Category: Breweries

Firstly, as you may have already heard, after over 8 years of loyal service and hard work, Rob & Julie are set to retire from The Rising Sun. We would like to place on record our thanks and appreciation for all their hard work and dedication to make the pub and SunFest what they are today.  By the time you read this, we should have concluded the interview process and be ready to welcome the new landlord(s), expect an announcement in next months edition.  Although a formal leaving date has yet to be set, if you would like to say farewell and maybe raise a (Welsh) glass in their name, we advise you to do so by the end of March! In terms of beer this month, we have a cornucopia of lovely stuff! First up is the latest in our British Hops Albion series, called Chaucer featuring the lovely Bramling Cross (often labelled as Bramling X).  This will be a 4.1% golden ale with plenty of Bramling Cross shovelled in to the brew, and also a subtle dry hopping with the same hops. Expect a nice level of bitterness with a spicy blackcurrant flavour. The return of an old favourite in Genesis is second out the brewhouse this month, coming in at 3.9% this pale session beer has plenty of New Zealand hops giving a herb and floral aroma coupled with distinctive lychee flavours leading to a crisp bitter finish. In preparation for Easter we have Dr Morton’s Rabbit Punch, golden in colour with a good biscuit malt base with some nice European hops for a balanced bitter finish. To complete the Easter celebrations, we bring back our Chocolate Stout which has sumptuous dark chocolate, raisin and cherry flavours with a long rich cocoa finish, just in case you can’t get enough chocolate over the next few weeks! We are also planning to launch a series of beers this year called our Signature range, which will feature recipes concocted by our lovely staff, with beers they are so proud of they are happy for them to carry their signature! We may try and sneak one out this month, but whose will it be? You will just have to wait and see!

March sees the start of a few exiting months ahead for the brewery. Our flagship beer, Barnsley Bitter is representing the North East region in the SIBA national finals to held at BeerX. This event will once again be held at Sheffield Ice 18th-21st March and pitches our Barnsley Bitter with the other regional winners throughout the UK. Also one to look out for in the finals is Barnsley’s Geeves Brewery with their Clear Cut there must be something good in the water around these parts! Expansion plans are motoring ahead with 2 new 25 barrel conditioning tanks and a cold-room extension ordered and also another major expansion planned for July, details to follow in the near future. We welcome 2 new members of staff to Acorn towers, Yvonne Underwood joins us in an administration role and Ian Darvill who is a very accomplished home brewer joins the production team. Our seasonal beer for March is the aptly named Madness a 4.5% pale ale brewed with sack loads of hops!

We’re well into 2015 now and the year is already taking shape. Our first few specials have been a hit, especially Seven Sisters at 4.2% ABV which had a lovely sweet lemon barley flavour. For February we have one new special, one repeat appearance from last year and of course, one old favourite. Savoy Hill, the main service entrance for the Welbeck Abbey, was named so because it once resembled the stunning entrance to the grand Savoy Hotel in London. Now it’s unfortunately lost many of the original glasswork and tiling but the name remains. This beer should be no less spectacular than the entrance, being filled with the mouth-wateringly fresh aromas of pear, orange and passion fruit. This is a 4.2% beer however, making it a pleasantly light indulgence. Cathedral Beeches is repeated special from last year. Coming in at 3.7% this traditional bitter is full of heady herbal aromas from British Phoenix hops, making it surprisingly delicious and certainly more interesting than many of its counterparts. The name stems from an area of woodland with towering Beech trees in which young lovers at Welbeck used to come and carve their names. Kaiser makes an appearance in February as our next Favourite at Welbeck. Our 4.1% Lager style pale ale is brewed using lager ingredients but in the British way to get the most from these traditional ingredients. If you miss it this month then don’t panic, it’ll be back again in May. Aside from the exciting news that we are brewing three specials per month now, we have finally finished the building project and are open for brewery tours again! The tours are booked as private events so if you would like to organise a visit or even a party at the brewery and we would be happy to help. We’ll be taking part in Sheffield Science Week 2015 as we did in 2014. There will be around 30 places available for members of the public to come to Welbeck for a brewery tour, practical brewing experiments, and a Q&A session with brewers and academics. This will be on Thursday 19^th and places for this event and others can be booked here: http://www.scienceweeksy.org.uk/events/offline Finally, we are very pleased to have been shortlisted as Company of the Year in the North Notts Business Awards 2015! The final is to be held on Thursday 2^nd April, so please keep your fingers crossed for us and we’ll let you know how we do.

