Category: Breweries

A quiet autumn and winter at Steel City, mainly due to Dave spending a big chunk of it in America (he may even get round to writing an article for Beer Matters…) and the far east. Available now in bottles is War Pigs, an imperial-strength version of Craven’d Ale oat milk stout. First collaborations of the new year formed a ‘brew sandwich’! On Friday Dave headed to The Dronfield Arms to mash in a kettle-sour with Edd at Hopjacker, then on Saturday to Raw to brew an ‘xtreme’ twist for both brewers, then on Sunday it was back to Dronfield to boil and ferment the sour… The Raw brew Abandon All Hop Ye Who Enter Here features no hops! Instead, bitterness and flavour are derived from yarrow, orange peel, lemongrass, nettle and camomile. Dark brown in colour and distinctly floral in flavour, this is like no Raw or Steel City beer you’ve ever tried. The Hopjacker brew End of Days is a variation on a Kentucky Common, itself an almost extinct beer style. The mash contained Chateau Biscuit malt and Flaked Maize, so far so traditional… However while traditionally Kentucky Commons were ‘slightly’ sour, End of Days was left to sour over the weekend with live yogurt, reaching a pre-boil acidity of pH 3.6 (IBUs are so 2012, it’s all about the pH now…). Bitterness was kept low as is traditional for the style but not the brewers! Finally a big (and untraditional!) flame-out charge of Simcoe, Mosaic and Cascade were added. Early tasting notes suggest a slightly toasty note from the Biscuit malt, huge hop flavour and a strong sour backbone. Hopefully a small batch of the brew will be secondary-fermented with Brettanomyces for a further twist. The next collaboration is away again at Hopcraft, and will be the third Insult to History for both brewers, possibly a black steam beer. Dave Szwejkowski

  Things have been quite hectic down in Wombwell over a very busy Festive period and there’s been little let up in the early part of 2016. January saw the return of our ever popular Winter Pale Ale a 4.5% pale golden ale with citrus and grapefruit aroma with a good bitterness.  This was complemented by the deep ruby KASHMIR  also 4.5%. A crisp, spicy ale with a malty taste and bitter fruit finish. As February approaches we will be busy brewing Drop Kick a 4% pale beer to celebrate the Rugby 6 Nations Tournament and ever hopeful that the England will produce a better performance than in last year’s Rugby World Cup!  Also in February Requiem is a rich malty premium bitter with predominately spicy, earthy overtones.  This one’s a Steve Bunting recipe and brew, but clearly creating fantastic beers isn’t quite exciting enough for Steve as the intrepid adventurer is off on an African Safari this February. It’ll be interesting to see what beer ideas he comes back with after this next trip. Steve in action with his new compact digital SLR he’s bought for the Safari Steve being away will give the opportunity for Bruce to get a few more brews in, along with a couple of the other lads, and who knows we may see the maestro himself – Mr Hughes getting his wellies back on to create a gyle or two. Acorn’s Brewery Tap – The Old No 7 in Barnsley closed its’ doors for a few days during January for the builders to come in and carry out some upgrading work to the facilities – in other words ‘New Loos for the New year ’. At the same time we took the opportunity to refresh some of the décor, but not too much, as some of our regulars didn’t want us to go and ‘spoil’ the old place by making too many changes. Finally back to the beer – We’ve been really pleased with the most recent series of single German hopped IPA’s with the Mandarina and Hallertau Blanc proving really popular and we’ve great expectations for the Polaris. All in all a really good start to 2016

