Year: 2018

Double IPA (DIPA)… a hop-forward, high ABV pale ale, intense in both aroma and flavour and an immensely popular beer style in today’s beer market.

The DIPA has become more and more prolific in recent years, and despite us being well-known for creating an entire plethora of hoppy pale ales, we’d NEVER, yes that’s never, in 22 years made one. We’ve come close with strong IPAs such as 2016’s much acclaimed Hop Smash, brewed in collaboration with Michigan’s Kuhnhenn Brewery, and have experimented on our pilot kit brewing up 10%+ behemoths for one-off releases for our own festivals, but none have before gone on general release.

Well, now we’ve made two! 

First up we created Deliverance, a new addition to our Brewers Emporium range. As with other beers within the range, the plan is for this to be a constantly rotating and evolving brew. For the first iteration we decided to go for a somewhat traditional DIPA (now there’s a juxtaposition for you), with a high bitterness and in keeping with the West Coast style. The malt grist was comprised of primarily low colour Maris Otter pale ale malt, but with additions of Munich and Caramalt. These slightly sweeter biscuit malts worked well to balance with the hops – Mosaic, Galaxy, Citra and Vic Secret, which were selected to achieve maximum juiciness! Different dry hops were added at two separate points to provide a platform for them all to stand alongside each other in harmony rather than fighting for the foreground to allow for a balanced and full bodied final flavour.

Completing this season’s double DIPA action here at Abbeydale, we invited Kev from Vibrant Forest to collaborate with us using one of our absolute favourite hops and one which Kev was keen to experiment with – the honourable Nelson Sauvin. This one doesn’t fit particularly neatly within a particular category box – whilst the West Coast style is still apparent, we’ve also included a New England influence. The malt bill in this case included 15% oats and 8% rye, giving a silken and slightly spicy backdrop for the grape notes provided by the hops to really get their sunglasses on. We dry hopped with Nelson Sauvin at two different points so as to ensure full dispersion of the hops and a more intense flavour.

Aside from the mashtun being VERY full for both of the above brews, we also modified our mash temperature and process to allow for the production of additional fermentable sugars to allow us to achieve the high ABVs required. As such, mash in temperature was 63°C as opposed to our usual 66.5°C to provide optimum conditions for enzyme action.

In both beers, we used a US 05 yeast strain which provides a clean flavour and has a higher alcohol tolerance than our house yeast (which is perfect for our core range, but not quite robust enough for boozier beasts!).

In a beer with a high ABV, it’s especially important to ensure that careful consideration is given to balancing the beer, and make sure that the flavour palette can stand up to the stronger alcohol flavour so that the beer does not become overwhelming, but retains a refreshing and overall tasty character. Although the finished beers came in at the same ABV, a hefty 9.0%, the diverse hops used and different finishing gravities (Deliverance came in at 12.1 and Nelson Sauvin at 8.8) ensured that each distinct beer has its own individual vibe – the Deliverance is bold and bitter yet balanced, whereas the Nelson Sauvin has a slightly softer, juicy mouthfeel.

We recommend storing these beauties at refrigerator temperature and drinking them fresh to allow those glorious hops to shine their very brightest.

Consider this your advance warning… the eleventh Sunfest will be taking place at the Rising Sun this year from Thursday 5th to Sunday 8th July!

Over 100 beers will be featured across cask and keg, with a wide selection of cider and other goodies too. Plus a range of food stalls, an eclectic mix of entertainment, and the usual incredible atmosphere.

More details to be confirmed in due course, do feel free to get in touch if you have any beers or breweries you would love to see included.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Cheers!

We are pleased to introduce our fourth annual collaboration with the Festival of Debate team – Agent of Change, a sessionable 4.0% pale ale perfect to ponder over. 

Founded in 2015, the Festival of Debate explores politics, economics and society in 2018 through a series of panel discussions, debates, Q&As, artistic responses, keynote speeches and other public events in Sheffield.

