The organisers of the recent Steel City Beer & Cider Festival would like to thank the following for donating items to the festival tombola and to sell for this year’s festival charity – the Weston Park Cancer Charity :- Ruth Grimsley, Phil Bayliss, Liz Aspden, Pete Roberts, AleChemist Brewery, Abbeydale Brewery, Docks Beers, Blue Bee Brewery, Kelham Island Tavern, Peak Ales, Paul Crofts, Sheffield Tap, Ossett Brewery, Contour Beer, Terry Palmer, MKM Building Supplies, Fairfax Chocolates, Bradfield Brewery, Les Greenwood, Thornbridge Brewery and everyone who donated anonymously. Apologies if we have missed anyone.
Category: Festivals
Steel City 48 – charity
Thanks to everyone at the festival who supported Weston Park Cancer Charity (WPCC). Your generosity produced a record charity donation from the Steel City Beer Festival – a whopping £2700.00 – a donation rate of £1.20/minute!
This magnificent sum includes loose change, unused beer tokens, eBay sales of three full sets of SCBF48 beer mats and net proceeds from the charity beer. Thanks to everyone who contributed and thanks again to Abbeydale Brewery for providing the charity beer, ‘Together at Every Step,’ a 4.3% abv dry hopped pale ale.
As Festival Organiser, Paul Crofts said, ‘It’s a fantastic sum to raise for such a good charity. It was far more than we predicted and shows how much local people appreciate the work of Weston Park.’
Sam Heritage, WPCC Fundraising Manager said, ‘we are very grateful for your generous support and for making our team of volunteers and staff, plus Brontë feel so welcome. I’ve had amazing feedback on just how brilliant it has all been …. it really will make such a difference.’
The festival was formally opened by local legend, and South Yorkshire firefighter, Brontë Jones. WPCC supporter, Brontë, was runner-up in the 2024 series of the prime-time BBC TV programme, Gladiators.
Located in Sheffield, Weston Park Hospital is the main cancer treatment centre for South Yorkshire and large parts of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. In the UK, around 1,000 cancers are diagnosed every day.
WPCC is here to face cancer with you. Their services, advice, therapies and support are for you and the people close to you, helping everyone to live with, and beyond, cancer.
Contact: 0114 553 3330 westonpark.org.uk
Photos: Dave Pickersgill (SCBF48) and Hannah Watson (WPCC)
Steel City 48 – a look back
The weather smiled on the Steel City Beer & Cider Festival this year, and brought in the crowds for another successful festival.
Bronte Jones did the honours with the official opening. A local firefighter and a recent finalist on Gladiators, Bronte has been working with our chosen charity, Weston park Cancer charity to raise funds. Shown here with Paul Manning the Chairman of the Sheffield & district branch of CAMRA.
Abbeydale brewery produced a special charity beer “Together at Every Step” to raise even more money for Weston Park. A dry-hopped pale ale which we’re pleased to say sold out!
Abbeydale also hosted a beer tasting event held by Jim & Laura Rangeley, which focused on the history of the brewery and it’s recent move to become an Employee Ownership Trust.
Andy & Philippa Morton with their beer goggles on. A perfect example of the “Finest Quality Merchandise” on offer at the Tombola stall.
Wednesday evening saw our annual Beer Of The Festival award taking place. Each Sheffield brewery put forward a beer and a series of blind tastings arrived at the winners. This year’s winners were
1st – Tapped Brew Co. American Flyer. An American brown ale
2nd – Triple Point Brewery. Debut. A new-style IPA.
3rd – Little Critters Brewing Co. Vanilla Chinchilla. Vanilla Ice Cream Porter.
Dan & Martha from St Mars of the Desert brought a Stichfass cask of their traditional old ale ‘Owd Eerie’, which managed to sell out in under 30 minutes!
A variety of street food stalls kept the visitors fed throughout the festival with a number of delicious options.
Thursday saw The Tigermen take to the stage with some rousing rhythm & blues.
Friday night’s entertainment was the excellent Highway Child, back for their third appearance at the festival
Loxley Silver band returned for their ever-popular usual Saturday afternoon slot. A particular highlight was the haunting ‘Gresford’, written in 1936 to commemorate the Gresford Colliery mining disaster in Wrexham where 266 miners lost their lives.
Throughout Saturday, sword dancing mayhem was provided by local favourites Kelham Rapper and Sheffield Steel Rapper. No area of the festival was left untouched by their lively performances (No, we don’t know how they do it without injuring themselves either)
On 3 of the days the mighty Rover Don engine was in operation to the delight of the visitors lucky enough to get in the room before it was full.
The cider team in jolly mood. (We don’t know if this was before or after they tried the 13% mead from local producer Paradise Garage!)