Happy New Year! Well 2016 came around rather quickly, and hopefully you have been participating in #Tryanuary rather than Dry January, but regardless, February will give you plenty more opportunities to try new beers! More on those later… We would like to welcome our newest member of our sales team, Janie Hamilton, to Abbeydale and she is settling in very well! Those of you in the trade will get to know Janie well as she is going to be out and about on the road the majority of the time! If you fancy joining us and working for the brewery (as long as you are reading this before February 12th!), we are looking for a new brewer! Dave Kerr, who many of you may know, has moved on to Northern Monk in Leeds, and although sorry to see him go, we thank him for all his hard work, and wish him well for the future! All details regarding the job are available on our website (abbeydalebrewery.co.uk). Hopefully many of you have made the journey up to see the new and improved Rising Sun, with the extra floor space and brand new kitchen and toilets installed.  We look forward to seeing you up there soon! So as promised, back to the beer! San Jose is the newest offering in our Lost Treasure series, expect big bold hop flavours with plenty of citrus and tropical fruit. This bountiful pale beer weighs in at 4.3%. Mem in Black – another in our Signature series this time featuring our very own Jamie Memmott, who has fashioned this robust plum porter at 5.2% With plenty of real plums gone into the brew, expect deep rich fruit flavours with a nice dark malt backbone. “Look into my eyes, no not around the eyes…” – a return of possibly one of our most scary pump clips, Trance Sister is a cracking little session pale ale at only 3.8% but has plenty about itself with its trio of American hops. We are also releasing a three-way collaboration that we are very excited about! We have got together with Brewdog Sheffield and the Skull and Bones Boys Club (a Sheffield clothing company) to make a very exciting beer indeed! However, we are keeping things under wraps for now, but expect a mid Feb launch at Brewdog on keg, and also available on cask at other reputable pubs in and around Sheffield! We should be rustling up a new British hopped beer in our Albion series, plus a brand new Dr Morton’s beer called Alphabetti Forghetti with recipes being concocted as we speak! Until next month, cheers and beers Robin Baker

A new Sheffield beer is born. Being the CAMRA brewery liaison officer for Exit 33 Brewing I jumped at the chance when I was asked to help brew a brand new beer with them. I’ve home brewed before but never on a commercial scale. For those of you who don’t know Exit 33 Brewing started life in Sheffield in 2008 as the Brew Company. They recently moved to larger premises and rebranded and I was cordially invited along to witness the birth of a new seasonal beer, a porter called Pitch Black. The founder of Exit 33 Pete Roberts explained the idea behind the porter recipe ‘we wanted to brew a rich flavoursome dark beer for the cold dark nights ahead. We love hop forward pale ales but we also like dark malt bombs and we wanted this porter to have moderate strength, a medium body and high drinkability’ To do this they had selected specialist malts from Bamberg in Germany. With a base of English malt these specialty grains add to the complex malt profile. It will have none of the astringent roasted flavour associated with some porters and will be smooth and mellow but with a great combination of malt flavours. Our brew day started on a dark early morning mashing the grains with water into the mash tun. Soon the smell of steamy malt filled the cold brew house and after an hour the black wort was transferring into the copper ready to boil. I then had the task of digging the spent grains out of the mash tun ready for the farmer to collect for animal feed. I added Northern brewer hops to the boil to balance the porter with a soft bitterness and after a one-hour boil the wort was transferred to a fermenter and the yeast pitched. There’s a lot of hard work involved in brewing but Pete and Dean made the day fun and informative. I taste tested the dark wort and it was sweet and moorish so I can’t wait for the finished beer which will be on sale from the end of January. Andy Marsh Brewery Liaison Officer

It’s been a busy few months for us at Hopjacker, as well as perfecting our four core beers, we’ve started a run of specials. A 4.6% brown ale with fresh ginger, dubbed Snake Oil and a 6% black IPA with Sorachi Ace hops, brewed in honour of Lemmy from Motörhead and available in both cask and ecokeg being the first to be released. As I’m writing this we are in the process of mashing in for our first collaboration. We’re brewing with Steel City Brewery and revisiting a forgotten style, a Kentucky Common, though as you might expect our version will be somewhat more hoppy than would be historically accurate! You can find our beers in fine pubs around Sheffield and Chesterfield, and of course at Dronfield CAMRAs Winter Pub Of the Season, the Dronfield Arms! Edd

