Category: Breweries

Neepsend Brewery have launched their first Gluten Free beer as a trial. The beer involved is Sicla, a Citra hopped pale ale. It appeared on the bar at the Wellington – their tap, along with other pubs including the Sheaf View over Christmas. The brewery also celebrates their 10th birthday this year!

Bradfield Brewery‘s first seasonal cask beer for 2025 is Farmers Mild, an easy drinking 3.4% ABV ale with a well rounded malty body and fruity hop finish. Into February and making its annual outing ready for Valentines day is Farmers Blushed, a light and fruity 4% ABV ale that is blushed with strawberries to give a sweet, refreshing finish.

True North Brew Co has acquired Abbeydale Picture House, where they intend to make an investment in restoring the old picture house building as well as taking over the Picture House Social bar in the basement.

Chantry Brewery, of Parkgate in Rotherham, have brewed a special beer in collaboration with the Rotherham Hospice, which is the chosen charity for the Great British Beer Festival Winter this year, where Chantry are hosting a brewery bar showcasing their full range. Meanwhile at their brewery tap and at the Cutlers Arms they already have a programme of live music gigs lined up for the months ahead.

Heist Brew Co. haven’t brewed since the ownership changed with a new company set up, which is still going through the red tape involved with a new brewing licence! Until that is resolved the tap room is selling a wide range of guest beers.

Little Mesters Brewing has retired the Stan beer brand, which commemorates Sheffield’s last Little Mester knifemaker, Stan Shaw, who passed away in February 2021, following a ruling by the Portman Group that the brand promoted anti-social behavior and knife crime. Portman Group is set up to self regulate the alcohol industry and is funded by the big producers.

Intrepid Brewing Company have been experimenting with barrel aged beers. Due for release is 30 month rum barrel aged imperial Stanage Stout whilst the current project involves a continental pale ale fermented with New England and Belgian yeast, perry lees and an old barrel.

Dead Parrot beers recently spotted on the bar at Perch, their tap, include Jet (Stout) and Vitriol (Bitter).

During the freezing temperatures of early January, the Loxley Brewery beer at the Wisewood Inn that proved the flavour of the day was their Black Dog stout.

Triple Point Brewing have launched a new cask pale ale – Kramos. It’s 4.4% ABV and dry hopped with liquid hop extract for extra juicy and tropical flavours. The hops used are Krush, Citra and Mosaic bringing Mango, Nectarine and lychee character to the beer. This one is gluten free but not vegan.

Thornbridge Brewery celebrates 20 years of brewing in 2025

2025 marks the 20th anniversary of Thornbridge Brewery, and they couldn’t be more grateful to everyone who has supported them along the way. Their journey began in the small Stonemasons Workshop at Thornbridge Hall, and has grown into the state-of-the-art Riverside Brewery in Bakewell. Today, they produce 9 million pints of beer a year and annually welcome over 100,000 visitors to the Taproom.

Over the years, they have brewed hundreds of beers, from crisp lagers to complex barrel-aged sours, even being able to utilise their own Burton Union set, in doing all this they have amassed over 400 awards.

To commemorate 20 years, Thornbridge have created a special limited-edition logo that will be found on glassware, t-shirts, beer mats, and seasonal beers throughout 2025. As part of the 20th anniversary celebrations, they will be reviving several beloved classics. These will be available through Thornbridge Beer Club or as part of their Year of Beer programme for pubs and bars. They are thrilled to spend 2025 celebrating this incredible achievement and sharing it with everyone who has supported them over the years.

The brewery’s flagship beer, Jaipur IPA, will celebrate it’s 20th anniversary on 7 June 2025, among the early successes was an award win at Sheffield’s Steel City Beer & Cider Festival and for a few years Thornbridge Hall hosted a beer of the festival awards ceremony.

