Sheffield and support this flagship 2016 exhibition and align their brand with the very best of design and production in Sheffield. So we thought we’d promote this and recommend you contact Grace Brierley, Partnership Development Officer: grace.brierley@museums-sheffield.org.uk, 0114 278 2612.

The Sheffield Brewery Co at the Made in Sheffield Awards 2016

This prestigious event celebrated excellence in manufacturing from across the city region. The Master Cutler once again hosted the event at the magnificient Cutlers Hall on 21st April. The Made in Sheffield brand gives local companies the opportunity to celebrate their ongoing commitment to world class quality and excellence in manufacturing. More than 250 companies are licensed to use the Made in Sheffield logo. The Sheffield Brewery Beer Club – book our next event: a weekender – Fri May 1st and Sat 2nd 5pm – 11pm.

Our second first Friday was a great success!

Congratulations again to our neighbours, the mighty Peddler Market, they’re open again the first Friday and Saturday of every month, and will showcase another fresh line-up of Britain’s best street food traders, alongside top-notch craft beers, freshly made cocktails, live music and art. The atmosphere is fab and just gets better each event! Big thanks to Tom from Silverdale School for playing a fantastic set last Friday. Any smallish bands or singers fancy playing at our Beer Club please get in touch with Pete at the brewery. Why not pop along to one of our events or maybe join the club and enjoy a choice of our cracking real ales or wines at a discount! Lookout for more in our Top Ten series which we’ll be releasing at the end of each month. Details of everything on our new website www.sheffieldbrewery.com

Our latest brews have included Solaris, a 4.3% pale ale with generous late editions of Sorachi Ace, Equinox and Calypso hopes giving plenty of distinctive Sorachi lemon and dill notes backed up by the fruity flavours of Equinox and Calypso, and Triton, a 4.5% pale hopped with three of the American ‘C’ hops, Citra, Cascade and Chinook. We’ve also got a new IPA in the fermenter at the time of writing. It will be a golden American IPA showcasing bags of Mosaic, Calypso and Chinook hops and benefiting from being dry hopped with mosaic in one of our brand new conditioning tanks, which we have just got up and running. By the time you are reading this we will probably have already hosted five of our fellow brewers on the 28th of April for the Sheffield Brewer’s Co-Operative collaboration brew for the Sheffield Food Festival next month. The beer will be a six hop pale ale – one hop variety per brewer with Neepsend, Kelham Island, Abbeydale, Exit 33, Blue Bee and Sheffield Brewery all pitching in. The beer will be available at the Food Festival at the end of May and in pubs across the city. We also have plans in place for a collaboration brew with Hopjacker Brewery in Dronfield, which will take place in May. The current plan is for a Breakfast IPA featuring grapefruit and oatmeal and we are looking forward to the brew day already.

In a slight (OK, more than slight) change of plan, since the last Beer Matters went to press Dave realised that he wouldn’t have time to fit in another brew for Anti-Reinheitsgebot 500 at the end of April. Bokaro IPA has therefore been put off until early summer, while the current brew is Beleidigung Zur Geschichte (Insult to History), a hybrid IPA/Weissbier (or Hopfenweisse). BZG features a blend of malted barley and wheat, 115IBU of Magnum, and a flame-out charge of Galaxy and Kazbek, before being fermented with a German Weissbier yeast. Finally the brew was dry-hopped with more Galaxy and (just to ensure non-Reinheitsgebot compliance) some kiwi fruit. First taste off the fermenter suggests big banana and tropical fruit flavours, and very easy-drinking for 5.3%! Beleidigung Zur Geschichte is unfined so will be naturally hazy (or even cloudy, as befits a weissbier), and of course vegan-friendly. An idea Dave had a while back was two festival specials, Four Candles and Fork Handles, and with the death of Ronnie Corbett last month now seemed an appropriate time to do it. Four Candles is Beleidigung Zur Geschichte dry-hopped with Jester, while Fork Handles is Craven’d Ale with the addition of Maple, Cacao Nibs and Coconut. They will be available side-by-side at the Shakespeare. In sadder news, the same brewday was to feature Shazz’s first brew to her own recipe, but a broken element on the minikit put paid to that idea. Especially galling after the time taken to peel and slice a large quantity of blood oranges, limes and clementines for the brew! RIP minikit, we had some good times… Perhaps Steel City could crowdfund a new one. ‘Equity for Drunks’ has a nice ring to it… The latest collaboration is a local affair, being brewed at Lost Industry. Nate at Lost Industry and Dave both independently came up with the idea of a Mojito Sour, and had been planning a Lost Steel Industry collab for a while, so it seemed a perfect opportunity. Lost Steel Industry is a 6% kettle-soured pale, brewed with Kaffir Lime leaves, Lime Juice, Mint leaves and fermented on rum-soaked oak chips. A trial batch will appear early May, with a full brew appearing in time for summer.

