Category: Festivals

This year at our Steel City Beer & Cider Festival we’ll be hosting the CAMRA Champion Beer of Sheffield competition with all the breweries in Sheffield & District invited to enter a cask beer. The winner will be chosen through a blind tasting process with panels of judges, including a number from the pub industry, tasting and rating all the beers entered. There are currently 22 brewing companies producing real ale in Sheffield, plus Intrepid out in the Peak District near Bradwell. The judging will take place on the first day of the festival, commencing during the Wednesday trade preview (we open to the public at 5pm but those in the pub and beer business are invited to apply in advance for guest list places to get in a little earlier) and we will announce the winning brewery at the festival early on Wednesday evening. If you aren’t there to hear the results on stage but want to try the award winning beer, look out for posters around the festival with details of the winner and which bar you can find it on (whilst stocks last!). As well as Champion Beer of Sheffield, we will be running a Visitors’ Choice award. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday sessions you will be given a voting slip with your festival glass when you enter the festival, simply note your top three beers and ciders you enjoyed at the festival to vote for them. You can also put your email address on there to be entered into a prize draw to win some bottled beers. We will present an award to the beer and cider that gets the most votes from visitors with the results announced at the festival on Saturday afternoon. Andy Cullen

By the time this magazine hits the pubs, our annual Steel City Beer & Cider Festival will be less than six weeks away, and we are on the lookout for more volunteers to help make the festival even better than before. If you have a day or two (or more, or just half a day even) you could spare between 8-14 October and fancy the idea of being part of our team, please get in touch. Staffing forms are now up on our website: sheffield.camra.org.uk/festival. If you can’t or don’t want to apply online you can also contact the staffing officer, Malcolm Dixon, on the official staffing telephone number (07923 416865) or at his home address (27 Longford Drive, Sheffield, S17 4LN). He can then send you a paper form to fill in. On the form you need to fill in your details and the hours you wish to work. Our staffing officer will then register you and allocate you a job and reserve you a free staff t-shirt (note only a limited stock of t-shirts have been provided by our sponsors so these are first come first served). There are a variety of roles available depending on your experience and availability, and all volunteers receive a free entry and free beer tokens as well as their t-shirt. Of course, the biggest reward is the satisfaction of being part of an enthusiastic team that makes the festival such a highlight of the Sheffield calendar! The most obvious roles include serving beer and cider at the bar but we also need staff at the entrance dealing with admissions, glasses, programmes and customer service; staff on the various stalls including merchandise, membership, beer tokens and games; staff in the office for various admin duties and of course members of the cellar team looking after the beer behind the scenes! We also really need volunteers to help on the site team setting everything up in the days before we open and taking everything down on the Sunday – we move in to an empty site on the Monday and build all the bars etc and have to leave an empty site with everything back in storage on the Sunday! We are always especially short of helpers taking down and packing away on the Sunday – we do close a little earlier on Saturday where some of the take-down jobs will begin before the staff social, but there will still be plenty to do on Sunday including van runs to our storage location. There’s no beer to be drunk but we do provide some refreshments, for example last year there were bacon sandwiches and coffee. Working a beer festival is generally enjoyed by all – some roles can be hard work, of course, but it’s also fun and if you have a passion for good beer or cider then a successful event makes it all worthwhile!

Four limited edition sets of 12 mint-condition beer mats advertising the 44th annual Steel City Beer Festival (SCBF44) will be auctioned on eBay. On one side of each mat is the SCBF44 logo, with the reverse printed for the sponsor. The logo side, when arranged, produces a large image of the festival poster (see below). In total there are about 100,000 beermats available. Over the next few months, these will be distributed over Sheffield, the surrounding area and wider afield. However, a full set is very unlikely to be seen in one place at any one time! Thanks to our sponsors:  Abbeydale, Acorn, Blue Bee, Bradfield, Little Critters, Lost Industry, Loxley, O’Hara’s Rum, Sentinel, Sheffield, Wetherspoon (Bankers Draft) and True North. All profits from these eBay sales will go the official SCBF 2018 Charity, Roundabout – Sheffield’s youth homeless charity providing shelter, support and life skills to young people aged 16-24 who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. (http://www.roundabouthomeless.org/) The festival itself will be held at Kelham Island Industrial Museum from 10-13 October 2018. Dave Pickersgill

