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.

STEEL YOURSELF….SOMETHING’S BREWING….. RIDDLE TR’ALE 4.8% Number three of our top ten reasons we love Sheffield is homage to the city-region’s places of interest and what finer way than to celebrate the Botanical Gardens. We were going to name the beer Botanic’ale but there is a more intriguing link. Given the success of our Number Two, Ge’thi’sen Outdooerz, we thought why not do just that. So we’re encouraging folk to read up about the Riddle trail and soak up the gardens and beautiful conservatories before enjoying a pint in your local of our new  Riddle Tr’Ale: a mighty fine golden ale made from vienna malt and liberty hops. This should tingle on your taste buds with plenty of citrussy flavours.     The Botanical Gardens and the Riddle Trail (extract courtesy of SHU) When the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Urban Parks Programme was established in 1996, the Sheffield Town Trust, Sheffield City Council, University of Sheffield, Friends of the Botanical Gardens, and Sheffield Botanical Gardens Trust formed a partnership to bid for funds to restore the Gardens. A year later, the Gardens were awarded just over £5 million with 25% matched funding; the only Botanical Gardens in the country to undertake complete restoration. Included in the restoration of gardens and buildings were some established and popular features: the Bear Pit, part of the original Victorian gardens and a Grade II Listed Monument, and ‘Spirit of the Wood’, a statue by an unidentified, but accomplished sculptor, installed in the Rose Gardens in 1953. The imposing Crimea Monument by George Goldie and Henry Lane (1863), sited in the Gardens when it was moved from the city more than 40 years earlier, was replaced by a fountain in order to be faithful to the Gardens’ original layout. New to the Gardens is ‘The Riddle Trail’, initiated by Sheffield’s ‘Off the Shelf Festival of Writing and Reading’ in 1999 in collaboration with the Botanical Gardens. The trail consists of eight newly commissioned artworks bearing riddles written by the poet Berlie Doherty http://www.berliedoherty.com/poetry.html. Doherty was funded by Signposts, an arts organisation in Sheffield. The purpose of The Riddle Trail is to lead visitors around the Gardens following a sequence of riddles incorporated into artwork of various forms, media, and locations. The Sheffield Brewery Beer Club – book our next event: a weekender – Fri April 1^st and Sat 2^nd 5pm – 11pm.   So, we had a go at switching to the first Friday and what a success! Massive thanks goes out to Graham McDonald for organising, and Silverdale school staff for making it such a brilliant atmosphere. Big thanks to Tom and, retiring teacher, Jack, and the rest of the OverCommitments for playing a fantastic set. We’re promising more from those guys in the future. Peddlers Market was also on and by all accounts ‘twas a fab weekend’s festival and a huge promotion for all that’s going on in Neepsend. It’ll also be on again that weekend, yay! 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 THANK YOU AND WE LOOK FORWARD TO THE NEXT 10 YEARS OF CONTINUING TO BREW THE HALLMARK OF A PERFECT PINT!

 

BYE BYE, BRIMSTONE… HELLO, DOUBLE BRIMSTONE!

We say a fond farewell to an Abbeydale classic, but not before one last hurrah… Brimstone is a beer that’s been with us for over a decade. An American hopped take on the classic English bitter, it’s become renowned for its robust, well balanced flavour and of course the horny goat-like devil in a pentacle pump clip. It’s a much loved beer here at the brewery and one that our brewers always enjoy creating. However, there’s recently been a bit of a twist in Brimstone’s tale (or should that be tail?!). Many of you may be aware of the global hop crisis that’s going on at the moment. As a result, it’s becoming harder and harder to get our hands on certain hops. One of those most affected for us is Amarillo, the very backbone of our Brimstone brew. With such a distinctive character, we’ve had to have a major think about whether we want to allow our beloved Brimstone to quietly fade away as the hops diminish, or whether it’s best just to call it a day. Sadly, we’ve reached the difficult decision to lay this particular Beelzebub to rest. BUT! This isn’t a beast that’s going to die quietly, oh no! The first of our limited edition birthday beers is to be DOUBLE BRIMSTONE… a 7.8% American brown ale, with a mammoth malt grist, outrageous hop quantities and a special new yeast strain. We’re also thrilled to announce the winner of our competition to design the pump clip for Double Brimstone as Carl Flint. He’s managed to capture the spirit of our beloved beast and suitably soup it up. The “groovy red pentacle shades” really suit him, don’t ya think?! You can find out more about Carl and his work on his website, http://www.carlflint.com/. In further exciting news, and an absolute first for us here at Abbeydale, we’re going to be releasing a limited run of Double Brimstone in bottles! We’ve decided on 750ml bottles to make them perfect for sharing. Look out for them at select local retailers and our pubs, the Devonshire Cat and the Rising Sun, in the spring.