Category: Festivals

Festival beer mats!

Posted on by Paul Crofts

By the time this issue of Beer Matters hits the pubs, we will have started sending out our festival Beermats. As usual we have 12 different sponsors for the mats, each with their own design on one side, and a different festival design on the back. Collecting all 12 mats and fitting them together will form this year’s Festival poster, another excellent design from Robin Lunnon at Durb Design.

Our Beer Matters distributors will be taking the mats far and wide across the city, and beyond, so you might have to visit several pubs to collect them all. (I know. It’s a tough ask, but I’m sure you’ll cope.)

We’ll also be putting a few sets up on Ebay to auction off for the festival charity, which this year is the Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

Don’t worry if you don’t manage to complete your collection, as we’ll be holding back a hundred or so of each design to put out on the bars at the festival itself. Yet another reason to come and see us at Steel City Beer & Cider Festival 47, 18-21 October 2023, Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield

P.S. Our staffing form is now open on our website for anyone wishing to volunteer to help at this year’s festival. If you’ve never volunteered before but are considering it, simply email festival@sheffield.camra.org.uk and we’ll let you know all about it. Trust us, you’ll enjoy it.

Tramlines fringe festival

Posted on by Guest

Supported by Sheffield BID and Sheffield City Council, The Fringe at Tramlines promises a packed weekend of entertainment including the free outdoor stage at Devonshire Green and many city centre venues

After a successful post-pandemic comeback in 2022, The Fringe at Tramlines makes its anticipated return to Sheffield from July 21st to 23rd. Supported by Sheffield BID and Sheffield City Council, this exciting event promises a jam-packed schedule of activities. Prepare for a weekend filled with music and entertainment as the city centre becomes a vibrant hub of celebration. From the lively outdoor main stage at Devonshire Green to the numerous city venues, bars, pubs, and clubs, a diverse range of live music and DJs will create an extraordinary festive ambience that extends beyond the city centre. Get ready to join the biggest party of the year as Sheffield comes alive with The Fringe at Tramlines.

At Devonshire Green, the main stage of The Fringe at Tramlines will captivate attendees with its range of music and an enticing selection of food and beverages. Under the expert curation of local music promoter, Papa Al, this stage strives to showcase a rich tapestry of musical genres that beautifully reflects Sheffield’s diverse cultural landscape.

Saturday headliners Jungle Lion are an energetic ska ensemble featuring 10 talented musicians with a long history of performances during the Tramlines weekend. Jungle Lion will be joined on Sat by reggae, funk, soul, ska and more from supporting acts, Solar Love Society and The Free Radicals. Speed for Lovers will perform their live electronic music inspired by Sheffield’s vibrant club scene whilst gifted reggae performer, Ripton Lindsey and soul/Motown band, Soul Battalion are also appearing on Saturday as are Romano Jilo (Roma dancers) and Blue Street Brass. 

The highly acclaimed Beatles Dub Club from Chris Arnold will also feature on Saturday and has been a huge hit on the festival circuit with support from by Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim). Chris remixes and re-edits Beatles classics. Completing the Saturday line-up are Los Vastardos, a new mystery band from Alex del Mango and the Shine Performance Choir with Sista Soul, a vibrant and funky choir including gospel soloists. 

Sunday at Devonshire Green is headlined by the magnificent Sheffield Beatles Project, a super group of local musicians playing music from The Beatles. Also performing are Highway Child (soul, funk and blues), Shanghai Treason (folk-tinged punk rock), Tracks Presents (a big group of young performers from Sheffield Music School) and Rogue Siesta with their funky reggae grooves. 

With so much musical entertainment being hosted across the city, Sheffield City Council have partnered with app developers Woov to create a brand new mobile app that will include a comprehensive guide to everything that’s taking place over the weekend. The free app can be downloaded for both Android and Apple devices using the link woov.to/tramlinesfringe

The Welcome to Sheffield webpage also features dedicated ‘The Fringe at Tramlines’ pages and is a great source of general information about Sheffield. It has suggestions for discovering areas around the city to eat, drink and hang out over the whole weekend.  www.welcometosheffield.co.uk/thefringe

A printed programme is also being produced by Exposed Magazine and will be distributed across the city in advance of the event with digital version via the Exposed website. https://www.exposedmagazine.co.uk/

Papa Al – Stage Curator, said;

‘Sheffield is blessed with a huge range of music from many different cultures and it’s brilliant to see this reflected on the main stage at Devonshire Green. We have everything from Beatles hits with the Sheffield Beatles Project to Roma dancers with Romano Jilo. Young musicians will be there in abundance with the Tracks showcase featuring talent from the Sheffield Music School and the fan favourites, Jungle Lion, will be there a ska extravaganza to finish on Saturday.  The Fringe at Tramlines is a chance to highlight the best Sheffield has to offer, we can’t wait to see you in July!’