Beer mat collectors take note – the Steel City 44 festival beer mats have now been released and should soon start appearing in your local pubs and bars. Like last year, the mats will feature a sponsor’s logo on one side and a section of the official festival poster on the reverse. To get the full poster, you’ll have to find the full set but you’re very unlikely to ever find all of them in the same place so you will have to do some searching! We would like to say thank you to the 12 sponsors who have kindly agreed to sponsor a beer mat:

• Abbeydale
• Acorn
• Blue Bee
• Bradfield
• JD Wetherspoon
• Little Critters
• Lost Industry
• Loxley Brewery
• O’Hara’s Rum
• Sentinel Brewery
• Sheffield Brewery
• True North

The mats are currently being distributed around the city but please note that Wetherspoon’s mats will only be available in their own pubs. There will also be some sets reserved for charity auctions as there have been in previous years. More details about these will become available in the coming weeks.

Cask sponsorship is now available for the 44^th Steel City Beer and Cider Festival, taking place at the Kelham Island Museum from 10-13 October 2018. Why not show your support for this fantastic local event while promoting your name to more than 6,000 visitors by sponsoring a cask? For only £60+VAT per cask, sponsors will receive an A4 poster on the cask of their choice (subject to availability), two free tickets to the festival (any session except Friday evening) including a free glass and two free pints, plus mentions in the festival programme, on the website and on sponsors’ posters around the venue. To book your sponsorship, or for more information, please contact sponsorship@sheffield.camra.org.uk and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

The countdown to the annual Steel City Beer and Cider Festival is getting ever closer, with the final few arrangements now being made. Posters, leaflets and beer mats are now making their way into the pubs of Sheffield and beyond, the festival website has gone live and you can now add your name to the Facebook event. Our beer and cider orderers are starting to get their wishlists together, and as always there’s sure to be a great selection. We will have almost 250 real ales and around 50 ciders across the upper hall and the marquee, plus a range of KeyKeg craft beers downstairs. We will also be offering hot drinks for the first time from a local coffee van after listening to feedback from visitors. On the food front, we’ve changed things up a bit so keep an eye out for more updates nearer the time, but there will still be a range of hot and cold food to enjoy. As always, there will also be a great selection of live music and other entertainment on offer during the festival, including old favourites such as Highway Child and the Loxley Silver Band. The Kelham Island Rapper will be performing their sword dancing on Saturday afternoon – not to be missed! Look out for the traditional pub games in the marquee too. Of course, none of this could be possible without the volunteers who give up their time to do everything at the festival from serving drinks to selling tokens and washing glasses. If you’re interested in helping out, keep an eye out on our website and social media pages, which should have details of the staffing form. All volunteers are greatly appreciated and you will get free entry and free cask ale or cider on the day(s) of your shifts!

Early May saw the first ever beer festival at the Heeley City Farm, a fantastic couple of days with a decent selection of real ale. Myself, Poppy and Andy Cullen were kindly invited to judge the home-brew competition on the first evening – an offer not to be refused! Around 20 beers had been entered into the competition, which was split into three categories: under 5%, 5.1% and over, and speciality beers (not forgetting one raspberry wine). All the bottles were blind taste-tested, with the brewers’ identities not revealed until the end. The first category might have seen the fewest entries (apparently home-brewers like their beers on the stronger side!), but the quality on offer was very high. First prize in this category went to Farmhouse IPA, brewed by Jim Scotson. Jim is studying for a PhD in chemistry and brews in his spare time under the name Dr TankNStein (www.drtanknstein.com). He maintains active Twitter and YouTube profiles, featuring interesting science-inspired home-brew videos and recipe break-downs.