Our big news for February is that we should, fingers crossed, be having two big and shiny new tanks installed! This will increase our production and packaging capabilities and hopefully give us even more flexibility in terms of the beers we’re able to make, but it does mean that our plan for releases this month is just a little up in the air at the time of writing. So please do forgive us if there’s something here that ends up being not quite as correct as we’d like!  

We’re also incredibly excited to be part of Winter GBBF this year, and will have a bar there for the duration of the festival (12^th-15^th February at Magna), as well as getting involved with the Learning & Discovery Bar on the Saturday – so please pop along and join us for a beer if you’re there! 

Talking of beer, here’s a flavour of what we’ve got coming up. Sheffield Rocks (4.1%) and Sheffield Stout (4.5%) are both returning favourites paying homage to the beer heritage of our fantastic city and starting to get us ready for Sheffield Beer Week. And we’ve teamed up with our very own pub, The Rising Sun, to create Drop By Your Local – a classic 4.2% pale ale hopped with Willamette, Citra and Centennial. Designed to be enjoyed in good company and celebrate all our wonderful local pubs.

Dr Morton’s Safety Beer (4.1%) featuring the Aussie combo of Galaxy & Vic Secret hops is always a crowd-pleaser of a pale ale, with a tropical melange of passionfruit, mango and pineapple on the palate. And also taking inspiration from Down Under, we have Fremantle (5.0%) on the way, hopped with Enigma, Cascade and Chinook. Quaffable and thirst-quenching with a crisp, refreshing bitterness. 

Laura

Bradfield Brewery have launched a new website which includes an online shop with a nationwide courier option available as well as local deliveries made by brewery staff.

New from Chantry Brewery on cask is National Hopster Service, a 4.5% ABV pale ale. Looking ahead we can expect their usual Christmas beers with a limited run available in can as well as cask. Meanwhile at the brewery the attached live music venue & tap has a busy programme of gigs, this is a short walk from Parkgate tram terminus.

Brampton Brewery in Chesterfield have released the dates for their 2025 brewery tour events. These take place once a month on a Friday evening and need to be booked in advance.

Fuggle Bunny Brew House have a bonus tap session at the brewery on Saturday 30 November. The bar will be open 2-9pm with live music at 5pm. Also available will be pie & peas.

New from Neepsend Brewery is Cherokee, a 5% ABV American red ale.

Recent brews at Triple Point Brewing include Luxe (chocolate and vanilla porter, 7.6% ABV), Luxe salted caramel edition (as Luxe but with the added ingredients, as you might guess!), Broadway (Mosaic IPA, 6.2% ABV) and Morello (tart cherry ale, 5.2% ABV).

Little Mesters Brewing are gearing up for Christmas putting beer in cans, which are available to buy from their bar on Woodseats as well as shops such as Mitchells Wine (which is located next door to the brewery at Meadowhead!) A new beer (or rather a reworked old beer) is Juicy Content 2.0 which has now become a NEIPA, promising juicy and fruity flavours! They have also been canning their Original Pale and Original Bitter.

Also gearing up for Christmas is Little Critters Brewing Company who have brewed three Christmas specials – a blonde, a clementine pale and a gingerbread porter.

Likewise, as you’d expect, Emmanuales are canning beers for Christmas. With it being colder, darker winter months Nick has gone for a couple of heavy hitters – England’s Green and Pleasant Land is a 6.1% British hopped juicy IPA while Ale Mary is a 10% ABV spiced barley wine.

A local brewery that has remained off the radar for us is Contour Brewing, a nano-brewery based in Grindleford. Their Grindleford Pale Ale (4.5% ABV) made an appearance on the keg taps at the Tunnel Tap micropub in Totley back in October.

Blue Bee Brewery have a few ongoing series of pale hoppy beers that use the same basic recipe but with different hop varieties, spotted recently on the bar at the Kelham Island Tavern was their Nectaron Simcoe Pale (5% ABV).

The beer range from Dead Parrot on the bar at Perch has most recently included Jet (stout), Vitriol (bitter) and Arid (blonde) among others.

