We are really happy to be able to announce that after missing two years for Covid, we’ve had the go ahead to organise our 46th normally annual Steel City Beer & Cider Festival, which will take place from 19 to 22 October.
The venue is once again the wonderfully atmospheric Kelham Island Museum and as before we’ll have cask ale, proper cider, stalls and live music in the upper hall, street food traders in the Victorian Courtyard and a marquee containing even more real ale & cider along with traditional pub games.
There are some changes to the festival site as a result of the Millowners Arms now being a proper commercially run pub all year around rather than a museum exhibit (this bar will be open as normal but within the festival site providing some additional food and drink choices for festival visitors). Bradfield Brewery’s bar which was previously hosted in the Millowners will this year be in the Brearley Room whilst the keykeg bar is being moved to a new area – the Stone Garden which will feature a bar serving craft beer in keg, can and bottle along with seating. To reach the Stone Garden you use the doors by the marquee and walk through the rooms containing the River Don steam powered beam engine and the Hawley knife collection.
Some initiatives from the last festival that went down well are being retained including the self service glass rinse facilities and the pre-bookable private tutored tasting and talk events. This year the half pint glasses are being sponsored by Hendersons Relish and the pint glasses are being sponsored by Bradfield Brewery, we anticipate them being popular souvenirs!
Posters and flyers (sponsored by Arnold Laver) will soon be available to get out and promote the event with promotional beer mats coming in the summer. There are still many sponsorship opportunities available if you would like to promote your business and support the festival at the same time, we’ll be opening the volunteering form soon.
After two years of Covid restrictions, Sheffield Beer Week was back to its usual format with fantastic beery events going on in pubs, bars and brewery taprooms across the city, not only getting us local beer lovers an excuse to get out and about more but also bringing in beer tourists from across the country to enjoy what is on offer in the area.
The week was preceded by a couple of beer festivals. In Sheffield the Indie Beer Feast was held at its new home of Trafalgar Warehouse in the City Centre, this festival is predominantly one of breweries bringing their own bars to showcase and talk about their beers. Meanwhile down the road at Magna, the Rotherham Real Ale & Music Festival was taking place, here live music is a bigger feature and the beer range more traditional and the event raises money for charity.
After having fun volunteering behind a bar at Magna on the Thursday and Friday, I attended Indie Beer Feast on the Saturday evening. Local brewers pouring here included Abbeydale, Lost Industry and St Mars of the Desert and it’s always a pleasure to say hello! My drinking plan was to start with a few sensible strength beers and work my way up, trying as many different breweries as possible too. First stop was the Torrside bar, this is a brewery perhaps best known for their smoky beers but had brought mostly pale ales to the festival and my first beer of the evening was their Yellow Peak, a 4.2% pale ale on cask. Also hosting bars were Black Iris, Donzoko, Duration, Fyne Ales, Mobberley, Neptune, Pomona Island, Rock Leopard, Turning Point and Wilderness plus Hogans Cider and Ross on Wye Cider & Perry Co. My final beer was from the Craft Beer Newcastle bar which was showcasing a number of beers from the North East, including Molinillo, a 11.3% keg Mexican hot chocolate stout brewed as a collaboration between S43 and McColl’s.
Once we’d had enough at the beer festival, we moved on to the Washington for music, chat and Abbeydale Salvation Stout!
Being the lightweight/sensible person I am in my old age I had a couple of nights off the booze and didn’t head back out to enjoy Sheffield Beer Week until the Tuesday evening. This started with a visit to the Brothers Arms at Heeley as they were being presented with CAMRA Sheffield & District’s Pub of the Month award followed by a visit to the Sheaf View where a number of guest beers from Burning Soul featured. A bus ride into town was then taken ahead of the football kicking out to get to the Bath Hotel, however I was a day too early for the Mallinsons tap takeover so had to “make do” with Thornbridge beer! Finally we took a tram ride down to Shalesmoor and visited the Kelham Island Tavern for their Bristol beer showcase and the Crow to see the result of the battle of the beers event and try the rather interesting carrot cake sour!
Wednesday evening kicked off with a visit to the Rutland Arms who were hosting an event with Kernel brewery of London. Unfortunately the ticketed tasting event with the brewer which included a food pairing was sold out but a huge range of their beers were available on the bar to order in the traditional fashion! Three dark beers from Kernel were available on cask which I just had to try – you very rarely see their cask beer outside their own tap room, however there were lots of goodies to try on keg too including a foeder beer, a damson and sour cherry saison, a grisette, various IPAs and more.
