Category: Pubs

The Beer Engine on Cemetery Road/London Road is now open and already proving a hit amongst beer drinkers. A range of 6 real ales are available – the two regular beers are Exit 33 Thirst Aid (nice, refreshing and session strength) and Bass (a classic bitter) with the rest a regularly changing selection of interesting beers from further afield. Some special events are planned on the beer front including a tap takeover with Bad Seed Brewery. Also on the bar is real cider, craft keg beers and a quality selection of bottled beers. The food service began a week after opening. Tapas style bar snacks are available on weekdays and roast dinners on Sundays. On a Saturday when Sheffield United are at home pie & peas will be available, other Saturdays its bar snacks. The pub has already seen a rare glimpse of spring sunshine and the beer garden proved the place to be! The Beer Engine is currently opening from 4pm Monday to Thursday and from midday Friday to Sunday.  

The Manor House Hotel have announced their plans for Three Valleys Festival on Saturday 6th June. There will be a dedicated and themed beer tent featuring 6 beers from Abbeydale Brewery, Music in the afternoon (3.30 ish start) on the outside patio from Sam Wain, a jazz/blues/boogie-woogie pianist & singer; Quality food provided by ‘I ♥ Ostrich’  with their range of superb burgers, fries & other ‘street’ food and Hotel rooms available for weary and tired drinkers with special festival rates available ! As part of the festival a free bus service will run from Dronfield Station to the hotel every half hour.

By the time you are reading this our new management team at The Rising Sun should be nicely settled in, and we are delighted to have Ryan and Nicole on board, and we look forward to a long and successful future together. You may well be familiar with them from their previous roles at the Robin Hood and the Hammer and Pincers respectively. Building work is also well underway, and we again apologise for any inconvenience caused during the expansion and appreciate your continued support. As mentioned in last months edition, the SunFest dates are 9th-12th July and will be going ahead regardless of the building works! We hope to see as many of you as possible there and if you can’t quite wait that long for a beer festival, we would be delighted to see you at the Sheffield Breweries Co-Operative tent at Sheffield Food Festival. Please see the entry regarding that elsewhere in this issue. Robin Baker, Abbeydale Brewery

A busy time at the Three Tuns in Dronfield, as you read this the Cheese festival that features platters of various exotic varieties of cheese will have just finished and coming up on the 30th April the pub is hosting Dronfield’s Question time event where prospective local MPs will be present to answer questions from voters – with the beer and comfort the pub offers!

Looking further ahead the Tuns is continuing to offer food on bank holiday Mondays (they are normally closed on Mondays) and they are also once again part of the Three Valleys Festival on 6th June.

The Ball Inn is now offering a discount for CAMRA members, just show your card before ordering and they will apply the discount.  The Ball has 14 real ale pumps with local beers.    

Our new Italian inspired menu starts on 1^st May and we’ll be stocking a range of Italian bottled beers to complement it. We now have a monthly open music jam session on the first Friday of every month. Guest musicians are welcome to come along either with or without their instruments. On the same night we’ll be doing a different food offering each month such as curry night, fish and chips, tacos or Chinese. All at a special price. The first two have been a real success so we need musicians and ale drinkers to come along and make it grow. A real cider is now on offer at all times.

Drinkers in Sheffield pubs are being reintroduced to a bar game that had almost died out in the city. Bar Billiards in Sheffield has become so popular that the number of facilities has almost doubled. Landlords Steve and Rebecca Keir are trying to save the traditional pub game from extinction by starting a new league. They started their efforts to save bar billiards in January 2014, as they had one of only two tables left in the city. They joined forces with The Gardeners Rest at Neepsend to host regular tournaments of the traditional pub game. Now there are eight Bar Billiards tables in the city, with new facilities at the Butchers Arms in Marsh Lane, The Steelers Bar at Intake, The Commercial in Chapeltown and more recently at Shakespear’s at West Bar. Steve Keir, and his wife Rebecca, said: “The game is certainly becoming a hit, more and more people are starting to become involved.” Bar billiards, which first became popular in England during the 1930s, developed from the French and Russian game ‘billard russe’. The game is played from only 1 side of the table, making it ideal for small and traditional pubs. Players must pot balls into any of the nine holes on the table, which all have a different point score, within a 17-minute time limit without knocking over any of the three pins. The first Sheffield Bar Billiards league season started in April 2015 with six of the eight pub teams taking part. Butchers Arms (Marsh Lane) Steelers Sports Bar Shakespeare’s The Gardeners Rest The Cross Scythes (Derbyshire Lane) The Commercial The top two teams will go on to play the top two teams in the York Bar Billiards league to find the 2015 Yorkshire Champions. We are working tiredlessly to save this great British game in Yorkshire and are always looking for new venues, teams and players. It is a fun league with players of all abilities and we dont take it too seriously. For us, its more about the game and the enjoyment of playing, not the win. So if you want to join in, all are welcome. Please help us save Bar Billiards contact your local Billiards pub or contact Sheffield Bar Billiards on twitter: https:twitter.com/sheffbilliards, on facebook:www.facebook.com/Sheffield-Bar-Billiards and on web http://sheffieldbarbilliard.wix.com/sheffieldbarbilliard Steven Keir, the Butchers Arms, Marsh lane.

Picture: Castle Rock Brewery’s Lewis Townsend, Sheffield CAMRA members Andy Cullen and Rodney Spriggs with the Woods family, Rebecca, Kevin and Steph in the new lounge at the New Barrack Tavern Football supporters, music lovers, real ale drinkers and the neighbours joined Kev, Steph and Rebecca Woods to toast the opening of a new bar and lounge at Sheffield’s New Barrack Tavern.  The Woods family has run the tavern for the past 11 years and it was voted a CAMRA pub of the month in 2014. Located on the city’s Penistone Road, the pub is already a respected destination for real ale drinkers and for many on their way to and from matches at Hillsborough.  The new lounge which will be used as a public bar on busy days can be closed off for private seminars, parties and meetings. £35,000 has been invested in the new lounge which replaced a Victorian shop and shed on the site.  Wooden parts of the old structure have been preserved and incorporated into the fabric of the new room. Landlord Kev Woods welcomed the guests to the opening; “It’s gratifying that at a time when we hear lots of gloomy stuff about pub closures, that we’ve bucked the trend and made the pub bigger.  On some days it can be a bit of a push, and the new lounge will make things much easier,” he says. Among those attending were members of the local community, representatives of Sheffield CAMRA and directors of the pub owners, Castle Rock Brewery. Graham Percy

As we climb out of the winter months and the new year hangover, the Castle has sprung back to life! As well as the three real ales, a real cider is now available, live music features every alternate Saturday and there is a monthly themed food night – March 13th was ‘a taste of India’ and for £12 you got a poppadum with pickles and dips, a platter of onion bhaji, meat samosa, pakora, gobi and salad then the main course, one of a choice of three currys with rice.