Diane Jarvis, Head of Business Operations at Sheffield BID, said;

‘Sheffield BID has been a funding partner to the Fringe at Tramlines since its inception in 2018. The event continues to play a key role in the major events calendar, driving vibrancy in the city centre and delivering an economic boost with increased footfall, dwell time and spend for local businesses.

The Fringe at Tramlines is an inclusive and diverse event. Once again, we look forward to playing our part in helping to create yet another vibrant and colourful experience for city centre visitors. It’s a great way to animate the city centre and showcase what the city does best.’

Councillor Martin Smith – Chair of the Economic Development and Skills Committee, said; “The Fringe at Tramlines brings music fans together from across the city to celebrate Sheffield’s cultural diversity and creative industries, There’s an incredible line up of acts and activities. With the main stage on Devonshire Green, plus a brilliant programme of music and entertainment in city centre pubs and bars, The Fringe brings the Tramlines party right to the heart of Sheffield.

REAL ALE PUBS PARTICIPATING IN THE FRINGE:

Check out Clashfinder for timings.

Our beer festival is back!

Posted on by Paul Crofts

It’s coming up to that time of year again. After last year’s successful post-covid return, we’re back once again at the Kelham Island Museum to celebrate all the best in beer and cider.

We’ve chosen to keep a very similar layout to the festival to let everyone get used to the changes we introduced last time. The Millowners Arms is still independent and offering a wide variety of drinks; The keg bar will stay in its new position in the rear courtyard, accessed through the engine room; and the Bradfield bar will be in the Brearley room, on your right as soon as you enter the festival.

No change in the range of beer and cider on offer though! Over 200 beers including around 50 keg beers, over 40 real ciders and 2 bottle bars featuring continental beers. The Sheffield Beer of The Festival award will take place again on Wednesday evening.

One noticeable change this year will be our decision to switch from beer tokens to beer cards. These will be A6 cards featuring a set of 20p boxes which will be crossed off as you spend. A common sight at other festivals we have decided to move to these to speed up service at the bar.

We have our usual array of live acts, and a great variety of food stalls, with extended vegetarian and vegan offerings this year. In addition to this we have our ever-popular Tombola stall, traditional pub games and CAMRA merchandise desk selling books and t-shirts.

Our overall festival charity is Yorkshire Air Ambulance, who will be grateful for any of your unused beer tokens, or festival glass deposit.

Although we’re not sure you’ll want to hand your glass back! We are delighted to announce that Henderson’s Relish are again one of our glass sponsors. This year they are sponsoring the pint glasses, with Bradfield brewery sponsoring the half pint ones.

No article on the beer festival would be complete without a word of thanks to our dedicated and hard-working volunteers. Each year they arrive to set everything up, man the bars, run the various desks, do whatever needs doing to ensure the festival is the success it is, and then dismantle everything and put it back in to storage for next year. We cannot thank them enough for the time and effort they give. The festival simply would not happen without them. As a thank you, this year we are running a free staff trip to Lincoln, and as an extra reward for the Sunday take down volunteers we have a free buffet at the Gardeners Rest. If you fancy joining our happy band please visit our website Sheffield.camra.org.uk/festival to get more details on volunteering. We can guarantee that you’ll enjoy it more than you expected.

Don’t forget to look out for our festival beermats around the locals pubs. As we have done for the last few years, the festival side of the mats are all different and once you collect all 12 they fit together to form an image of the festival poster.

We can’t wait to welcome you all back once more.

Steel City Beer & Cider Festival, 18-21 October 2023, Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield.

Pax in the Park

Posted on by Andy Cullen
Dorothy Pax canal side bar on their Ukraine fundraiser event night

You may recall that last year the Dorothy Pax didn’t run their Canal Lines event on Tramlines festival weekend with a live music stage outside their canal side bar at Victoria Quays as the Canal & Rivers Trust no longer allow it.

Instead, the guys from the Pax put on a new event, Pax in the Park, at Heeley People’s Park with a busy programme of live music, food vendors, a bar and free entry.

Stage at Pax in the Park. photo credit: Mal Whichelow

Being able to offer free entry to all at this fringe festival was only possible thanks to money left from their successful application to the Arts Council England’s Culture Recovery Fund, which had paid for improvements to the sound system at the Dorothy Pax bar to help them as a live entertainment venue.