Thursday evening saw us head down Abbeydale Road for the Two Thirds Beer Co. event – a tap takeover by Polly’s. Six beers were on and tasting flights of a third pint of each was ordered and enjoyed!
Next stop was the Broadfieldwhere Peaky Climbers, True North’s new collaboration beer was on cask then we finished at the White Lion to enjoy a bit of live music – it was their jam night.
Finally Friday and I joined members of Dronfield’s CAMRA branch for an Ecclesall Road social. The beer week event here was a meet the brewer with Dronfield’s own Temper Brewing at the Beer Housemicropub, however we also took advantage of the opportunity to try out two newly opened bars at Banner Cross – Itchy Pig 2 micropub and the Dark Horse bar -along with established favourites Ecclesall Ale Club and the Portland House.
Chesterfield CAMRA’s usual annual beer festival at the Winding Wheel theatre couldn’t happen this year as Covid uncertainty had impacted the planning timescales. As a replacement a huge list of pubs across Chesterfield town centre, Brampton and Whittington Moor teamed up to put on a weekend walkabout event featuring beer, food and music.
Members of Sheffield and Dronfield CAMRA branches all arranged to get together for a couple of joint socials, with us visiting Whittington Moor on the Friday night then the town centre & “Brampton Mile” on Saturday afternoon. On both days we also caught up with friends from Chesterfield branch too!
Friday night saw us start at the Glassworks on Whittington Moor, which is run by Brampton Brewery. For the festival weekend they had a number of guest ales on the bar alongside their own including Anarchy Deafening Silence pale ale, Durham Apricity Copper Ale and Durham Dark Angel Stout. With a 6:30pm start we were able to sit and relax here for a bit! By the time we moved on to the Beer Parlour it was packed with the usual friendly crowd and great beers, including one from the relatively local Silver Brewhouse and a classic not seen about as much these days – Bass.
We finished in the Derby Tup to enjoy live blues music from Slim Wilson & The Swamp Brothers along with again a great range of beers including a plum porter and IPA from Eyam Brewery, a pale ale from Scarborough and more, including another local classic – Hartington Bitter from Whim Brewery.
On Saturday afternoon we met up at the Pig & Pump in Chesterfield town centre, which for the festival weekend featured an Abbeydale Brewery tap takeover, with the brewery supplying a diverse range of beers from Serenity, a 3.9% pleasantly hopped pale ale, up to Black Mass, a 6.66% black IPA.
Next we walked up to the Hidden Knight for a quick half, this is a Greene King pub but they had a guest ale on from Thornbridge. We then proceeded to an old favourite, the Chesterfield Alehouse micropub, who were hosting a tap takeover with all the handpumps given over to showcasing beers from Two by Two brewing whilst a good number of the keg taps featured beer from Seven Bro7hers Brewery.
We were then within touching distance of the Brampton Mile and visited the Tramway Tavern, Brampton Brewery and Real Ale corner (which had a couple of extra casks on gravity) before time ran out and we caught the X17 bus back to Sheffield.
However a special mention goes to David Marsh from North London CAMRA branch who joined us for the afternoon who apparantly managed to fit in another 5 pubs after we left before he caught his train home from Chesterfield!
After a tumultuous 2021, Sheffield Beer Week sees a welcome return to the city, 7-13 March 2022. The event will be a much-needed boost for the city, the hospitality and brewing sector.
Sheffield Beer Week’s ongoing strands include Beer & Food, Community & Heritage; with additional 2022 strands including our Harrogate Beer Week collaborative focus, creating welcoming spaces for everyone in the beer scene with Out & About (@outandaboutsheff) and International Women’s Day events and celebrating our access to vital green spaces under The Outdoor City banner.
There’ll be a continued intertwining via a hybrid of online and in-person elements with a key online talk exploring beer and brewing research with leading international professionals. From Lars Marius Garshol (Norwegian farmhouse brewing), Dr Christina Wade (Irish beer history), Ron Pattinson (beer historian), Tim Holt (Brewery History Society) and the Sheffield Feminist Archive. Our collaborative partnership with Harrogate Beer Week will showcase North Yorkshire breweries in South Yorkshire with a friendly cross-county beer week focal point, highlighting the positive nature of beer tourism.