The Brewery of St Mars of the Desert have released a new beer – Red Planet. It is brewed with a blend of caramel and Munich malts along with Citra and Simcoe hops. This 5.4% ABV ale is suitable for the autumn and in terms of style sits somewhere between a red IPA and an American brown ale. It launched at their tap room mid November and is also available in cans.

Ho ho how is it coming up to the end of the year already?! Tis the season and we have a tasty selection of beers perfect for spending a chilly evening in a cosy pub. First up is Glugg, a 4.2% Belma and Cashmere hopped pale ale from our “mythical creatures” series. This one is inspired by the Yule Lads of Iceland, but Gluggagaegir was a bit too much of a challenge to explain on the pump clip, and that’s before we’ve enjoyed a pint of it! Delicate melon flavours meet a spicy, earthy character.

Winter (4.2%) is coming, an Ekuanot single hopped pale which promises an aromatic fruitiness and flavours of citrus and berries, plus a delicate herbal note in the finish

And rounding off our festive releases is Doctor Morton’s Christmas Hamster (4.1%). Citra and Cascade hops combine with Munich malt for a tasty caramel character alongside notes of lemongrass. Sweet, spicy and smooth with a medium but fresh bitterness. 

In keeping with the frosty feel of the season, we’ve got a couple of new beers coming up making use of new and exciting sub-zero, supercritical hop extraction techniques. First up, Cryo Deception (4.8%) – a special limited release of our much-loved New Zealand pale. Nelson Sauvin hops have been added in whole cone, T90 and Cryo form, for a lusciously aromatic and flavourful beer that’s bursting with notes of white grape, elderflower and gooseberry. Light and refreshing with a balanced bitterness in the finish. We’ve also got Polarnaut (4.7%), an experimental pale ale which features the cool combination of Citra and Sabro, in the vibrantly named Hyperboost and Dynaboost form. Expect a soft and refreshingly juicy beer with a blast of hop character giving notes of pith, pine and a hint of tropical coconut.

Heralding the new year, as is our tradition, we’ll have Doctor Morton’s Duck Baffler back (4.1%), a pale ale single hopped with Citra which is always incredibly popular. January also brings us an English hopped Through the Hopback special, featuring Ernest hops. This one will be 3.9% and holding flavours of ripe nectarines and apricots.

Have a good one!   

Bradfield Brewery still have some stock of their limited edition barrel aged beers in bottles. There are a choice of two – Highland Pale Ale (8.1% ABV) and Belted Galloway Stout (8.4% ABV). Meanwhile on cask the brewery is gearing up for the annual launch of Belgian Blue, the fruit flavoured Christmas beer!

Some interesting beers from local brewers recently at our Steel City Beer & Cider festival held at Kelham Island Museum. Blue Bee had an oak aged edition of their Park Hill Porter along with a Superdelic Nelson Pale Ale where the hop pairing gave a distinctive grapefruit and resinous flavour despite being a sessionable 3.4% ABV. Dead Parrot supplied “Twilight”, a barrel aged Belgian style Dubbel brewed for the Belgian Beer festival held at their Perch bar. Drone Valley brewery sent a special edition of their Station Porter which had the addition of roast Robusta coffee beans. Duality, a new brewery based in Todwick, had two beers at the festival – “Imposter Syndrome” a New England IPA and “The Usual” a simple 5% ABV Mosaic hopped pale ale. Emmanuales had two beers at the festival – Noah’s Dark Belgian Ale and Solomon’s Gold. A new beer from Fuggle Bunny Brew House was Mystic Makrut, a pale ale with bursts of Papeda and aromas from Asia. From Intrepid was Mitis Dark Mild (Hazelnut edition) and Solskin Hop & Grut Ale. Little Critters had a Head Banger hazy session IPA and Loxley supplied quite a varied range including Halliday best bitter and Palores hazy dry hopped pale ale. Neepsend was another brewery with a varied range including Hedylogos, a decadent double chocolate stout and Cherokee American Red Ale. Of interest from Triple Point was Zephyr, A whirlpool-hopped pale ale that is light, fruity, and full of character.

