Category: Festivals

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

There are many ways you can assist CAMRA – for example, you could work at one of our many beer festivals. There are dozens of varied roles: serving the beer is the obvious job, but there are many others: from van or fork-lift driving to building (and demolishing) bars to glass washing to social media to counting money. Whoever you are, there are jobs which suit your talents – jobs you will enjoy and jobs which are useful for your CV. Upcoming beer festivals include both Magna (Rotherham) and Burton-on -Trent. In August, the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) at Olympia (London) offers an opportunity to take part in one of the key beer festivals worldwide.  Accommodation and a coach back at the end of each evening are provided for volunteers. Burton might be fifty miles away but it’s on a direct train line from Sheffield; a Derbyshire Wayfarer ticket costs £12.60 (£6.30 for over 60’s). An excellent beer festival takes place at the Town Hall: you could volunteer for part of the day, enjoy your beer and then return northwards. Locally, next October, the 44^th annual Steel City Beer Festival will need many hours of volunteer time. The online staffing form will be available around August – we look forward to welcoming many of you as an integral part of the making of this festival, the highlight of the Sheffield beer calendar. On a day-to-day basis, volunteering opportunities include the continuous updating of WhatPub, liaising with local breweries, writing articles for Beer Matters and many more I have not mentioned! There’s lots to do – just get involved! Dave Pickersgill

The recent Steel City Beer & Cider Festival, which for the fourth year in a row was held at the Kelham Island Museum, proved as popular as ever. More than 6,100 visitors attended over the four days, between them drinking over 14,500 pints of cask ale, 2,300 pints of cider and perry, 1,400 pints of cask-conditioned key keg beer (a complete sell-out) and 566 bottles and cans from the international section. Our membership stand saw 93 new members join CAMRA, a record for the Steel City Festival. As always, the festival was completely organised and staffed by volunteers, who very kindly gave up their time to ensure that the festival went as smoothly as possible. As a thank-you, a day trip to York was arranged for the volunteers; photos from this will appear in the next issue of Beer Matters. The volunteers’ work began on the Monday of festival week, with two days of frantically constructing stillages, bars and stalls and then positioning, venting and tapping all of the beers and ciders. This year, we had 227 cask ales, 46 ciders and perries, 36 key keg beers and 22 different cans and bottles. Wednesday evening, the opening night of the festival, was a real who’s who of the Sheffield beer scene, as representatives from many of our local breweries and pubs paid us a visit. The evening also saw the judging panels select their beers of the festival; the overall gold award was bestowed on Weird Beard’s Curse of the Ryeclops (7.5% rye IPA), with silver and bronze going to Blue Bee’s Ginger Beer (4.5% pale ale with added ginger) and North Riding Brew Pub’s Doomguy (6.2% chocolate orange porter) respectively. Seven local brewers won awards in the categories, including Sheffield Brewery’s Crucible Best (3.8%), which took gold in the Bitter category. The Friday evening session is traditionally fancy-dress night, and this year a number of volunteers got into the spirit of things, working their shifts in an array of Victorian attire. Drinkers were treated to plenty of entertainment, if not the best of weather, with live music provided by Do$ch, J&M Select, The Beat Merchants, Highway Child, Vegas 6 and the traditional Saturday afternoon performance from the Loxley Silver Band. Visitors could also experience the immense River Don Steam Engine in operation at various times during the festival. Our chosen charity this year was the Weston Park Cancer Charity, and proceeds from the quiz, collection buckets and donations of unused beer tokens added up to a total of £1,300, which has now been donated and very gratefully received. We must say thank-you, of course, to all of our sponsors who made the festival possible, especially to our main sponsors; Bradfield Brewery, who again sponsored the pint glasses and the Millowners Arms; SkyBet for sponsoring the half-pint glasses and Neepsend Brewery and Wetherspoons for sponsoring the volunteers’ t-shirts. We hope that everyone who came to the festival had a great time, and whether you made it or not we hope to see you all next year!

From Friday 17 to Sunday 19 November, The White Heart in Penistone will be hosting its 5^th beer and cider festival, hoping to follow up the success of the previous four events. Over the three days, there will be 30 real ales and 10 craft ciders on offer, alongside food and live music performances each day. Four of the beers will be supplied by the pub’s very own micro-brewery, Penistone Brewers – something a little different to look out for! The rest of the beer is to be organised by Acorn Brewery and will feature a range of breweries. The White Heart is the oldest pub in Penistone, established in 1377 as a coaching house which would have brewed its own beer, a tradition that has been resurrected 640 years later. All the beers on the main pub bar are Cask Marque approved, and the pub was awarded Barnsley CAMRA’s Summer Pub of the Season in 2016. The pub is located on Bridge Street, Penistone, S36 7AH. There are hourly trains direct from Sheffield to Penistone (Sheffield to Huddersfield train), and the pub is about a 10-minute walk from the station. See you at the festival!