This year, of course all that grant is gone, it has also been a hard year in the hospitality business with significantly increased operating costs as well as customers going out less frequently thanks to the cost of living crisis, so they have very little funds spare to start up such an event – it costs in the region of £85k to put on.

View from Pax in the Park stage. Photo credit: Mal Whichelow

Team Pax are still well up for running Pax in the Park again this year, from 21-23 July, with a stage in Heeley People’s Park hosting some top class live music supported by a bar serving quality slurps from local breweries and vendors selling delicious street food. They passionately believe it should be a community spirited free entry event too. They are asking for help though…

  • contributions to a crowd funder to help pay for the infrastructure at gofundme.com/f/freepaxpark
  • corporate sponsorship
  • volunteers to help on the day with things like stewarding, marshalling, litter picking and generally ensure the event fits in the local community happily

More information can be found on the Dorothy Pax website at dorothypax.com/freepaxpark.

Live music at Pax in the Park. Photo credit: Mal Whichelow
Live music at Pax in the Park. Photo credit: Mal Whichelow
Selfies at Pax in the Park. Photo credit: Mal Whichelow

Indie Beer Feast 2023

Posted on by Dave Pickersgill

In early March 2020, I visited the 3rd edition of Indie Beer Feast (IBF), the kick-start to Sheffield Beer Week. This was an excellent afternoon at the 1920s, Grade II listed Abbeydale Picture House: the only Beer Festival venue with spider plants in the toilets. 

The 2021 4th edition was cancelled and my advance ticket then saw two postponements and a change of venue. The next IBF finally took place in March 2022 at Trafalgar Warehouse, a whitewashed ex-industry space – unfortunately, after two years of careful avoidance, Covid caused me to miss the event……..

Finally, three years after my last visit, 2023, saw a welcome re-acquaintance with IBF. There were no spider plants. However, a new distinctive glass, the 20 Fl.Oz. Barley, greeted the wide beer range provided by the various brewery bars: some cask, mostly keg, but all interesting.

The available beers covered a large variety of beer styles: the Redwillow range of Saisons, a 15.2% barley wine from Little Earth Project and many more. 

Included were pop-up tastings. Les O’Grady from the Magull-based Brewery, Neptune, led a session on Friday afternoon: all Neptune beers are vegan, there is no forced carbonation. Hence, all their beers are classed as real ale. The brewery is currently a team of seven, with a projected expansion to nine. 

Their ‘Lost at Sea,’ 6.2% IPA was sampled. This was originally a lock/down collaboration with Lost and Grounded. It utilises Golden Promise and crystal malt, Challenger hops in the boil and is dry-hopped with Centennial, Columbus, Simco and Brava hops. Les also commented that Brexit has killed off possible overseas sales. 

Trafalgar works was originally built in the late 19th century as a medium sized integrated factory for the production of edge tools, and later cutlery and blades. It was then part of the larger Trafalgar grinding wheel complex.

Yet again, IBF proved a positive start for Sheffield Beer Week: lots of innovative variety in, for myself, a new venue. 

Sheffield Beer Week

Posted on by Guest

Sheffield Beer Week returns in 2023 for it’s ninth event with a renewed vigour around their key strand, ‘Going Back To Our Beer Roots‘. Focusing on showcasing the brilliantly brewed Sheffield beer from breweries within the City Region. Ongoing core strands include Beer and Food, Community and Heritage; with additional strands including International Women’s Day events and celebrating our access to vital green spaces under The Outdoor City banner. 

Sheffield breweries Tapped Brew Co, Little Critters, Heist, Loxley, Abbeydale (look out for their Cloud Peak session IPA with Sheffield Beer Week and Indie Beer Feast!) and True North are already planning special beers for the week, with further breweries to announce more. Tapped Brew Co, housed at The Sheffield Tap pub, are even planning a live brewing day during the week, so watch this space for further details on that! Saint Mars of the Desert and Stancill breweries are hosting open tap days, whilst the rejuvenated Kelham Island Brewery will be highlighting its flagship beer Pale Rider, which started the ‘beer journey’ for many people in the city.

Visit Sheffield’s The Festival of the Outdoors has become a vibrant month of annual activities in March itself and to tie in Sheffield Beer Week is hosting a number of events under this banner. Local historian Dave Pickersgill, editor of CAMRA’s ‘Sheffield’s Real Heritage Pubs’, will be hosting his popular heritage pub and brewery walks. There will be a number of running events too including a trail club organised by Abbeydale Brewery and their Rising Sun pub and Hop Hideout beer shop’s all abilities welcome run social.