Stancill have brewed their annual bonfire night beer – Treason – A spiced Yorkshire parkin porter with a toasty, roasty flavour. Added ginger gives a spark of warmth.

Sheffield & District CAMRA branch celebrates its 50th birthday this year – the Golden anniversary – and one of the few long running Sheffield beers still available is Stones Bitter, which for a while had a strap line of “Sheffield Gold”. To mark the occasion True North Brewery provided a special dry hopped edition for the Steel City Beer & Cider Festival (the 48th due to having two years off for Covid). The beer was brewed using Challenger hops and double dry hopped with Goldings, giving floral, spicy, earthy, lemon, and thyme overtones, with a salty, moreish, and zesty finish.

Abbeydale Brewery Ltd becomes 100% employee owned

Sheffield based Abbeydale Brewery Ltd is delighted to announce that it has become an Employee Ownership Trust, strengthening the commitment to its talented team, safeguarding its long-standing values and securing the legacy of the business. This change of ownership covers the whole business, encompassing the brewery itself and their pub, The Rising Sun in Nether Green. Both the brewery and pub are now 100% employee owned, with a company name chosen by the new employee owners of Sheffield Beerworks EOT Ltd. 

Since its foundation in 1996, Abbeydale Brewery have always utilised a people-focused ethos, growing organically over the past three decades and being open to learning from the team.

The business, which employs over 50 staff (split between the brewery itself and their pub, The Rising Sun in Fulwood), has always been firmly rooted within the community. It benefits from an engaged and committed workforce, all of whom reside within the local area.

Employee ownership will ensure that the business can continue to drive forwards with the values of independence, community and teamwork which it holds as key – overall retaining, building upon, and further developing the principles held for the past 28 years. Selling owner Sue Morton says “as well as trying to grow the business safely and organically, we have always tried to maintain an inclusive and supportive culture with the people who work with and for us. The future of the business is important to us, and we have always said we would not sell out to the ‘big boys’. We can think of no better option to secure the legacy of Abbeydale Brewery than to trust our team with the business they have helped us to build, together – we’re looking forward to seeing the exciting new developments they will bring forward”.

A limited-edition beer will be released to commemorate the occasion. With a recipe that was democratically chosen by the team, “Trust” will be a sessionable pale ale, intended to capture the essence of the beers that have enabled the business to reach this milestone. It will be available in cask, keg and can, and will launch at the Rising Sun on Monday 14^th October, and will also be on the bar at the Steel City Beer Festival at Kelham Island Museum from Wednesday 16^th October. 

Brewery founders Pat and Sue Morton will continue to be involved with Abbeydale Brewery – whilst they will step back from the day-to-day running of the business, their positions on the Board of Directors will remain, and they will continue to play an advisory role in the management of the business. 

The new Board of Trustees will be comprised of Jon Conroy who will be the independent chair, Pat Morton (selling owner), Dan Baxter (Co-Managing Director of Abbeydale Brewery Ltd and Abbeydale Inns T/A The Rising Sun), and two employee representatives – Finlay MacDonald who is a bartender at the Rising Sun and brewer Christie McIntosh representing the manufacturing side of the business. Dan says “I could not be more proud of our team and everything we have achieved together over the years. We are a humble bunch, mentored by Pat and Sue, and have a vast skill set amongst our staff at both the brewery and the Rising Sun. The future for the business is very exciting! The support of our customers and our community is paramount as it always has been. So a massive thank you for enjoying our beer. We will continue to do what we do best”. 

Abbeydale Brewery join a growing movement of EOTs that also includes companies such as Aardman Animations, cosmetics supplies Lush, and fellow Sheffield based Gripple and Swann Morton.

Next from our Mythical Creatures inspired series we have Hydra, a 3.9% pale ale single hopped with Elani. Vibrant and tropical, with aromas of guava and lime alongside a delicious peachy character and a zesty zing in the finish.