Steel yourself… something’s brewing at the Sheffield Brewery Company! This has been our catch-phrase from the start: it was ten  years ago this February, when Pete, Tim and Eddy, the founders of The Sheffield Brewery Company, met in the Gardeners Rest and hatched a plan to set up a micro-brewery in part of the historic Albyn Works in Neepsend. By June the company was formed and work well and truly underway to establish the brewery and get the first mash on. Test brews were released: First Brew, Second Brew, Third Brew and Fourth Brew and our original core range of Five Rivers, Crucible Best, Seven Hills and Blanco Blonde was developed.  As time moved on we added our delicious Sheffield Porter and Sheffield Stout as well as monthly specials Including the original Tramlines ale and more recently,  in conjunction with the castings giant, Forgemasters Ale. The Sheffield Brewery Co. opened for brewery tours in March 2007 and at the time it was one of only a handful of breweries in Sheffield. The ensuing decade, both in terms of the Sheffield city-region’s real cask and “craft” ale growth and those who passionately consume it, has been, to say the least, a real testament to the quality of ales produced in this region. Real ale has become a game-changer as the now 18-plus breweries in this region will attest. It’s not all been plain sailing! We’ve certainly been up and down all Seven Hills (and floods), but we’ve continued with our desire to brew real ales using traditional ingredients and fervently develop a  range of excellent quality real ales. All of our core range and a few specials have won  awards regionally and we’ve  been delighted with the feedback we’ve had from pub customers, landlords and the trade generally. It’s been a pretty fantastic ten years — thanks almost entirely to you, The Sheffield Brewery Co. faithful. As was always our desire, we set-up our own Beer Club and have held regular last Friday of the Month events since (next event is Jan 29^th) and we’ve plans to celebrate our 10th Anniversary in Summer. To kick off the celebrations we’re excited to be launching our new website (launch 1^st Feb) and re-designed pump clip branding: We’re also producing a new Seasonal and Special range called “Ten of the Best” to celebrate all matter of things bloody wonderful about this region. No. 1 will be an IPA “Being Philanthropicale”. Lookout for more in the series which we’ll be releasing at the end of each month and details will be on www.sheffieldbrewery.com. THANK YOU AND WE LOOK FORWARD TO THE NEXT 10 YEARS OF CONTINUING TO BREW THE HALLMARK OF A PERFECT PINT! Pete Rawlinson

In November we became one of the sponsors of Kendal Mountain Festival, a world class event that ‘sets the standard as an innovative, inclusive and creative celebration of everything outdoors’. We wanted to work with the festival as we felt they shared many of our values, striving for quality and fun whilst being inspired by the outdoors environment that we are blessed to work in. To celebrate the partnership we brewed KMF a 4.8% Pale Ale, brewed with big American hops that entices with Grapefruit and Mandarin aromas before exploding with tropical fruit flavour. The beer was a big hit at the festival on draft and in bottle. We have been donating an amount from the sale of each keg and bottle to the Kendal Mountain Festival charity funds, however in light of recent suffering facing people in the area due to the flooding we will now be doubling our donations from each keg and bottle sold direct from the brewery and from selected Booths stores from which it will soon be available.  We hope this donation goes a little way to helping people at this time in Kendal and the surrounding area.

When we launched our strawberry beer I Love You Will U Marry Me in 2015 there was always the possibility that someone might seize the opportunity and use the beer to really make that proposal. So we were delighted when Sinead O’Connor contacted us to say that her fiancé Ian Batterbee had done just that by proposing with a bottle of the beer on Christmas Day. Sinead says it was really appropriate to make the proposal with beer as the couple as beer lovers had met in a pub in Didsbury. The wedding – including a selection of great beers – is now being planned for 2017. The proposal took place at Marsden Waterfall in West Yorkshire on Christmas morning where the couple regularly walk their dog. “It wasn’t a surprise to walk there on the morning” says Sinead “but opening my final present and reading the label was a fantastic surprise”. I Love You Will U Marry Me was launched in June 2015. The beer was  brewed to support S1 Artspace’s ambitions to create a major new cultural venue at Park Hill for Sheffield, funds raised from the sale of the beer will go towards this development. The beer’s name originates from a marriage proposal when the words ‘I Love You Will U Marry Me’ were painted onto a Street Bridge at Park Hill, this urban romantic gesture has since become famous throughout the city. This is a fruit beer absolutely packed with fresh strawberries. It has been very carefully brewed so as to not overwhelm the palate with sweetness and create a balanced taste.