The eye-catching pump clip for the beer was created by illustrator Lisa O’Hara, who told us about her inspiration for the artwork… “At the time of receiving this brief, I had been actively adding to a matchbox label collection – which made for a great source of inspiration, in their size and simplified content. I am particularly inspired by the aesthetic of Scandinavian designers like Olle Eksell and Marianne Westman. Since Festival of Debate encompasses people and politics I tried to incorporate a strong and empowered looking figure. Merging this with the beer pump format; simple geometric compositions, and a limited palette – I had a lot of fun getting to the final design. Opus are an excellent bunch to work with and trusted me a great deal, which was refreshing!”

Festival of Debate is coordinated by not-for-profit company Opus Independents in collaboration with over 40 partner organisations across the city. This year’s programme takes place in April, May and June and features over 70 events of all shapes and sizes – the biggest programme yet.

This year’s Festival strands are Culture, Self & Identity, Democracy & Activism, Fairness & Equality, Futures, and Science & Environment. As well as having produced Agent of Change in support of the festival, this year we are also very proud to be sponsoring the Democracy and Activism strand… so keep your eyes peeled for the Abbeydale team at some of the events!

Festival founder James Lock said: “Our chance for a better world comes from facing issues head on, learning new points of view, making the effort to listen and being empathetic with one another. We believe this is everyone’s responsibility and hope that this year’s Festival programme goes some way to furthering that ideal.”

The Festival of Debate starts on 18th April and runs through until 29th June. For a full list of events, to purchase tickets for paid events, and to find out more information about the festival, please visit the Festival of Debate website.

There’s absolutely tons going on and something for everyone, so do get out there, enjoy the events, get involved in the debates, try our collaboration beer and let yourself be an agent of change!

In the first of a new series, we’ve invited Ros Ayres, a local blogger and food expert, to share her thoughts on our beers and come up with a special food pairing. Ros is a Sheffield based food blogger at Nibbly Pig and is also the food editor for Now Then Magazine.

Here’s what Ros made of her trip to the brewery…

“I love hearing the stories behind food and drink businesses and learning more about what drives people’s passion and creativity. It makes me truly appreciate the hard work and heart that’s gone into creating a product.

With over 20 breweries in Sheffield and such a choice of types of beers available from pales, IPAs, stouts to sours – there is much to say about beer. Abbeydale Brewery are producing some interesting new ales and I chatted to Sales and Marketing Director, Dan to find out more… as well as giving myself the challenge to come up with a food pairing for one of their beers.

Over the last year, the brewery have been working with different ingredients, developing recipes and considering tasting notes to bring a little bit of something extra. The whole team work collaboratively to come up with beers, the brewers get experimenting to check it will work and most importantly that it will taste good.

You might have seen their cans featuring ranges including Unbeliever, a sour, Salvation, a stout and Voyager, an IPA. For these specific beers, the recipe is varied at intervals to mix up the flavours and give us punters another beer to sample. For example, there’s been a rice pudding, coconut and rocky road version of the Salvation stout amongst others.  

Dan explained it’s all about learning, and working on collaboration brews is another great way the brewery share knowledge on both sides.  The latest is A + B, a double dry hopped pale made with Bad Seed Brewing, which uses Lemondrop, Centennial and Cascade hops.

Abbeydale make a new beer every week, each brewer shares their expertise and ideas, then a lot of groundwork goes into formulate new recipes and then the brewing proper happens.  50% of the beer produced is distributed within 5 miles of the brewery and is available to buy in local shops and in pubs, including Abbeydale’s own, The Rising Sun, Fulwood Road and Devonshire Cat, Wellington Street.

There are longer term ‘experimenting’ projects happening too and Abbeydale brewer Jim is currently working on the Funk Dungeon. These are a range of slow-fermented barrel-aged beer which will take on average between 6 months and 2 years to produce.  The aging process gives more in-depth characteristics to the beer which you don’t get in quicker brewing. They don’t taste like a traditional ale and will appeal to different audiences who may not like mainstream beer.

New flavours to explore and making beer more accessible to more people can only be a good thing.

A sweet and sour pairing

I’m a fan of sour beers and they’re getting back on trend with breweries, although it’s actually one of the oldest beer styles. I decided to match Abbeydale’s sour, Unbeliever #4 (made using hibiscus and grapefruit) with a dessert, working on the contrasting principles of sour and sweet.