The light vs dark duo of Archangel and Dark Angel make a return – both 4.5% and hopped with Simcoe and Vic Secret, the beers partner each other perfectly. In the pale version, expect a bright tropical character and a piney, fresh finish. In the stout, the hops meld with the rich malt backbone for tasty fruitcake flavours and a long-lasting bitter finish.

Through the Hopback – Superdelic (4.1%) is a delicious pale ale featuring an exciting and unique new hop! Fruit forward in flavour with notes of red berries and citrussy notes, paired with a sweet candy character.

And our 2024 vintage of Old Ale is on the way too – rich, mellow and well balanced, this release is a blend of two years of craftsmanship. Flavours of toffee, fruitcake and raisins meet a light wood character and a subtle spiciness from UK grown Fuggles and Olicana hops. Smooth and sensuous with a warm, lingering finish. 8.0% ABV, designed to be savoured. 

Thornbridge have become one of the latest members of the Zero Carbon Forum, a non-profit organisation, empowering members to reach sustainability targets with more speed, efficiency, and profit as a united effort.

As part of Thornbridge’s commitment to social responsibility they are striving to making their operations more sustainable by assisting with measuring their carbon footprint, addressing their emissions and environmental and social governance as a matter of priority.

Zero Carbon Forum stated ‘At Zero Carbon Forum, we’re working with over a third of the UK’s hospitality and brewing sector to drive the changes we need to ensure our restaurants, bars and pubs can be enjoyed for generations to come.’

Jim Harrison, Co-Founder and Chairman of Thornbridge, explained ‘Our journey to improve the environmental impacts of our beer is a key part of our business for the future and we are proud to be a new member of the Zero Carbon Forum to work with businesses embracing the same ideals.’

The Forum has provided a space for Thornbridge to work with like-minded businesses in sharing knowledge and new ways of working. They are excited to become an integral part of the Forum in the future.

Sheffield’s Abbeydale Brewery are celebrating this week, after their Lead Brewer, Jim Rangeley, was named Brewer of the Year at the 2024 Brewers Choice Awards.

Jim was presented with the prestigious award at a London ceremony earlier this week, where he and the team celebrated alongside hundreds of their brewing industry peers at the annual industry event. Jim, 35, who hails from Sheffield and this year celebrates a decade of working in the beer industry, heads up Abbeydale’s small batch, mixed fermentation “Funk Dungeon” project, alongside being a valued part of the brewteam.

Jim says “I’m privileged to have a job I truly enjoy, working as part of a brilliant team for a company that puts its trust in me. To have even been shortlisted was incredibly humbling and it’s a true honour to have won.” 

Judged by a panel of industry experts, this accolade recognises Jim’s talent and passion, as well as his strong sense of values and commitment to progress within the wider industry.  Beer writer and judge Melissa Cole said “What Jim has achieved at Abbeydale is nothing short of excellent. From the Funk Dungeon to churning out great core ranges and being a decent human at the same time, this award is well-deserved.” 

Tim Sheahan, editor of The Brewers Journal and organiser of the awards, added: “The level of competition for the ‘Brewer of The Year’ category is always incredibly high and in 2024 this was no different. But the judging panel at The Brewers Choice Awards recognised not only Jim’s ability to produce a wealth of different styles with unerring ease but his commitment to the industry, too.” 

In addition, Abbeydale Brewery were also shortlisted in the Branding of the Year category for their cask beer focused Travel Poster series, the artwork for which is created by designer James Murphy, who has been working with Abbeydale Brewery since 2016. James described making the top three in this hotly contested category as “fantastic”, adding that the unique branding for this range is intended to invoke an emotional connection between the beer, the place, and ultimately the drinker. 

Abbeydale Brewery, Sheffield’s longest established brewery, are well known for producing a huge range of beers (in particular their flagship pale ale, Moonshine), blending innovation with heritage and reflecting these values across their beers.