Well, we’ve made it into 2015 and new beer keeps rolling out. Firstly, Ella IPA 5.0% is the next in our ever popular single hopped IPA series using the Australian hop Ella, with strong apricot, cedar and peach characteristics. Also new for 2015 is our series of beers named after different groups of numbers. First out and on bars as this month’s Beer Matters goes to press is Natural, a small IPA packed full of American hops. At 3.5% it’s a perfect session beer for the New Year. Second up will be Integer 4%. Using one of our favourite hops, Citra, this is sure to be packed full of intense citrus and fruit hop flavours. If this isn’t enough excitement for some of you then we must not forget to mention to look out for our dry hopped IPA, made especially to celebrate The Three Tuns’ Sausage Fest.  This event takes place Valentines weekend with lots of sausage based fun. After all, what’s more romantic than a plate of bangers and mash with a pint of IPA to wash it down? February 11^th sees the Closed Shop celebrate its 2^nd Birthday under the ownership of Reet Ale Pubs. So, we have had assistant manager Christie down at the brewery as free labour, allowing us to spend more time sitting and drinking Earl Grey… The resulting beer is Red Rye Centennial 6.0%; it sees us using rye malt for the first time accompanied with copious amounts of Centennial hops. Be sure to try a special dry hopped version at the Closed Shop on the 11^th Febuary as well as looking out for it throughout the various other great hostelries of Sheffield.

Having established their core range of three beers, a programme of interesting one off beers under the banner of ‘Intrepid Journeys’ has commenced. Beers in this range will be interpretations of various beer styles from around the world often brewed in small batches, starting off with a Belgian Saison.

So Journey number 1 is a short hop over the channel into Belgium which is home to some fantastic beer, typically associated with high gravity beers that you might sip or have just one of. The Saison is a departure from the Belgian norm in that it is the easy drinking sibling of the Tripel. A concern given the time of year is being able to maintain the temperature in the fermentation vessel. Belgian yeast ferments fairly warm and the brewery is about 5 degrees at this time of year which means the beer may stall. A difference from a true Saison this beer will be casked rather than bottled and served through a pump meaning we can’t carbonate the beer as highly as a Saison would normally be.

Steel City’s first brew of the year is an away collaboration… Dave realised that he’d somehow managed to not do a single collaboration with Raw in 2014, so put this right with a visit to brew Ceremony of Opposites (name inspired by the Samael album, obviously…), an oxymoronic Black IPA with the tropical-flavoured Galaxy and Citra hops supplemented by mango and passion fruit. The second brew was just a day later at ‘home’ (Toolmakers), this time a stout. Diabolis Interium, meaning, as any scholar of Latin or fan of Dark Funeral will know, ‘Devil Within’, is the latest instalment in the Black Metal series. It’s a dry stout made with oats, dark muscovado sugar for a rummy molasses flavour, chocolate malt and roasted barley, with a big flame-out charge of Bramling Cross hops. A kegged (but still real!) version with honey will be available at the Shakespeare and the Craven Arms in Birmingham, and is called Mead From Hell (well, it has been a few months since Dave brewed an Alestorm-related beer…). The Shakey will also be getting a version with added rum. The minikit also made an appearance, for an exclusive 9-gallon brew of Funeral in Carpathia, an Imperial Stout named after a Cradle of Filth track (are you spotting a theme here…). Final ABV is not yet known, but Dave expects to be paying ‘Tramp Tax’ on this one! A pin of it will appear at the Shakespeare, while the rest will go in bottles. Recently we’ve seen quite a few cases of breweries taking legal action against other brewers over similar names – e.g. Brewsters taking on Brew Star, Camden taking on just about everybody – so when Dave saw there’s now a Black Metal brewery in Edinburgh there was only one thing to do – a collaboration! Nothing confirmed yet, but Steel City/Black Metal collabs will definitely happen this year. More collaborations are lined up for March – a long overdue away collab at not-so-silent Steel City partner Gazza’s Hopcraft brewery in Wales, then later the same weekend away to Arbor to brew a sour beer, hopefully with different fruit versions.

Following another record breaking December the brewery is looking forward to a busy start to 2015. Hop contracts have been signed and delivery of the hops for the first half of the year have arrived. Please check our website for regular updated of new and old beers. Seasonal beers for February are; White Oak 4.8% – Pale and aromatic bitter with a citrus fruit aroma and hints of tangerine from the Crystal Hops. Kohatu IPA 5% – Rich golden in colour,this New Zealand hop variety has bags of tropical fruit, also plenty of lime and pineapple notes. Cheers, Dave Hughes