Thanks from the beer festival tombola!
The organisers of the recent 45th Steel City Beer & Cider Festival would like to thank the following for donating items to the festival tombola and to sell for the Burton Street Foundation Charity:-
The Fat Cat, Kelham Island Tavern, Gardeners Rest, Shakespeares, Kelham Island Brewery, Abbeydale Brewery, Triple Point Brewery, The Brew Foundation, Brian Moore, Paul & Julie Brearley, Sarah Mills, Dave Pickersgill, Paul Crofts, Alan Gibbons, Nigel & Emlyn Tasker, Terry Palmer, David Little and everyone who donated anonymously. Apologies if we have missed anyone.
Andy Morton
I’m Polly, I’m 23, and I’ve been a member of CAMRA for three years. This October’s 45th Steel City Beer Festival was the sixth I’ve attended, but the first I’ve volunteered at. As luck would have it, a week off work coincided with the setup of the festival, so I thought I’d give it a go.
Over the course of a week I helped with everything from glass washing to stillage assembly, pulling pints to putting up bars. I even helped taste test the beer to make sure it was ready to be served!
Would I recommend it? Absolutely. Over the course of the festival I met dozens of new people, learned plenty about what it takes to set up a festival, and most importantly had a tremendous amount of fun.
If you have the time and the interest, helping out at a CAMRA event is a great way to spend a few hours, days, or even a week! 
Kelham Island Museum was the setting once again for the annual Steel City Beer & Cider Festival which took place over 4 days in October. Over 6,000 visitors attended, drinking almost 20,000 pints of beer and 3,000 pints of cider. Thanks to help from our friends at Abbeydale Brewery we managed to keep the Keykeg bar open for the whole festival this year, which certainly proved popular. In fact additional supplies had to be brought in on Saturday morning to ensure we kept the taps flowing.
The usual excellent range of food stalls provided a wide range of hot and cold food, and moving one of the stalls round by the Engine Room, and adding more seating made the marquee area a lot more inclusive, giving a better overall feel to the courtyard. Saturday also saw a charity cake stall run by the Seven Hills WI, featuring cakes baked using beer and cider.
Drinkers were entertained by another top quality choice of live music, featuring rock bands each night, plus the usual Saturday afternoon spot by the Loxley Silver Band, and a return appearance by the ever-lively Kelham Rapper, who could be seen performing their sword dances several times on Saturday at various places around the festival.
Wednesday night sees a lot of the local trade visit, and is the night we run the Champion Beer of Sheffield Award, this year sponsored by Beer Central. Each local brewery is invited to submit one of their beers for the competition which is blind judged by teams of selected tasters.
The results, which announced during the evening were as follows.
3rd place – Vanilla Stout by Bradfield Brewery
We also ran a special event featuring a talk by renowned beer writer Roger Protz. This covered the history of India Pale Ale and included 6 tasters of IPA’s from the festival selection. 22 people attended the talk and feedback was excellent. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it and we will be looking to add additional talks and tasting sessions to the festival in future.
This year’s charity was Burton Street Foundation, who provide various support services for people with learning disabilities and their families. Through collections of cash, unused tokens and donated glass refunds, we are pleased to say that over £2000 was raised for this excellent local charity. Thanks to everyone who donated.
And of course a final mention to our volunteers, all 200 of them! We can’t thank them enough for giving up their free time to come and help make the festival the success it is. It’s a lot of hard work, but everyone enjoys being part of it and it’s nice to see so many faces back again each year. Extra thanks are also due to the volunteers who helped on the last Sunday. What takes four days to build is dismantled and put back into storage in just 10 hours. It’s a herculean effort and the team were rightly treated to a free buffet and free drinks at the Rutland Arms 2 weeks later. This is an area where we could definitely use more help next year, so if you’re feeling up to it, get in touch.
Planning for next year’s festival begins in January, and if you fancy being part of our team, please contact one of the committee, either via the emails listed in the front of Beer Matters, or in person if you see one of us out and about at any point. We’ll be only too happy to let you know what we do, and to find a way you can get involved.
See you all again next year. Cheers.
Paul Crofts 
Respected veteran beer writer Roger Protz is coming to Sheffield’s Steel City Beer & Cider Festival this year on the opening night to celebrate his new book “IPA – A Legend in our time”.
His book will be available to buy on our CAMRA book stall at the festival and there will be meet the author book signing events on Wednesday and Thursday.
Roger will also be leading a tutored tasting session where he will talk you through samples of 5 different IPAs from the festival list. This will be in a private room for a limited number of ticket holders only.
Tickets combining the standard entry package with the tutored tasting event are available to buy online in advance and include
As we near the 2019 Steel City Beer & Cider Festival, it seems like the 500th edition of Beer Matters is a good opportunity to look back over the festival’s history.
1975 – 2018
The first festival was a single day affair, held in September 1975 at Sheffield University’s Tapton Hall of Residence and featured around 25 beers. The following year saw a move to the University Lower Refectory and by 1981 had become a 2 day festival featuring 60 beers from 40 breweries including Hartleys, Mitchells, Oldham, Paines and West Riding. Cider and bottled beer had also been introduced, and the admission price of £1.00 included the glass and the first drink!
The 15th Festival in 1989 saw a move to the Students Union of Sheffield Polytechnic. Admission was now £2.00 and an extra day had been added. In 1993 the Festival returned to Sheffield University, but this was for one year only as the Lower Refectory was then closed for redevelopment. So 1994 saw us back at what was now the Nelson Mandela Building of Sheffield Hallam University.
There we remained until 2001 which saw the move to St Phillips Social Club, Netherthorpe. No longer tied to University vacations in 2003 we moved to October enabling us to attract the student audience.