The staff at the Keg Bar had a very busy festival as usual, and obviously all enjoying it. Even Josh from Kelham Island Tavern was smiling! The tall chap at the back wasn’t much help though.
A familiar face! Sean Clarke, former owner of Beer Central working behind the bar in the Upper Hall.
A lively afternoon in the Upper Hall.
Overall, another great festival. Thanks as ever go to all the volunteers who showed up and put in all the hard work to make it happen. And of course to all our visitors who came along to enjoy it.
It’s a couple of well-earned months off now for the planning committee before we start the process again in January. We’re always keen for new people to join the team, so feel free to email us if you’d like more info.
Great British Beer Festival
Tickets are now on sale for both the summer and winter editions of the Great British Beer Festival in their new locations for 2025.
The winter festival takes place from 12-15 February at the Magna Science Adventure Centre in Rotherham, just 5 minutes bus ride from Meadowhall Interchange on route X3.
The summer festival takes place from 5-9 August at the NEC in Birmingham, which is a 5 minute walk from Birmingham International railway station.
Both festivals feature a huge range of UK cask ales, craft beers in keykeg, world beers, cider & perry, learn & discover bar, entertainment and more. Judging takes place for the Champion Beer of Britain at both events too.
The festivals are organised and staffed by volunteer CAMRA members with a little support from the team at CAMRA HQ, if you’d like to help out please fill in the online staffing form.
More information and advance tickets are online at greatbritishbeerfesitval.org.uk and winter.gbbf.org.uk.
Craft beer festival
Craftwerk
Arriving in Neepsend 40 minutes early, I took the opportunity to visit Alder for a couple of halves. Set in the old shoe polish works, they have 5 cask ales available. I sampled the Pomona Island – Tarquill and Quafftide, a 3.8% and 4.5% respectively.
I then popped over to Peddlar Warehouse to find a relatively small queue, that was dealt with quickly. On entering, you were given a tickers lanyard and a half-pint glass. My first drink was a 5% Bombay Honey from The Indian Brewery, very Jaipur ish, with added sweetness. I then moved on to my second of the 16 brewers on display from around the UK, these included Lancaster, Surrey and Sussex, Kidderminster’s Copper Beach Brewing Company with a nice 4.6% APA. I then sat and had a chat with 2 guys who had travelled up from Nottiingham for the festival, I recommended that should they had room, and the legs for another, Kelham was just a short hop after the 23:00 closure.
Next was Lune Brew Co and their LB201, a Citra, Centennial and Mosaic hopped pale of 4.1%. These beers were going down well accompanied by a DJ playing Indie classics. The next selection brought a change of flavour with a Pineapple and Passion Fruit Palaver, a 4.5% fruited pale ale. This also brought a change of entertainment with a singer/guitarist covering reggae to Indie rock.
Seeing that beers were covered by the admission charge, it would have been rude not to try as many as possible. So, I then moved on to Bayonet Brewing – Delta Lima Six, a New England hazy pale at a sensible 4%. Next came my favourite of the festival, Only With Love’s Oh Yeah, an ice cream soda pale ale, but here’s what won it they topped it with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sprinkles. so nice I had 2 before it ran out. Even at this stage of the night with the hall full, there was never big queues and service was typically a minute or so.
Next came our local Thornbridge – Kipling, New Zealand Pale Ale at 5.2%. The next ones in succession were Siren Craft Brew – Juicy Details, a New England hazy 6%, Jimbrew Brewing Co – Maybe It Was Two Times, a 4.8 Gluten-free pale, Disruption Is Brewing – Digital Code at 5.5%. With beer comes munchies, so I went into the courtyard to see what was on offer and decided on the Jamica food stall serving very tasty pattys, I had the beef and it hit the spot.
Being fed, it was back to the beer and more music in the form of a young Indie covers band. The accompanying beer was Cloudwater’s Fuzzy, another hazy New England pale. This was followed by Only With Love’s – Bongo Tropic IPA at 4.5%, yet another New England style Brew. Next was Siren’s Soundwave, an American IPA of 5.6%.
As closing was coming up quickly, there was time for one last half from Pennine Brewing Co with Scapegoat, a Blonde Golden of 4.2%.
All in all, a very well run and value for money festival. The range of brews in taste and geographical locations was well thought out, as well as brewers willing to chat.
Here’s to next year.
Oktoberblest
Our chair Paul Manning, his wife Bev and long standing Sheffield camra stalwart Alan Gibbons recently visited the Oktoberblest beer and gin festival at St Matthew’s on Carver street.
The church was built in 1855 amongst the slums of the city, is now grade 2 listed and has long been regarded as a sanctuary in the heart of the city. The church has an ambitious target to raise nearly £800,000 for interior restorations and money raised at the festival will go towards increasing the £450,000 raised to date.