Firstly the team at Welbeck would like to wish all our supporters a very Happy New Year. We couldn’t continue if it wasn’t for those who do therefore we wish you all a prosperous and happy 2016. It’s already shaping up to be a busy one here at the brewery and there are plenty of plans afoot and treats in-store. We’re currently in the process of sampling and racking our second batch of Lady A, an abbey dubbel- style ale which is currently wood-cask maturing in the tunnels under Welbeck Abbey itself. It’s a fine libation full of dry wood tannin, rich abbey yeast and red fruits. Imagine a vastly ramped up, imperial strength Red Feather and you may be getting close. Some of you were lucky enough to get your hands on the first batch we released. Keep your eyes peeled on Twitter and Facebook for announcement of the release of the second batch. Our newest venture Portland House, based on Ecclesall Road in Sheffield has settled into its surrounds nicely and the pub is preparing to start promoting tasting evenings in the very near future. It’s a lovely place to sit and watch the world go by (with a tasty beverage in hand) so drop in and say hello if you find yourself in the area. Our January Specials are out now so look out for brewery favourite: Kaiser, a 4.1% lager-style pale brewed with German hops for an authentic herbal aroma and cereal malt tones. It’s crisp, dry and refreshing- just what you need to kick off a new year! Our other Monthly Special for January is Seven Sisters pale ale at 4.2%. It has a refreshing lemon barley citrus flavour, giving way to light bitterness. It was brewed to celebrate a medieval oak tree on the estate, which sprung seven trunks- known locally as the Seven Sisters. February specials are also planned and the hugely successful Savoy Hill (USA pale) and Firehouse Red (hoppy red rye) will be making a return. Finally we have a few staff announcements at the brewery. Some of you may be aware that Head Brewer, General Manager and (brewery) Mother Goose- Claire is expecting her first child. Claire is now on maternity leave for 6 months and we wish her and husband Tom well for the new arrival very soon. During this time please direct all enquiries to Hannah at the brewery who is Acting General Manager in Claire’s place. Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Assistant Brewer, Joe, as he moved on to an apprenticeship with a civil engineering firm in Sheffield. He will be missed however we wish Joe all the best in his new career. Some of you may now have met our new full-time Delivery Driver, Peter, who has settled into brewery life very well. Give him a wave if you see him on his rounds! Finally we welcome Tom Roe as Assistant Brewer. He is already enjoying learning to brew on a large scale after tinkering on his home brew kit. So that’s it for now folks, we would like to thank you all once more for your continued support throughout the last five years and wish you all well for the year ahead. Hannah Bolton

After a hectic first six months we are looking forward to an exciting 2016 here at Neepsend Brew Co. Since we started brewing in June we have produced fourteen different beers and are starting to settle on a core range of our 4.0% Blonde, 5.2% Stout, a 5.0% IPA with a changing selection of hops and a couple of pale and hoppy specials around 4.2-4.5%. We also brewed Hokkaido IPA – a 5.6% IPA dry hopped with Sorachi Ace – which has been well received and there are plans for some further stronger and more experimental brews. We were delighted and very flattered to be named as ‘brewery of the year’ for 2015 by local bloggers, the Two Beer Geeks. We are a work in progress but are very happy with the start we’ve made and have got big plans for 2016. Watch out for a Neepsend presence at Sheffield Food Festival in May as part of the Sheffield Breweries Cooperative and and a brewery showcase at the Sheaf View during Sheffield Beer Week in March.