I used a recipe from Sophie Grigson’s book Spices to make Shrikhand, a traditional Indian sweet yoghurt flavoured with saffron and cardamom and topped with nuts.

For me, recipes are all about combining flavours, textures and colours and here I got to tick all of those boxes. The Unbeliever is bright pink from the hibiscus which provided a vibrant contrast to the saffron yellow dessert decorated with green pistachios. Flavour-wise, the beer was refreshing with a zesty zing which worked well with the earthy spiced shrikhand.

Cheers.

Ros”

It all started back at Salford Beer Festival in October last year, when festival founder and all round top bloke Jim Cullen introduced our brewer Jim to Steve – owner of Bexar County Brewery and co-owner of Peterborough’s premier craft beer bar, The Stoneworks. Steve came along to a bottle tasting of our then brand new Funk Dungeon releases, and to our surprise and absolute privilege, instantly invited us down to host a twenty-two line tap takeover at his bar – the largest event of this sort for us to date. We managed to wrangle ourselves a collaboration brew into the bargain and so last week we hopped on the train down south ready to create something truly unique.

Bexar County Brewery is a 7.5 BBL plant located on the outskirts of Peterborough city centre. Steve, who originally hails from Texas, is well known for his experimental brews with a massive emphasis on creating weird and wonderful flavour combinations. The idea we’d jointly agreed on was a beer based on the classic cocktail Dark and Stormy, usually a rum based beverage with generous flavours of lime and ginger. To recreate this in beer form, Steve’s approach was to close down the rest of his brewery production for an entire fortnight and rustle up a large batch of lime kombucha, essentially a tea which is fermented by a scoby – a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast – which grows to suit its environment (“a bit like a goldfish, then” being Laura’s key observation here). The result was a deliciously refreshing drink with a great hit of lime in there, and a giant scoby destined to be fed to Steve’s lucky chickens!

With the kombucha already made, all that was left for us to do on our brewday was get this hybrid beverage ready to make some alcohol! We were aiming for a dark beer, with chocolate and black malts added to the malt grist. 1kg of Perle hops went in at the start of the boil, just to add a gentle bitterness as well as stabilise the beer, along with 20kg of dark sugars and jaggery for that classic rich sweetness, reminiscent of the rum usually used in a dark and stormy cocktail. At the end of the boil, the wort was transferred through the under back, which was packed full of ginger tea to add a spicy element to our finished brew.

Once the beer, to be named “Death of Tomorrow”, was safely in the fermenter and the yeast pitched, it was off to the Stoneworks for our Tap Takeover and Meet the Brewer event. The Stoneworks is Peterborough’s only dedicated craft beer bar, with 22 keg lines giving scope for an interesting and progressive range of beers, alongside a carefully curated cocktail selection (the Mezcal Margarita was a big hit!) and enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff, some of whom we were particularly pleased to see drinking there with us on their night off! It was also great to meet the team from other local breweries including Oakham, 3 Blind Mice and Baker’s Dozen. The bar was buzzing with a lively atmosphere all night and the beers seemed to go down really well. A special keg version of Deception was the first to kick on the evening, with the only keg of Absolution ever made (to date!) and Voyager 7 and 8 not far behind.

Before we left Peterborough, we also popped over to the Hand & Heart, a cask only bar out in the suburbs that’s had over 200 of our beers on over the years. Run by the charismatic Bram and Sue, they had also decided to dedicate all of their lines to our brews for Easter week to coincide with the Stoneworks event.

And a quick final note – we hope to get Steve back up to Sheffield for a return collaboration in late November… just round about the time of this year’s Salford Beer Festival! Look out for news on tickets and more on twitter @salfordbeerfest.

Moonshine minikegs are going to be delivered to the following stockists from Monday 26th March…

The Devonshire Cat www.devonshirecat.co.uk/

The Rising Sun www.risingsunsheffield.co.uk/

Maison du Biere (Elescar) www.maisondubiere.com

Beer Stop (Dronfield) www.facebook.com/BeerStopDronfield/

Beeches of Walkley www.facebook.com/BeechesWalkley/

Mr Pickles www.mrpicklesfoodstore.co.uk/

Starmore Boss starmoreboss.com/

Dram Shop www.facebook.com/TheDramShopUK/

Curious Hop www.curioushop.com/

Archer Road www.archerroadbeerstop.com/

Turners Bottle Shop www.turners-craft-beer.co.uk/

Beer Central www.facebook.com/BeerCentralLtd/

Bargain Booze (Crookes) www.bargainbooze.co.uk/storedetail/?id=531

Mitchells Wine Merchants www.mitchellswine.co.uk/

Beer Huis (Ossett) www.bierhuis.co.uk/

They are in limited supply, so get yours quick! 