Sheffield breweries Heist Brew Co. and Lost Industry will be brewing up beers for International Women’s Collaboration Brew Day (@IWCBD/unitebrew.org) on International Women’s Day – 8 March (look out for additional events). As Visit Sheffield’s The Outdoor City hosts a month long celebration of the green spaces and adventure trails in the city through March, Sheffield Beer Week will showcase beer and history walks (via local historian Dave Pickersgill, editor of CAMRA’s Sheffield’s Real Heritage Pubs), a running and beer social club and highlight the ‘Right to Roam’ campaign (righttoroam.org.uk) alongside the 90th anniversary of the Kinder Mass Trespass with Sunday Times best-selling author Nick Hayes (The Book of Trespass), Brewery of St Mars of the Desert, Sheffield Beer Week and Hop Hideout.
On the weekend of 4-5 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’ member and leading UK award-winning beer writer Adrian Tierney-Jones will be heading up to host pop-up tastings and to judge the Indie Beer Feast Beer of the Festival; this year’s theme is hope. Breweries pouring include Sheffield outfits St Mars of the Desert, Lost Industry and Abbeydale. Plus bars from Women on Tap showcasing female led breweries and beer collaborations and Craft Beer Newcastle highlighting a myriad of brilliant breweries from the North East. In addition to Manchester’s Pomona Island, Liverpool’s Neptune, Derbyshire’s Torrside and Pentrich, Norfolk’s Duration, Cheshire’s Mobberley Brewhouse, Nottingham’s Black Iris, Wales’ Wilderness, Scotland’s Fyne Ales and Donzoko Brewing, London’s Rock Leopard and North Yorkshire’s Turning Point Brew Co. They’ll also be a bigger focus on cider with both Ross and Hogan’s hosting bars and low intervention wines with Naturally Wines showcasing their Italian portfolio.
For details of public transport options linking the venues head over to Travel South Yorkshire. “CityWide” All day and weekly unlimited travel passes that work on all the buses and trams in the city are available from Travelmaster.
The organisers of Rotherham’s charity real ale & music festival have confirmed the event is returning to Magna from 3 to 5 March 2022 and their website is now live for ticket sales, volunteer sign up and information.
The event features a huge range of real ales on handpump along with other craft and world beers, traditional cider, gin, wine and prosecco. There is also a programme of live music across 2 stages over the three days.
The festival opens from 6pm on the Thursday and Friday, midday on Saturday. Each day it closes at 11pm. Advance tickets are available online, however a discount is offered to CAMRA members paying on the door.
Magna is easy to get to by bus with First’s service X1 and X10 stopping on the main road alongside the venue, this bus links Sheffield City Centre, Meadowhall Interchange, Rotherham Interchange and Maltby.
Chesterfield CAMRA normally hold their annual beer & cider festival at the Winding Wheel theatre every February, the 2020 event was one of the last to take place before the first Coronavirus lockdown of March that year and of course the 2021 event could not take place.
Due to limited planning timescales and uncertainty with the pandemic, including the Winding Wheel being used as a vaccination centre, the festival in its normal format won’t be back until 2023.
For February 2022 the festival will be going walkabout with pubs in three areas of Chesterfield – Whittington Moor, the town centre and the Brampton mile – putting on events over the same weekend of 4th and 5th February.
Regular buses run from Sheffield to Chesterfield via Whittington Moor, the fastest being the X17, the others being 43, 44, 50 and 50a. The Brampton pubs are walkable from the town centre or various buses (84,90,X70) run along the Chatsworth Road.
Well, we might not have been able to hold the normal festival but the second weekend in October saw the next best thing. The Steel City Beer & Cider Festival went On Tour with 44 venues across the city putting on numerous events, Tap Takeovers, brewery tours and general fabulous beeriness!
All the venues did us proud, putting on over 300 different beers and ciders for visitors to try.
Our Pub Heritage Officer Dave Pickersgill kicked off proceedings on Thursday evening with a book signing at The Crow Inn for the latest edition of Sheffield Real Heritage Pubs. Fully updated with new pictures, copies are still available from local booksellers, or via the CAMRA website. Other signings were held at the Rising Sun, Bradfield Brewery and local bottle shop Beer Central.
Gravity bar at the Dog & Partridge
Abbeydale brewery followed with a Talk and Tasting at the Rising Sun and then Tap Takeovers at the Dog & Partridge and Millowners Arms. The Tap Takeovers came thick and fast as Heist Brew not only featured the Mad Scientist brewery but also had their Head Brewer come over from Hungary. The Bear featured Three Hills brewery and also had a Meet The Brewer session.
For some venues the taps were based on a theme instead. Shakepeares had a range of Milds, Kelham Island Tavern were offering beers from various Berkshire breweries and Pangolin Craft Bar had an Irish Beer Showcase.