As always there’ll be a celebration of great independent brewed beer from across Sheffield, the UK and beyond with venues Jabbarwocky, The Crow Inn, Rutland Arms, Kelham Island Tavern, Sheffield Tap, Heist Brew Co., Stancill Brewery, Brewery of St Mars of the Desert, Craft & Berry, Hop Hideout, Beer Central, True North pubs and Shakespeares Ale & Cider House already planning events. Look out for more venues and events to be added on our website via the 2023 events listing.

On the weekend of 3-4 March, to kick-off the week, Sheffield’s craft beer festival, Indie Beer Feast launches. A celebration of great independent craft beer with brewery bars, street food, low intervention wines and fine cider. The beer festival champions and supports The Everyone Welcome initiative. British Guild of Beer Writers’ members and leading UK award-winning beer writers Adrian Tierney-Jones and Pete Brown will be heading up to host pop-up tastings and to judge the Indie Beer Feast ‘Beer of the Festival’. Breweries pouring include Sheffield outfits Saint Mars of the Desert, Heist, Triple Point and Abbeydale. In addition to Manchester’s Sureshot, Liverpool’s Neptune, Lancashire’s Rivington Brewing Co, Birmingham’s Attic Brew Co, Hitchin’s Crossover Blendery, London’s The Kernel, Rock Leopard and Wild Card Brewery, Huddersfield’s Beer Ink, Macclesfield’s Redwillow, Suffolk’s Little Earth Project and County Durham’s McColl’s Brewery. They’ll also award-winning Sheffield beer shop Hop Hideout hosting a bar and bottle shop, in addition to low intervention Italian wines from importers Naturally Wines.

Head to http://sheffieldbeerweek.co.uk

SUMMARY OF EVENTS ANNOUNCED SO FAR

Here are the events that had been announced at our time of going to press to give you some ideas – the latest list and more details can be found on the Beer Week website.

If you are planning on spending the week using public transport to explore Sheffield and visit beer week venues, you can get timetables and maps from Travel South Yorkshire and buy a weekly Citywide bus & tram pass from Travelmaster. Alternatively one day passes can be bought on board buses & trams or on the First & Stagecoach bus apps. All single rides on buses and trams currently cost £2 (or less for some very short bus journeys).

Members’ Weekend

Posted on by Dave Pickersgill

Next month, CAMRA Sheffield and District are hosting the 2023 Members’ Weekend, AGM & Conference on 21-23 April at Octagon Centre, University of Sheffield. A full conference schedule, plus details of trips and activities will shortly be available.

Over 1000 CAMRA members will attend. They will also take the opportunity to visit several of the many excellent breweries and pubs spread across the city. We also need volunteers to assist with the many jobs which will need covering. 

Assuming you’re a CAMRA member, we hope to see you there.

CAMRA members can register and volunteer at camra.org.uk/agm. Further local information to help plan your weekend in Sheffield is available here.

What’s on

Thu 20 Apr – Meet & greet and live brew day at Sheffield Tap.

Fri 21 Apr – Brewery open days and tours. Ticketed tours are at Abbeydale, Chantry, Neepsend, Stancill, Toolmakers and Triple Point. Members’ Bar open in the evening.

Sat 22 Apr – AGM and conference followed by fringe activities (Health and Safety, What Makes a Successful Branch, The True Cost of Beer, Promoting Cask and Increasing Footfall). Members’ Bar open lunchtime and evening. Ticketed events in the evening include a cider tasting with Mike from the Cider Hole, a guided heritage pub walk and brewery tours at Abbeydale, Chantry, Stancill, Toolmakers and Triple Point.

Sun 23 Apr – Conference in the morning, Members’ Bar open early afternoon.

Steel City 46 review

Posted on by Paul Crofts

Festival organiser, Paul Crofts, looks back at Steel City 46 and forward to 47

After a three-year break, we were finally able to return to Kelham Island Museum for our annual beer festival. For obvious reasons, the world has changed dramatically since our last festival in 2019, and we approached the 2022 event with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

The general feeling amongst the organising committee was that there would be some pent-up demand for a festival, and that visitors would be keen to return to what has become a very popular event. However, information we were getting from CAMRA HQ was that visitor numbers at other festivals were down. There was also the background of rising prices and uncertainty about the future impacting how much people would have to spend.