The festival opened with Rt Revd Stephen Race, the bishop of Beverley blessing the beers accompanied by Fr Grant Naylor, the current vicar.
Nick Law the founder of Emmanuales gave a very illuminating talk on the brief history of beer and belief and we also enjoyed some great music whilst sampling the beers.
Nick had brought two beers – Noah’s Dark a 5.4% dark Belgian ale and Solomon’s gold a 4.5% Belgian golden ale. Both tasted great and we also tasted (mainly half’s!) of Reunion Witbier a 5% cloudy white ale from Mount St Bernard Trappist brewer in rural Leicestershire. This was followed by Juiceinator a 4.7% pale and Days of Thunder a 5% hazy pale both from Bang the Elephant brewery in Langley Mill, Derbyshire.
We ended with Santa’s Little Belter a 4.9% ginger and cinnamon dark ale from the recently closed Halton Turner brewery in Digbeth, Birmingham together with Jolly YPA a 4.8% pale from Jolly Boys brewery in Barnsley.
We enjoyed the evening and look forward to next years event as it becomes a regular on the Sheffield festival calendar.
Charity beer mat auction
Sheffield and District CAMRA are again using eBay to invite bids for three full sets of beermats which advertise the forthcoming beer festival. All proceeds will be donated to the festival charity, Weston Park Cancer Care (WPCC).
The full set for 2024 consists of nine mats, sponsored by Abbeydale Brewery, Abel Magnets, Blue Bee Brewery, Bradfield Brewery, Chantry Brewery, Heist Brewery, MKM Builders Merchants, Peak Brewery and Triple Point Brewery.
To make your bids, search, on eBay, using SCBF48.
Exhibition at Steel City 48
Richard Hough is felling artistic and creative and has chosen to tell you about his exhibition in the form of poetry…
Richard The Brewer Invites you to view a Delightful collection Of beer retrospection.
Shout ‘Hip Hip Hooray!’
Rich’s Pump-clip Display
Due to huge interest
Is BACK! At the Beer Fest
Your friends – go and tell ’em
To get down to Kelham
Industrial Museum
If they want to see ’em.
Richard Hough
The Steel City Beer & Cider Festival is at Kelham Island Museum from 16-19 October.
Great British Beer Festival Winter
Following its residency for the last few years at Burton on Trent, 2025 sees the winter edition of CAMRA’s Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) move to its new home for the next four years – Yorkshire – with the venue being the Magna Centre on the edge of Rotherham.
The festival takes place from 12 to 15 February 2025.
Magna is a former steel works that has been converted into a science museum and events space and is big enough for the festival to grow and have a number of features added to it that visitors to the summer GBBF are used to such as the Learn & Discover bar, Bieres Sans Frontier bar and a dedicated Champion Winter beer of Britain bar – as well as a number of cask ale bars, real cider & perry and live music. The bars will be spread across a main hall hosting the music stage and a number of smaller rooms which you can explore, the venue’s cafes will also be open serving hot food.
The bigger capacity also means there should be no problems turning up and paying on the door if you make a last minute decision to go, however advance tickets will still be sold online with a separate admissions desk offering advance ticket holders quicker entry.
Magna is no stranger to hosting beer festivals, 2024 was the final year of the long established Rotherham Real Ale & Music Festival which was a charity fundraiser assisted by the Rotherham CAMRA branch and GBBF Winter will be picking up where they left off.
Magna is on bus route X3, operated by First bus, which runs between Sheffield, Meadowhall, Rotherham and Doncaster. Buses connect with trains and trams at Meadowhall Interchange or you may wish to combine your trip to the festival with pubs in Rotherham or Sheffield.
As with all CAMRA festivals, this is organised and staffed by volunteers and the staffing form will be launched for CAMRA members to sign up to volunteer soon.
INFORMATION AND ADVANCE TICKETS > winter.gbbf.org.uk
Steel City beer festival opening
The 2024 Steel City Beer and Cider Festival will be opened by local legend, and South Yorkshire firefighter, Bronte Jones, runner-up in the 2024 series of the BBC hit TV programme, Gladiators.
The BBC reboot was a huge success, reeling in 8.7 million viewers across its first seven days on air. Filmed in the Utility Arena, the show began in January and showed 16 competitors complete various challenges for the chance to be crowned Gladiators Champion.
Bronte recently ran the Sheffield Half Marathon in memory of her boyfriend’s cousin Molly Midgley, who tragically died aged just 27 of a rare cancer, adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC). She and the rest of ‘Team Molly’ were raising money for our festival charity, Weston Park Cancer Charity.
The Steel City Beer & Cider Festival is held at Kelham Island Museum from 16 to 19 October featuring a range of around 200 cask ales along with other craft beers, traditional cider & perry, street food, live music and more. See sheffield.camra.org.uk/festival for more details.