Shiny tap takeover at Portland House – on cask and keg
Other takeovers were Wilde Child at the Itchy Pig; Saltaire at the Riverside; our neighbours at Drone Valley Brewery were in the Red Deer; Portland House had a selection of beers from Shiny; The Crow had Bristol’s Arbor brewery on the taps, the Rutland featured Buxton, as did the Hillsborough Tap; the Forest had a number of their own beers from Toolmakers; the Industry Tap had a huge selection of 21 different beers; Two Thirds brought in some Brew York beers and Perch served up their own Dead Parrot beers as well as putting on some excellent music from the bands originally booked to play the festival. A little further out of town, St Mars of The Desert were featuring their two SMODfest beers.
Team from Arnold Laver enjoying a tour and tasting at Triple Point Brewery + Bar
Our friends at Triple Point brewery put on a massive range of their own beers including a couple of new ones, and also treated our Festival sponsors Arnold Laver to a personalized brewery tour and beer tasting, which I’m pleased to say led to a couple of new converts to the delights of Real Ale.
The Ecclesall and Fulwood Ale Clubs were launching a new beer brewed in memory of Head Brewer James Eardley who sadly passed away recently. Shining Light is a delicious 4.9% Pale Ale made to James’s own recipe.
Local brewery Neepsend were doing brewery tours in conjunction with Factory Floor, and also brewed two special beers for their own pubs, the Wellington, Blake Hotel, and the Sheaf View, who we were delighted to see reopen after their recent arson attack. The Sheaf also had festival favourites Sunshine Pizzas in attendance keeping everyone fed.
There was more live music taking place at the White Lion, Toolmakers Brewery, Dorothy Pax and morris dancing at the Wisewood. A Sunday afternoon session by Steve Delaney at Portland House, proved so popular they intend to continue with music on Sundays for the foreseeable future.
Some of the festival committee outside Triple Point taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather
The festival committee managed to get round all the venues at various times, and had a thoroughly enjoyable time. A well-earned reward after the hard work putting it all together.
enjoying a few Abbeydale beers at the Dog & Partridge
Thanks to all the venues and breweries who supported us, and all the visitors who came out to make it a success. I’m sure we kept everyone’s appetite for Real Ale going, and next year we’ll be back in the Kelham Island Museum, better than ever. Cheers.
Dan at Heist Brew Co – “A record weekend for us, beating even our Oktoberfest celebration last week!”
Lance at Portland House – “We had a great weekend down at Portland House. The Shiny Brewery beers went down a treat and we had a lot of new faces in there leaving five star reviews on the bar.”
Nick at Pangolin Craft Bar – “It was a great weekend, and our best Thursday night since opening”
I’d like to add my thanks to all of the venues and to everyone who was out enjoying themselves during the course of the festival. I bumped into some Kent CAMRA members who were blown away by the festival and thought more CAMRA branches should run something like this to not only showcase some fantastic beer, but local pubs and bars too. I also met some volunteers from the previous Steel City Beer Festival who said the festival on tour was a fantastic idea, and would love to see it return in the future!
It made me feel so proud to visit the venues and see people enjoying themselves, and overhear conversations about the beer festival and where people were heading to next. After a tough 18 months for the beer industry, it felt as though this was the lift everyone needed, for both venues and punters. It felt like it really brought everyone together.
Every single venue has had something different from the norm, and I’m sure they will have gained many a regular as a result. From smaller venues like The Bear running their first tap takeover and meet the brewer event, to Heist managing to organise a tap takeover from Hungarian brewery Mad Scientist to showcase beers never before seen in the UK.
I took part in the Neepsend Brewery tour which was very interesting, especially as they had 20,000 pints in their tanks ready to go! It might have taken a while to drink them all though… Everyone involved should be proud of their efforts in putting on a fantastic citywide festival that showcased exactly why Sheffield is such a fantastic place for a pint.
Elliott
As well as Press Officer for the festival, Elliott regularly posts about the local beer scene on Instagram. Find him at thenotsosoberbarcrawl.
With pub going a bit more normal now the JD Wetherspoon chain is once again running a national beer festival this autumn with the Sheffield launch taking place at the Sheaf Island on Ecclesall Road on 20 October.
There is a list of 20 real ales in the festival in a brochure containing tasting notes with each pub being allocated around half of them which will be rotated across the pumps, so you will need to visit more than one pub to try them all!
