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CAMRA is considered one of the most successful consumer organisations across Europe. Founded by four real ale enthusiasts back in 1971, today we represent beer drinkers and pub-goers across the UK.

Our vision is to have quality real ale, cider and perry and thriving pubs in every community. Our mission is to promote and advocate:

• the production, availability and consumption of quality real ale, cider and perry
• pubs and clubs as social centres and part of the UK’s cultural heritage
• the benefits of responsible social drinking

We do this by supporting and encouraging the beer and pubs trade by running beer festivals, lobbying Government for change, running numerous awards and developing bespoke pub finders and guides.

There’s plenty for everyone, whether you’re a dedicated campaigner, a beer connoisseur looking to learn more about beer or just want to meet up with friends in your local.

Benefits of being a member include various discount schemes with partner businesses and access to lots of online content including Learn & Discover articles and videos, What’s Brewing online newspaper and Beer Magazine. Members also get cheaper entry into CAMRA beer festivals and discounts on CAMRA books, including the annual Good Beer Guide. You also get a higher level of access to CAMRA’s online pub guide – you can sign in and rate your beer, submit updates and also see which pubs have been awarded a place in the Good Beer Guide. All this can be found at camra.org.uk.

To really make the most of your membership however we recommend getting involved with the local volunteer run branch – we’re Sheffield & District, covering the city plus a big chunk of North Derbyshire. We run regular socials for members, have a programme of pub awards which are nominated and voted for by members, we have this monthly magazine (we need volunteers to write content and distribute copies to pubs) and organise the annual Steel City Beer & Cider Festival.

You can find out more about what is happening in our local branch online at sheffield.camra.org.uk.

Other nearby branches include Barnsley, Rotherham, North Notts, Dronfield, Chesterfield, Matlock & Dales and High Peak.

Join CAMRA online at camra.org.uk/membership.

BRANCH AGM – all Sheffield & District CAMRA members are invited to attend our formal annual general meeting, the venue is the Two & Six micropub in Sheffield City Centre (gallery room) on Saturday 9 May. The normal monthly branch meeting follows.

Whether you are a fresher arriving in the city for the first time or an established student returning for the new academic year following the summer break, welcome to Sheffield, a place packed full of great pubs, bars and breweries!

Unfortunately with Coronavirus restrictions in place to keep everyone safe, things aren’t quite the party they were and the pubgoing experience is a little different – however most of the good pubs, bars and tap rooms have reopened and are following government guidance to operate in a Covid-Safe way (please help them stay open and safe by following the rules!).

We’re here to help you on your adventure enjoying great beer and discovering fantastic places to drink it, check out the links below!

Click here for our guide to Covid-Safe pubgoing including group sizes, test and trace, the sitting down rule and social distancing.

Click here for information on getting to the pub by bus or tram.

Click here for some local area pub guides to inspire your next beery excursion

This years event takes place from 3rd to 5th April in York at the University of York West Campus, in Central Hall. There are several strands to the event – the legally required AGM, the conference where members debate campaigning policy, workshops to share experience running branches and the social side with a members’ bar, brewery trips and pub crawls. All CAMRA members are entitled to attend and can register online at camra.org.uk. This year at the AGM there are four Special Resolutions that have been put forward by the National Executive for a vote, these are to approve changes to the organisation’s Articles of Association to strengthen the governance of the Campaign, following a review last year. There is also a National Executive election. More information can be found in Whats Brewing newspaper or online. If you are a member that cannot attend the AGM, you can register to vote for or against the special resolutions online. In York, the event starts Friday evening with the members bar opening, this is basically a mini beer festival featuring session beers from local breweries and is open exclusively to members who are registered to attend the AGM & Conference. This is a great place to meet up with other members for a relaxed pint after conference or before going into York to visit the local pubs and bars. There are also coach trips out to breweries on the Friday and Saturday nights, these need to be booked in advance online. The AGM happens Saturday morning, which is then followed by the conference for the rest of Saturday daytime and Sunday morning. The fringe events, including workshops, take place Saturday late afternoon after close of conference. The University of York is out of town, however a very good bus service shuttles from York City Centre to the campus and York is easy to reach by train from Sheffield. Looking ahead to next year now, the 2021 event is being hosted by us in Sheffield at the City Hall and once the York event is over, we will be getting busy with our organising and will be putting a call out for volunteers to help!

Our 500th issue of Beer Matters magazine is published on Tuesday 27th August 2019.

We are celebrating with a bumper 48 page issue.

In addition to the usual pub, club and brewery news, awards, listings and trip reports we have a number of articles looking back over the years at how the real ale scene has changed as well as looking to the future.

The magazine arrives from the printers on Tuesday evening when our volunteers pick up their copies from the Dog & Partridge to distribute to pubs across our branch area.  A .pdf version will also be available online to download.