After 6 years at St Phillips in 2007 we were again looking for new premises due to the impending closure of the Club. We eventually settled on Darnall Liberal Club, but this proved to be too far out of town. The festival’s success was also hampered by the discovery of an unexploded WW2 bomb that delayed staff and visitors from attending! Initial plans for moving under canvas in Endcliffe Park fell through, so the first tented festival was held at Cemetery Park in 2008. After 3 successful years we were finally defeated by the weather. Whilst the punters cheerfully coped with the mud in 2010 after torrential rain the day before opening, the conditions for take down proved too much for the volunteers.
In 2011, we moved to the International Sports Hall, Ponds Forge after managing to get approval for an ambitious budget, as a substantial increase in attendance and turnover were required in order to cover the venue hire. It turned out be unseasonably warm for the beginning of October, we struggled to keep the beer cool and the punters stayed away. Despite a substantial loss, with a modified budget we managed to obtain approval for two further years before we had to call it a day.
So 2014 saw yet another new venue for the 40th Festival. The move to Kelham Island Museum proved a huge success and continues to this day.
2019
So what does this year have in store? An excellent choice of beer of course. Over 300 beers including around 50 keg beers, over 40 real ciders and 2 bottle bars featuring continental beers. Last year we introduced the Sheffield Beer Of The Festival award and will be repeating this again on Wednesday evening.
We are particularly excited that world-famous beer writer Roger Protz will be joining us at the festival and hosting a tasting session based around his new book on IPAs.
Another improvement for this year is the introduction of rinsing points where visitors can clean their glass between drinks. No more heavy stout foam remaining in your glass when you fancy a pale ale for your next beer!
We have our usual array of live acts, booked by the irrepressible Saxbob, and a great variety of food stalls, with extended vegetarian and vegan offerings this year. There is also a welcome return of the Sheffield WI who will be hosting a charity cake stall on the Saturday. In addition to this we have our ever-popular Tombola stall, traditional pub games and CAMRA merchandise desk selling books and t-shirts.
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 Harrogate, and as an extra reward for the Sunday take down volunteers we have a free buffet at the Rutland Arms. 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.
Finally, don’t forget to look out for our festival beermats around the locals pubs. As we have done for the last 3 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.
See you there.
Steel City Beer & Cider Festival, 16-19 October 2019, Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield.
Paul Crofts & Alan Gibbons 
We’re pleased to be able to announce details of our 45th annual beer & cider festival which will take place from 16th to 19th October, again at the atmospheric Kelham Island Museum across the Victorian Courtyard, Brearley Room, Millowners Arms, Marquee and Upper Gallery.
The festival will feature a range of over 250 beers including real ales on cask and other craft beers in keg, can and bottle (including Vegan and Gluten Free choices) along with around 50 traditional ciders and perries.
We will also be hosting an array of street food traders, old fashioned pub games, tombola, book stall and live music.
The event is entirely organised, run and staffed by volunteers who do it to share their love of good beer or cider, if you fancy joining the team and helping out, the staffing form is now live at 
Between them, visitors drank their way through more than 15,000 pints of cask ale; 1,600 pints of KeyKeg beer, 2,400 pints of cider and perry; and 437 bottled and canned international beers. We also signed up 96 new members, a new SCBF record surpassing last year’s 93.
Our fifth year at Kelham Island continued to be successful with punters, with steady crowds turning up from around the country to experience the historic venue. The weather was definitely on our side too, with dry weather throughout apart from a few showers early on Friday afternoon.
We began the festival with 222 different cask ales, 41 KeyKeg beers, a range of 48 ciders and perries and 22 varieties of international beers. Credit must go to the orderers, who once again ordered a superb selection of beers and ciders across the whole range of styles. The KeyKeg bar was completely sold out by Friday evening, and come the close of the festival at 10pm on Saturday there were only a handful of casks with anything left in them!
After a few days spent setting everything up, the festival was officially opened on Wednesday evening by Ben and Tracey from this year’s official charity, Roundabout, who help Sheffield’s homeless young people. With our collection buckets and donated tokens throughout the weekend, we are hoping to have raised around £1,500 for the charity – to be confirmed in the next edition of Beer Matters.
Entertainment throughout the week was provided by the Steve French Band, James Taplin & Mick Holmes, Highway Child and rounded off on the Saturday night by Gamsu. The ever-popular Loxley Silver Band played their usual Saturday afternoon slot, and the Kelham Island Rapper roused the crowds with their nimble sword dancing routine. Of course, we shouldn’t forget Mike’s pub games in the marquee throughout the week too.
This year’s food also seemed to go down well with visitors, with vendors from previous years such as Sunshine Pizza Oven and Yuley’s Bratwurst joined by popular new stalls the Dilla Deli and Sheffield’s own South Street Food. Upstairs, Oddfellows provided the chocolate once again, while Cowley’s Fine Foods added something a little different with his range of meat and vegan jerkies. Kevin’s Pies had a very successful first festival, so much so that he completely sold out – we’ll make sure he bakes a few more next year!
One of the major events at our festival is the beer judging which takes place on the Wednesday. We did things a little differently this year, with each of the breweries from within our branch region submitting a beer for consideration in the Champion Beer of Sheffield competition. We also had Visitors’ Choice awards for the customers’ favourite ales and ciders over the four days, which were announced on Saturday afternoon.
Thanks to everybody who came down and supported us during the week: the brewers who provided the most important ingredient, beer; the customers who came and drank most of it; the local businesses who sponsored glasses, bars, programmes and more; and of course, the volunteers who made it possible. We’ll be announcing the dates of the next festival early in the New Year, so keep your eyes peeled!
Dominic Nelson