Needless to say, the feedback from local breweries and on social media was positive. The hospitality industry has been particularly hard hit by the economic situation. The festival was seen as something that would help generate a bit of interest and encourage people back into going out and celebrating the Sheffield beer scene.

So when it came to opening time on the Wednesday, we were somewhat relieved to see a queue of punters actually wanting to come in! Over the next four days though, it became clear that despite a steady stream of visitors we were not going to achieve the attendance numbers we were hoping. Probably a combination of poor weather on some days, post-Covid wariness and a permanent change in some people’s habits meant an overall reduction on 2019 numbers. Luckily those that came spent a little more and by the time we closed on Saturday the committee were satisfied that we had produced another great festival.

One particularly popular feature was the half pint glasses, featuring the Henderson’s Relish logo. We ordered 35% more half pint glasses than usual in anticipation of these being popular and they sold out! Visitors also had a good range of food stalls to choose from, along with the usual exciting live music, with festival favourites Kelham Island Rapper doing their riotous routines in every bar.

Two noticeable changes this year were an expansion of the ticketed events, and a new keg bar position. Beer and cider tasting sessions, hosted by Hop Hideout and the Cider Hole, and pub heritage talks by Dave Pickersgill were an excellent addition to the festival, building on the 2019 talk by Roger Protz. The keg bar had to be repositioned due to the Millowners Arms becoming a commercial venture, and moved to the rear courtyard. A number of visitors commented that this felt separated from the rest of the festival, and we will probably look to find a better spot this year.

A couple of CAMRA employees who came up from the St Albans head office to work with us were impressed with what they saw and we believe it enhanced Sheffield’s reputation as well as justifying the decision to hold the 2023 Members’ Weekend here this April.

Steel City 47

Looking forward to this year’s festival we have looked at some of the changes forced on us by the pandemic and are planning several improvements.

It has been obvious for a while now that we have an enthusiastic but ageing band of volunteers, and the physical work of running the festival is becoming more of a challenge. We have a concern that this may now be putting off some people who might otherwise be only too willing to help. Therefore we have plans to use third-party companies to cover some of the more strenuous and time-consuming elements of the build. From discussion with a number of existing volunteers it appears these moves will be very popular and we hope that it will help in recruiting new volunteers as well as encouraging back some of our previous volunteers.

We also plan to work more on attracting new volunteers to specific areas. Something in particular that we want to improve is the number of people in our cellar team. Anyone who thinks this may be something they would be interested in can email festival@sheffield.camra.org.uk and we will be happy to give them more details on what is involved. We would like to have a larger team so we can share out the workload and make it easier and more enjoyable for everyone.

One pleasing aspect of this year’s festival, which will be vital for the coming year, is the great camaraderie between the volunteers. This was evident both during the festival and at the subsequent staff trip to Halifax. We’ll be keeping this going during planning meetings, with ongoing communication with all volunteers and by arranging a couple of social events over the summer.

Again, anyone wanting to know more can email us or call in to one of our planning meetings, which are held the third Tuesday in each month at the Gardeners Rest in Neepsend. I can guarantee that being part of our team will be both enjoyable and rewarding.

The dates pencilled in for Steel City 47 are 18-21 October 2023.

photographs by Dave Pickersgill

CAMRA Members’ Weekend 2023

Posted on by Dave Pickersgill

In April, we are hosting the 2023 national CAMRA Members’ Weekend at the Octagon Centre, University of Sheffield. It officially starts at 4pm on Friday 21 when both registration and members’ bar open. The AGM and conference occur over the weekend, with many trips and activities also taking place.

A full schedule will be available nearer the time. 

We’re expecting over a thousand CAMRA members to attend; most will register in advance so they don’t miss out on information about booking trips and activities. They will also take the opportunity to visit several of the many excellent breweries and pubs across the city. We’ll also require volunteers to assist with the many jobs that will need covering. 

Hope to see you there!

Register and volunteer at camra.org.uk/agm.

Christmas Snowflake

Posted on by Paul Crofts

Everyone involved with the recent Steel City 46 was delighted to discover that Sheffield Children’s Hospital put our name to one of their Xmas Snowflakes as a thank you for our £1,200 donation. We’d like to pass on those thanks to everyone who donated money at the festival.

Our snowflake is (or maybe was, if you’re reading this in Beer Matters) on one of the columns above the doors to the Memorial Hall at the rear of Sheffield City Hall.

This year’s Xmas Snowflake project has already raised over £360,000, which will go towards building a helipad and making facilities at Sheffield Children’s Hospital even better than they already are.