Next up, we had the most popular category, 5.1% and over. There was a really diverse range of beers entered, from imperial stouts to IPAs and red ales. First place went to friends David Stephenson and Gary Wood with their exquisite Double IPA. David said: “I have been brewing for a while now and won first place at last year’s Autumn show. Gary and I have only collaborated on our brewing for just under a year since we were both made redundant from the National Blood Service, we have found our beer is a lot better working together. For me personally I find the whole process of brewing fascinating and it ties in very nicely to the degree in food technology that I am currently studying towards.”

Last but definitely not least was the speciality category, where we were treated to some fascinating brews, including sours, Belgian-style saisons and even a gruit, an ancient style of beer bittered without hops. Our winner was a Grapefruit and Sichuan Sour brewed by Edward Thatcher, a.k.a. Big Ed. A former professional brewer, he now creates recipe kits that allow you to brew craft beer in the comfort of your own home. He currently has ten styles to choose from, available online at www.craftalekits.com or from Turner’s bottle shop on Abbeydale Road.

Congratulations to all three of our winners, who all received free beer (what else!?) as their prize, and thank you once again to the organisers at Heeley City Farm for inviting us along. We’re already looking forward to the next festival!

On 11-12 May, we’ll be hosting our first Beer Festival here at Heeley City Farm. Eight local breweries (and one local distillery) have donated ale (and gin) for the public to purchase to raise funds for the upkeep of the farm. Thanks to the kind donations from: Abbeydale Brewery, Welbeck Abbey Brewery, Neepsend Brew Co, Stancill Brewery, The Sheffield Brewery Company, Little Critters Brewing Company, The Ecclesall Ale Club, Thornbridge Brewery and Locksley Distilling Company.

Join us from 5:30-9pm on the Friday, and 2-9pm (or until the beer runs out) on the Saturday. Both sessions are free entry. There will be live music on the Saturday afternoon between 2-5pm from Rob Lowdon, Paul Pearson & Friends, Morrigan’s Fire and Treebeard, followed by the Mads n da Bads DJs playing into the evening. So come and have a pint or two and enjoy the sights and sounds of the City Farm. For more detail on the work we do please visit our website at www.heeleyfarm.org.uk. We are located on Richards Road, Sheffield, S2 3DT. Olly Connolly

Organisers have confirmed the annual 3 Valleys Beer Festival in Dronfield will be taking place again this year on its usual date, the first Saturday in June, which this year is 2 June 2018. This event gets more popular every year and is now classed as a major event by Derbyshire County Council so organisers are working together with their emergency planning committee to ensure all have a safe and enjoyable day out. 3 Valleys sees a whole raft of pubs, clubs and breweries putting on small beer festivals on the same day and fund a free bus service linking all the venues with Dronfield rail station and new this year there will also be festival buses from Halfway Park & Ride site where the 120 bus and Blue route tram terminate. Entry to all the venues is also free of charge so it is a great value day out featuring beer, cider, food, live music and scenery. New venues confirmed for this year include Fuggle Bunny Brewhouse and the Butchers Arms at Marsh Lane with returning favourites including the Miners Arms at Hundall, Hyde Park Inn at Hill Top, the Jolly Farmer and Miners Arms in Dronfield Woodhouse whilst in Dronfield itself the Dronfield Arms, Green Dragon, Manor House Hotel, Blue Stoops and Pioneer Club are all back again for 2018. It is expected there will be a few more venues still to be announced. One cluster of venues that have proved very busy in the last few years are those on Dronfield High Street – Blue Stoops, Manor House and Green Dragon – all offering outside bars, music and street food stalls – so new this year will be a road closure to make it easier and safer to walk between these venues and provide more space to eat and drink outside! As a result the festival buses will serve these venues using the stop in the Civic Centre. For all the developing news about 3 Valleys 2018 keep an eye on the festival’s Facebook page. Andy Cullen