On launch day the Sheaf Island will feature five of the festival beers alongside their regular ales and they will be celebrating the launch with a pub quiz and games.
The festival beers expected at the Sheaf Island are:
PurityAPA A 3.9% gluten free session pale ale brewed especially for Wetherspoons with Nelson Sauvin, Galaxy and Columbus hops.
AdnamsOld Ale A 4.1% ruby red ale with caramel and chocolate aromas, flavours offering hints of liquorice and berries with a bitter finish.
Bath Ales Queen of Hearts A new 4.3% amber ale brewed for Wetherspoons.
Hogs Back Citrus Pale Ale A new seasonal beer, this is a 4.5% pale ale offering floral and citrus notes, the bitterness from the Fuggles, Mosaic and UK Cascade hops balanced nicely by the subtle malt flavour making the beer an easy drinking, light hoppy beer with a dry finish.
Thornbridge Shelby A 5% golden/amber ale with aromas of stone fruit and berries which leads to a gentle maltiness on the palette balanced by a citrus and lemon bitterness from the Bramling Cross and Fuggles Hops. An official beer of the Peaky Blinders TV series and inspired by beer recipes of the era.
Greene King Ruby Abbot This 5.2% ruby ale is a special edition of Abbot Ale brewed for Wetherspoons.
Wadworth Sweet Molly A 5.5% red ale brewed for Wetherspoons.
Bank’s (Marstons) New Wave IPA A 6% golden IPA brewed for Wetherspoons.
For myself, the last beer festivals attended before Covid closed everything down were the Chesterfield CAMRA event at the Winding Wheel Theatre in February 2020 as a volunteer and the Sheffield Indie Beer Feast at the Old Abbeydale Picture House in March 2020 as a customer.
The August 2021 Bank holiday weekend saw our first festival social since then with the Old Hall Hotel in Hope putting on their Hope Valley Beer & Cider Festival with a marquee in the car park hosting a range of traditional ales and ciders, seating and occasionally live music whilst also outside was a pizza oven and gin & cocktail bar – with the pub itself also offering its usual food & drink.
An official Sheffield & District CAMRA outing visited this event on the Saturday as part of our monthly RambAle programme whilst a number of others including myself took a trip out there on the bank holiday Monday, combining it with the open day at Intrepid Brewery.
The following weekend saw beer festivals in Grenoside and Bolsover.
It has also been good to see a number of events recently that whilst beer wasn’t the focus, had real ale available for visitors, this included Rockin’ the Bowl, Bradway Family Fun Day and Worral Festival.
9-11 September saw the return of the Rail Ale Festival at Barrow Hill Railway Roundhouse near Chesterfield. This normally takes place in May and returns to its normal dates for 2022 following the cancellation of the 2020 festival and the 2021 event being postponed until September.
View from behind the Derbyshire bar before the festival opened
Rail Ale has a range of over 350 real ales spread across several bars along with craft beer on keg, cider & perry and gin.
Train rides were available on Friday & Saturday afternoon with classic shunter locomotives hauling Mk1 coaches up and down the short branch line from the platform within the festival site and there were plenty of other old trains stabled up outside next to the street food vendors for those interested enough!
Also supporting the fact the festival had something of a transport theme, there was a choice of ways of getting there for those that thought the Stagecoach number 90 was a bit too routine including a free volunteer run shuttle bus from Chesterfield station using preserved vehicles or for those with a bigger budget a locomotive hauled charter train shuttling from Derby & Chesterfield dropping off thirsty visitors inside the beer festival!
I joined a team from Dronfield CAMRA volunteering there on Saturday afternoon with the majority of us working together behind the Derbyshire bar. Whilst both serving and sampling some tasty beers there were bands on the stage next to our bar as well as the Ashover Brass Band on in the marquee and it was just wonderful to be able to be once again involved with such an event and catch up with all the old faces we haven’t seen for a couple of years.
Looking ahead it is disappointing that with the uncertainties surrounding Covid still being a worry during the planning process we aren’t able to bring you Sheffield’s Steel City Beer & Cider festival this October, we’re sure the pubs will do us proud however as part of Steel City On Tour.
The first CAMRA festival to take place in our part of the world will be Nottingham which takes place at its new home of Trent Bridge cricket ground from 13 to 16 October. This is always a fantastic event with a great atmosphere and an absolutely huge range of interesting beers and ciders to choose from!
(header photo: Nick Wheat, Rob Barwell and Andy Cullen behind the bar, selfie taken by Nick Wheat).