If you would like a printed edition posting to you, copies are available to order online for £1.50 (to cover postal costs) by clicking here or on the image or button below.

Order Print Copy of Beer Matters 500

As a magazine that has been appearing in the pubs and clubs of the Sheffield area for many years, you may take it for granted that Beer Matters will arrive in your local each month for you to pick up a copy. However, as we celebrate our 500^th edition we thought we should shine the spotlight on the talented professionals and dedicated volunteers who make this happen.

Content

The first step is to collect up all the various content for the magazine. Items such as brewery and pub news are a combination of information being picked up by various members on their travels, plus details we are sent by our local breweries and pubs. We also have articles written by our members, and I’m sure many of you will be familiar with regular contributors such as Andy Cullen, Andrew Morton, Dave Pickersgill and Dom Nelson. Most of this content, although not all, will be added to our website prior to inclusion in the magazine.

Design

This is where the first of our professional colleagues gets involved. Robin collates all the website content along with additional material and all the advertising images and turns it into the well laid-out and readable format that you see in the final magazine. Beer Matters recently reached the last four of the National CAMRA magazine of the year award, mainly thanks to Durb Robin’s skills. You may also be familiar with the other work he does for us which is the poster and flyer designs for the Steel City Beer & Cider Festival. In our opinion the last few years designs have been some of the best festival posters we have ever seen.

Printing

In the early days this consisted of a few sheets of photocopied pages being stapled together by willing branch members. However the modern version is vastly different publication, sometimes running to 40 pages. Once the magazine is laid out, and following collective proof-reading from the branch committee, it is sent to our printers, 221 Creative. A locally based company, 221 Creative have been printing Beer Matters for a couple of years now and provided a noticeable increase in quality as well as a quick turnaround from the final proof. 3500 copies of each issue are printed, and then delivered in to the Dog & Partridge for collection by the final and undoubtedly most important link in the chain.

Distributors

None of the above would matter if we didn’t have a group of willing volunteers to distribute the finished magazine to the local pubs and clubs for drinkers to enjoy. These dedicated branch members call in each month to pick up their allocated copies and then give up their free time to do the rounds of their area placing the magazines in over 100 local hostelries so that you, the reader, can be kept informed on what’s happening in the Sheffield beer scene. Beer Matters is very popular in our pubs, with some taking around 100 copies each month. As you can imagine this means some distributors are collecting and distributing large numbers of magazines, and in one case 750 copies each month! This can result in multiple trips and Sheffield CAMRA are lucky to have so many dedicated members who are willing to put in the time and effort to make sure Beer Matters is available across the area. Some of these volunteers are quite well-known locally, such as Andy Cullen, Alan Gibbons and Andy Morton, but other less so, and we felt it was time we gave them the pat on the back they deserve. So if you see one of them bringing the magazine in to your local I’m sure they would welcome a few words of thanks to let them know you appreciate their efforts. One of our longest serving distributors is the indefatigable John Beardshaw: “I was born in Crookes and knew all the pubs in the area and 57 years ago started drinking in them. I usually visited two or three pubs a night so when I started delivering Beer Matters it was an easy thing to take a few copies for each pub out with me. A few pubs have either been converted to flats or demolished but I still deliver to most pubs in the S10 post code area. I used to visit a few pubs in Derbyshire and the picture shows me with friends at the Old Bowling Green at Bradwell. Left to right are Edgar Blagden, Ron Nuttall, John Beardshaw and Phil Patts. Theakston’s Old Peculier was served into stoneware mugs.” Beer Matters can also be read online at sheffield.camra.org.uk/beer-matters If you fancy being part of our distribution team, or know of any pubs not currently receiving Beer Matters who would like to in future, please contact us at beermatters@sheffield.camra.org.uk. Paul Crofts  