After a couple of months brewing and becoming accustomed to our new home down at The Sheffield Brewery Company, March and April were good months for Emmanuales. We delivered our first cask beer, Ryejoice, made with Nelson Sauvin and Simcoe hops to The Harlequin for a joint Meet the Brewer event with Exit 33 as part of Sheffield Beer Week; we appeared on BBC Radio Sheffield to talk about our beers and plans for the future; and three of our beers – Jonah and the Pale (5.0% Transatlantic Pale Ale), Ryejoice (5.4% Pale Rye) and As the Deer Pants For Porter (5.0% Smoked Porter) – finally hit bottle shops in and around Sheffield. Even with the increased capacity to produce our beers, demand for Emmanuales is growing all the time. Our feet are barely touching the ground with early starts brewing and late night bottling sessions, all the while currently holding down a day job. Over the course of this year, you can expect to see more events, as well as new beers. Later this year, we’ll be launching Hymns & Beer; two events – one in Sheffield and one in Oxford – with Emmanuales on tap and bearded hipster singer/songwriter Tom Read performing modern folk arrangement of timeless hymns. Also, we’re currently brewing Ex Nihilo, a Russian Imperial Stout, an American amber ale (yet to be named; suggestions on a postcard!) and conditioning something very special… Inspired by a salted caramel flapjack called Salty Jack, produced and sold by Gertie’s Cafe in Walkley, Salt of the Earth (4.8% Salted Caramel Peanut Ale) is made with oats, peanuts, and a collection of caramel malts. Not only is this beer a celebration of a divine tray-bake, but raises up a glass to the good people of Walkley, who really are the salt of the earth. Salt of the Earth, Oh Hoppy Day (6.1% IPA), Ex Nihilo and our American Amber Ale will be available in June. For more details, visit www.emmanuales.co.uk.

The Sheffield Food Festival returns 28th – 30th May, and along with it Sheffield Brewer’s Co-operative Beer Tent. This year is set to be better than ever, plus we have a shiny new logo! We will be working closely with The Sheffield Royal Society for the Blind (SRSB), raising awareness and funds. SRSB “provide opportunity, support, friendship and services to blind and partially sighted people in Sheffield, helping them to achieve whatever they wish to do and whatever they aspire to be.” A very worthy cause, we’re sure you’ll agree. Come down over the weekend, show your support, say hello, and taste the Brewers Co-operatives multi-collaboration beer “6 Hop IPA” forged at Neepsend Brew Co. 10p of every pint sold will go directly to the charity. – srsb.org.uk. So what else is new… Well, we will be hosting a Meet the Brewer and Food Pairing event on the Saturday from 5pm. The Women’s Institute (WI) will be in attendance selling some homemade beery cakes and treats. And lastly to appease the fizzy beer drinkers we will have keg beer on offer from Abbeydale, and they will be revealing their brand new keg beer name and artwork! Stay tuned for further information from Kelham + Neepsend + Sheffield + Abbeydale + Exit 33 + Blue Bee Breweries or follow us on Twitter: @SheffBreweries or Facebook: Sheffield Brewer’s Co-operative For more information about Sheffield Food Festival check out the event on their Facebook page!

