Category: Steel City Festival

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.

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)

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

1^st – Tapped Brew Co. American Flyer. An American brown ale

2^nd – Triple Point Brewery. Debut. A new-style IPA.

3^rd – 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.

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.

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.

A number of special events are being hosted at the Steel City Beer and Cider Festival. These can be booked in advance online at https://sheffield.camra.org.uk/festival/#ib-toc-anchor-22

1.  Guided walk: Little Chicago – Thursday

A guided walk with a difference – you will explore Sheffield’s Little Chicago Quarter before your fast-track entry to our Beer Festival. Led by local author, John Stocks and editor of ‘Sheffield’s Real Heritage pubs,’ Dave Pickersgill, you will explore the beer, social and Industrial heritage of the area. The walk will explore streets that feature in John’s book ‘Sheffield 1925: Gang Wars and Wembley Glory,’ and also explore the beer, social and Industrial heritage of the area.

The comfortable walk, with one minor ascent, is just over a mile. It will last for approximately 90 minutes before concluding at Kelham Island Museum for a post-walk drink and discussion.

Tutored tasting – Abbeydale Brewery – Thursday

A tutored beer tasting and discussion led by experts from the oldest brewery in Sheffield. Established in 1996, last year Abbeydale produced over 200 Bbl./week of which over 75% was cask. They produce at least one new beer each week, including both the Funk Dungeon and Dr.Morton’s brands.

You will be introduced to five beers:

• three cask, one key-keg and one bottled beer from the Abbeydale Funk Dungeon collection: Blood Orange Sour (abv 6.0%).
• the latter is from a limited release of only 100 bottles: a collaboration made with Sicilian Moro blood oranges left over from the production of Locksley Distilling citrus liqueur. Abbeydale have added the flesh of the fruit (around 150g/l) directly into the barrel with a simple sour base beer, hopped with UK grown Opus hops. Sour, light and refreshing.
• the cask beers will include the one-off dry-hopped cask which is available in support of the festival’s chosen charity: Weston Park Cancer Charity.

Pub Heritage Talk: Little Chicago – Friday

A short pub heritage talk which will concentrate on the Little Chicago area of Sheffield, taking you back from the C19th and up to the current day. Along the way, mention will be made of the 1884 ‘Sheffield Drinks Map,’ the establishment of a coaching inn and the Sheffield pub with the most CAMRA awards.

The talk will also act as a launch event for a new Sheffield Pub Heritage walk booklet.

More information on the Steel City Beer & Cider Festival is available here

Between Wednesday October 16th and Saturday 19th later this year, Sheffield CAMRA will be holding its 48th annual Beer and Cider Festival down at the famous Kelham Island Museum.
We hope you can join us for some or all of it.

Over those 4 days we’ll be bringing you a choice of over 200 different cask beers, a further 50
keykeg beers, 30 ciders and food stalls, along with talks, tastings and music most nights, but like all beer festivals it is completely organised and staffed by volunteers, who gather together from Sheffield and beyond to set it up, staff and otherwise make it happen.

Set up starts on the Sunday beforehand (13th) with getting the floors protected and the stillage erected. The casks start arriving on the Monday and need to be put in place so the beer is allowed to settle. The bars are then erected and stalls set out. Glasses arrive and need to be washed and made ready, banners erected, tables and chairs set out, etc, etc, etc.

Lots of jobs which need lots of people. Could you help us out and help by doing a shift?

You don’t have to be a member of CAMRA or have a background in hospitality or bar work or
worked at a previous beer festival but obviously such experiences all would be helpful. There’s also lots of other jobs which will need doing and are just as important.

Training will be given for anything you’re not sure of or have never done before.

We have shifts starting at 09:00 right through to after 23:00 when we close and need to clear up. We especially need people who can arrive and stay late to cover all our shifts. Food tokens are available to everyone who does two or more shifts and drink tokens are available for everyone who helps. You should also get a specially designed T-Shirt to keep as a souvenir.

After the festival we also arrange a volunteers reunion social trip, this year it is on 9 November with our coach taking us to Nottingham for the day to enjoy a number of good pubs and tap rooms there!

An online volunteer form, along with all other information, is available at our Festival Website at sheffield.camra.org.uk/festival – just click on the ‘volunteers’ tab or get in touch on 0792-341-6865 and we’ll post out a printed version for you to fill in & return.

Please get your form filled in asap as we have already started allocating jobs. We need everyone to be as flexible as possible as we won’t necessarily be able to give you the job you most want to do but we’ll try and find a suitable alternative if we can.

Do help us make this 48th Sheffield Beer & Cider Festival yet another successful one whether you join us as either as a visitor or as a volunteer. Whichever you come as – we can promise you an enjoyable time.

Malcolm Dixon, SCBF48 Staffing Officer: (festivalstaffing@sheffield.camra.org.uk or 0792-361-6865

We are very happy to confirm we have the go-ahead to organise our 48th Steel City Beer & Cider Festival this year, which will take place from 16 to 19 October.