As with all branches of CAMRA, Sheffield & District is volunteer run and we need more people to help out to be effective. If you fancy getting involved, here are some things you can do that require varying levels of time/commitment/effort: Brewery Liaison Officer (BLO): This is a role that is all about building a friendly relationship between CAMRA and local brewers and keeping up to speed with what the brewery is doing. You maintain the brewery’s entry in the CAMRA Brewery Information System (B.I.S.) which ensures that information we use for the Good Beer Guide, Champion Beer of Britain and beer festivals are correct. You are also asked to provide a quarterly news report to the regional co-ordinator and encourage the brewery to submit news to our Beer Matters magazine. We currently have BLO vacancies for Intrepid, Mitchells Hop House, On the Edge, Regather, Triple Point, True North, Fuggle Bunny and Toolmakers. Whatpub.com surveyer: Whatpub.com is the public website that fronts CAMRA’s national pub and club database. We aim to have every single venue in the UK in the system with up to date details including opening hours, contact details, idea of beer range, food service times etc. This relies on members submitting updates and also intelligence of new places opening and also closures. We ask that you check what is displayed for pubs and clubs you visit and if it is wrong please ask the manager/staff/landlord/landlady for the correct details and use the link to submit them to us. Beer scoring: Another function members can use on whatpub.com is to rate the quality of the real ale they try in pubs and submit that data to the local CAMRA branch. This information may help with the choosing of Good Beer Guide entries and the winners of pub awards. Beer Matters magazine editor, website and Social Media These roles are currently being covered on a temporary basis, we are looking for enthusiastic people to join the committee and help shout about what Sheffield CAMRA is doing along with sharing our passion for good beer and pubs. Beer Matters magazine distribution Each month we print 3,500 copies of our magazine which volunteers then take out to as many real ale venues across our area as possible. We still have a few areas uncovered, if you could help with that please let us know! Public Affairs Officer As a campaigning organisation, this is an incredibly important role on our committee, building relationships with key people such as MPs, councillors and journalists and ensuring they are aware of our views on issues affecting beer drinkers and pubs, influencing them to our way of thinking and publicising our campaigns. Social Secretary We want as many members actively involved as possible and reflecting that people do things in CAMRA as a hobby in their spare time, it is important to have a good programme of enjoyable social events and someone to organise them. Guided pub crawls, minibus trips, brewery tours, beer tasting sessions, dinners in real ale serving venues are all proven ideas and may be you are the person to not only organise such events but also introduce some new ideas! Beer & Cider Festival Staff Our festivals are 100% volunteer organised, managed and staffed. It involves work but has its rewards and can be quite enjoyable. We’re involved with organising Dronfield beer festival in May and organise Sheffield’s Steel City Beer & Cider Festival in October and always need volunteers to help, staffing forms can be found online. You may also wish to help at other CAMRA branch events or the big national one in London – Great British Beer Festival (where accommodation is provided for full time volunteers), check out camra.org.uk for dates etc. Vote for pub awards! We run a pub of the month award programme as well as a Pub of the year competition. If you drink in a pub in our area that you think deserves recognition, nominate it for an award! If you see a pub already nominated that you think is good, vote for it! Each year as a branch we also pick the best Sheffield & District pubs to feature in the national Good Beer Guide.

Owner John Mitchell writes about the history of his family business You could say beer runs through my veins and a drop of wine! I have been retailing and wholesaling in Sheffield for over 50 years. It all started when my dad Dennis opened his Butchers shop at Meadowhead in 1935, in 1963 we became licensed which saw me leave Jordanthorpe school in 1967 to join the Off-Licence / Beer-off.  My dad was born at the Wagon & Horses in Millhouses in 1917 which was part of The Sheffield Free Brewery. My Grandfather Harry Mitchell went on to run the George IV on Infirmary Road after the Wagon & Horses. In the 1920’s this was a very busy public house selling over 60 hogsheads a week, these quenched the thirst of all the Kelvin & St Phillips hard working steel workers. He was also there during the infamous Sheffield gang wars between the Mooney and Park Hill gangs. The family also ran The Rising Sun on Nethergreen, The Peacock at Baslow which is now the Cavedish Hotel and the Middlewood Tavern which is now sadly derelict. Other members of the family were also in the trade, notably Henry Sampson who not only played cricket for England but also ran the Adelphi which was knocked down in 1970 to build the Crucible Theatre. The Adelphi was a stones house and he was landlord when Sheffield Wednesday were founded there in 1867 and Yorkshire Cricket in 1863 William Brightmore Mitchell married Louise Hodgson in 1834, her father John Hodgson built the Bell Hag on Manchester Road, this used to be known as the Hodgsons Folly. Going back as far as 1695 Joseph Mitchell my 5^th Great Grandfather had the Yorkshire Bridge at Calver. Last but not least another Joseph Mitchell 1727-1788 married Mary Bolsover in 1760, her father was the inventor of the Sheffield Plate. Well me I kept the Old Sidings with my Brother in law Phil and my late wife Diana in the 80’s, it is now the Dronfield Arms. I also had Trippets Wine & Champagne Bar on Trippet Lane in Sheffield 2007-2011 which was formally The Red Lion and was used a mortuary in the great Sheffield flood. So when the restaurant we rented out vacated last December, we saw opportunity and decided to open a Micro-brewery. The brewery is a 5 barrel plant which give scope to brew enough bottles for our shop Mitchells and sell the rest in cask to some of the great Sheffield pubs I have come to know and enjoy a pint in. Cheers, John

The new edition of the Good Beer Guide is now out and features the very best real ale pubs in each area, as selected by local CAMRA branch members that drink in the pubs. It also contains listings of all the breweries in the UK producing real ale at the time of going to press including details of the beers they brew on a regular basis. The printed book costs £12.99 and is available from the usual book shops along with the CAMRA online shop, however members can pick up a copy at CAMRA branch meetings for just £10. Also coming soon is a new Good Beer Guide app for Android and Apple smart phones, keep an eye on your app store for launch.