I hope you are all planning on coming down to support the Sheffield Brewers Co-operative festival on May bank holiday weekend. Come down and say hello to us all! Onto our beery news. Firstly a few adjustments to make from last months submission.  Our yeast was a bit hungry, so our very special Double Brimstone is now at 8.1%, not at 7.8% as previously stated, and the Festival of Debate beer, Why Not Give A Toss? came out as 4.4% rather than 4.0%.  The Double Brimstone should be all in the trade by now, and if you were one of the lucky 150 people to get your hands on a bottle then brilliant! We are incredibly pleased with how it has turned out and a fitting tribute to Brimstone. Another beer that should be hitting the bars by now, but didn’t make it into last months issue is Empress. A refreshing golden ale infused with whole lychees, a perfect summer tipple. This tropical fruit surprise is balanced with hints of lime and coconut, and finished with a cascade dry hop. New beers to shout about this month are the next in our Signature series, with our office manager, Laura’s recipe Lady Ra Ra a 4.5% vanilla and raspberry muffin beer. This is going to be both naughty and nice, with sumptuous fruity flavours with a smooth creamy finish. After all it is muffin season all year round! We have the return of Alchemy, a well loved classic from the back catalogue. A full-flavoured pale and hoppy beer. Lots of fruit, especially citrus and some spiciness from the Amarillo hops. A refreshing bitter finish for ideal early summer drinking. Those with good memories will remember reading a eulogy regarding Last Rites when production ceased in late 2010.  As part of the birthday series we have resurrected it and it is in fermenter as I write. The very sessionable 11% ale is tasting amazing already. This will be very scarce and in high demand I’m sure!

As ever we continue to brew new beers. This month sees Born in the USA 6.0% appearing on bars around Sheffield and beyond. This IPA brings together our favourite three hops at the moment: Mosaic, Citra and Equinox all from American and when combined give big tropical and citrus fruit flavours along with pine like notes.  This not the only IPA we have out this month we have Equinox IPA 5.0% too. We love this relatively new hop variety and thought we should try it in one of our single hopped IPAs, on its own Equinox gives tropical fruit and pine like flavours leading to a bitter finish.  Also Geek is back and as for the time been we have run out of Star Wars films we have gone with Wrath of Geek 4.3% (some Star Trek reference I’m told) as ever this hoppy American pale ale is packed with delicious Mosaic hops. In other news Ginger Beer 4.5% is also back this month and promises to be as fiery as ever, so be warned this is not a beer for those of you who don’t like ginger! As well as this we are on the eleventh incarnation of American 5 Hop 4.3% this time this pale ale combines: Equinox, ADHA 484, Chinook, Columbus and Willamette. May sees quite a few beery events featuring our beers including over the May Day bank holiday Sheffield Students Union Beer Festival, Barnsley Camra Beer Festival and the British Oak Beer Festival at Mosborough.  And over Spring Bank you can find our beers at the Closed Shop Beer Festival at Commonside and at the Brewers Collective Tent at Sheffield Food Festival. So there is no excuse not to try one of our beers.

To help kick of Sheffield Beer Week on Saturday 12th March, True North – who until now had brewed their beer at Welbeck Abbey or Stancill Brewery – opened up their new Sheffield City Centre brewhouse to visitors. Representatives of True North were available to answer questions about the brewery and a range of beers were available to try including a couple on cask (the Oatmeal Pale went down well) and a couple on keg – their pilsener lager and a premium IPA that was brewed in collaboration with North Union Brewing – as well as a couple of guest craft keg beers. Also present was Jules from Hop Hideout with her Sheffield Beer Week organiser’s hat on! The brewery is on Eldon Street behind the Forum Cafe Bar (which is owned by the same people as the brewery) looking out onto Devonshire Green in an old brick building with bags of character. Shiny brewing vessels line two sides of the rectangular room along with a temporary visitors bar, gin distilling equipment and a coffee roaster. It is intended to roast coffee for their chain of bars and restaurants. The gin distillery is to relocate to the Blue Stoops at Dronfield once the building work is complete there. The fourth side of the room is lined with tables for visitors to sit and drink – they intend to open the brewery and bar up to visitors about once a month for special events. There are a number of classic London Soho neon signs hanging around the brewery as a bit of an in joke, this is explained by a notice taped up by the entrance to the toilets – it is reference to some research that suggested the reaction of many men the first time they walk into a brewery is similar to the first time they walk into a sex shop! The old kid in a sweet shop thing huh?!  

Steel City finally got back in the brewhouse after a somewhat prolonged hiatus. India Pale Ales named after places in India seem to do well round these parts, so where could be more apt than Bokaro Steel City? Perhaps slightly more industrial than Jaipur, the brew itself is anything but industrial. As you might expect from Steel City, ‘BKSC’ features a very pale mash and three-figure IBU, flavour and aroma coming primarily from Galaxy and Kazbek hops. Finally, on a sadder note, the craft-as-heck* blue swingtop bottles are no more. Supplies have been exhausted, some ‘normal’ 330ml bottles will be acquired soon but in the short term the only bottles available are standard 500ml. How old fashioned, must remember not to brew brown twiggy beer to go in them… Dave Szwejkowski * OK, heck may not be exactly what Dave said.