The venue is once again the wonderfully atmospheric Kelham island Museum with the same format as last year – bars spread across the Upper Hall, Brearley Room, Crucible Room and a marquee serving a huge range of real ales (around 200!) plus over 50 other craft beers in keykeg, bottle and can along with a selection of around 30 different ciders and perry.

The upper hall will also be home to the live music stage and stalls whilst in the courtyard you’ll find a number of street food traders. Meanwhile the Millowners Arms pub, located within the site, will be trading as normal exclusively for festival visitors with some additional beer choices plus all your other pub drinks such as wines, spirits and soft drinks.

New this year will be a street food trader in the rear courtyard by the Crucible room where the keykeg bar is based, adding to the experience for those hanging out around this part of the festival!

For more information visit the website – sheffield.camra.org.uk/sc, this will get updated as details get confirmed, alternatively follow the Steel City Beer & Cider Festival on Facebook, Instagram and X for updates.

After last year’s successful post-covid return, we were looking forward to welcoming everyone to another great festival this year. Little did we know the weather would have other ideas. Here’s how it eventually worked out.

Setup

Set up went particularly well this year, thanks to a good number of enthusiastic and willing volunteers. Starting on Sunday morning, we rattled through setting up the racks and cooling system and by the end of Monday all the beers were in place and chilling ready for opening. Tuesday saw us finishing all the bars and signage, and by Wednesday at 5, with all the food stalls in place, we were open.

Wednesday

The Beer of The Festival, contested by all our local breweries, was again sponsored by our friends at Beer Central and judging began straight away. By 6.30 we were ready to announce the winners. Heist Brew Co. took Gold with their “The Bad Part Of Gnome Town”, a hazy session IPA, and one of their first attempts at a cask beer! Silver was a porter named Brook from Tapped Brew, (also the best pun of the evening) and Bronze was Little Critters’ Pecan and Maple Stout, Great Danish. Purity Brewing hosted a drop-in Q&A session and things were well underway, with everyone enjoying themselves and it seemed like we might top last year.

Thursday

A slight change in the opening hours for this year meant we opened at 11.30 and we had a steady stream of visitors from the off. As usual Thursday afternoon saw a lot of beer tickers arrive to sample the best of what we had on the bars, and a number of works events also boosted numbers early evening. Mike from the Old Shoe ran a talk on cider and an excellent set from folk-rock band Kingfisher Blue rounded off the evening nicely. However, by this point we had already had the flood alert warning and were expecting the worst on Friday.

Friday

Rain! And more rain! When we arrived at 9 o clock the river was already quite high, and the management at Kelham Island Museum were planning hourly assessments to track the water levels. Unfortunately, late morning saw a directive from the Museum that we had to close. Everything that might get water damaged was either taken upstairs, or simply placed on top of the bars. The Museum even had to drive their two Sheffield-built early 20^th century Simplex motor cars up to the upper Hall and park them in front of our stage. A disappointed festival committee trooped off home (after a quick pint in a local establishment of course) to follow the weather forecast and hope for the best for the following morning.

Saturday

Fortunately water levels peaked early evening on Friday without there being any flooding at the Museum and after discussion with the Museum staff on Friday night we got the green light to open, albeit at a slightly later time to allow to put everything back in its correct place.

The weather then decided to improve steadily and, in the end, it was a great day. The River Don engine drew it’s usual admiring crowd; the Loxley Silver Band entertained everyone upstairs; the boys from Kelham Rapper did their sword dances anywhere there was space (however tight that might be!); St Mars of the Desert hosted a well-attended talk on their beers; and live music from Galloping Dick rocked the Upper Hall to finish. The volunteers did their best to reduce the beer surplus at the afterparty, aided by pizzas from Sunshine Pizza Co, and the festival drew to a close.

Sunday

As always at the festival there is an amount of beer left which sadly has to be poured down the drain. As a result of Friday’s closure there was a lot more to dispose of this year, with an obvious effect on the festival’s finances. We’d like to say a thank you to Bradfield brewery, who kindly took back the unopened casks of their beer, and the Rutland Arms and Kelham Island Tavern, who bought the unopened kegs and cider boxes. And thanks to the volunteers who came and dismantled it all on Sunday. They did an incredible job and by 3 o clock we had everything cleared and back in storage.

Final verdict

Overall the festival was a great success on the days we were open, and had we been open on Friday we would no doubt have exceeded last year’s visitor numbers. We raised £1750 for the festival charity, Yorkshire Air Ambulance, thanks to generous donations of unused portions of beer cards, cash, and sales of a special beer from Abbeydale and MKM Building Supplies. Feedback was excellent, and we had several encouraging comments from new visitors, and also new volunteers, who are already looking forward to next year. Here’s to 2024 (and hopefully better weather!).