Thinking ahead…. we’re also filing them for fathers day, so get in touch with your local store and pre-order!

It’s Sheffield Beer Week this week, and we are putting on a funk celebration across the Steel City. We have four beers being unleashed from the Funk Dungeon; a couple of exclusives and a few first pours.

The first made its debut at Saturday’s opening festival Indie Beer Feast: an Oak Fermented Tart Saison (4.1%, pH 3.16), which uses a tart base wort from the Unbeliever release a couple of months ago, but this version was entirely fermented in an oak puncheon. For those of you who missed out on Saturday’s festival, we also have a special single cask of the tart saison flavoured with a pomegranate tea from our friends at Birdhouse Tea Co, which is being served at The Shakespeare’s barrel aged beer evening tonight.

Also taking place tonight, we also have the first pour of the barrel aged version of 1868, our collaboration with famed beer historian Ron Pattinson. We are currently aiming for this to be the first annual release of a bretted oak aged Scotch Ale, brewed to a historical recipe from 1868. We have a version on keg which has been aged in an ex-rum puncheon, and with additional samples available for ticket holders which have been aged in French and American Oak. Tickets are free and are available here. You can also read more about the brewday behind this tasty barley wine-esque beer here.

1868 will also be on from Wednesday at The Old Workshop, alongside a great selection of beers from other Sheffield breweries in their local beer showcase (please note as it has been barrel aged, the ABV of this version is 11.7% which differs from the pump clip image shown).

Moving on to Thursday night, we are looking forward to Sour Puss at the Devonshire Cat. We will be taking part in our first funk battle, a sour-off (opH?!) with our compatriots Chorlton Brew Co from the other side of the Pennines. At this event we will be featuring a special one off blend of our 12 month aged gruit and a fresher "Flanders" Red. Currently this is only 5 months old but has already developed a soft fruit acidity accompanied by an oak character that underpins the flavours delicately and deliciously. We’re really looking forward to seeing how this one continues to develop.

And after such a fun filled, beer fuelled week, as a riposte to your Beer Week imposed hangover, why not head over to the Rutland Arms for vegan brunch, and a series of 3 bespoke beers made here at Abbeydale with help from Rutland staff Emma and Heather, alongside a Bloody Mary boost to our barrel aged sour.

Cheers!

Jim

Follow the Funk Dungeon on Twitter: @abbeydalefunk

Over the past couple of years, our passion for ageing beer with wild yeast and bacteria has grown, along with the number of beers in our cellar – the affectionately titled Funk Dungeon. And towards the end of last year we were finally ready to start releasing some of those beers into the trade – more on those and the project as a whole in this blog post.

We are also really excited to increasingly have access to and be able to taste the work of other breweries and producers doing the same, and the fact that so many are keen to share knowledge, ideas and advice means that it’s a fantastic community to be a part of.

We feel that now is the perfect time to showcase some of not just our sour and mixed fermentation beers, but also those from other great producers of this type of beer from around the UK. So we will be rolling up the shutters of the brewery once more for you to come and drink 30 rotating lines of the best mixed fermentation beer the UK has to offer.

More information and ticket details will be released soon, but for now get August 25-26 in your diaries! In keeping with the theme we’ll also have music from funk and soul DJs, there’ll be street food on offer and tank beer for those who fancy also sampling the more classic side of Abbeydale’s beery offerings.

We are currently in talks with some incredible breweries including Little Earth Project, Chorlton Brewing Co, Thornbridge and Fyne Ales to get hold of some of their tasty treats, with beers and breweries to be formally announced in due course.

For us, this side project is a great way to experiment with flavours and processes that don’t normally suit the rest of the volume we produce, and offers something genuinely exciting for the progression of our brewery as a whole. It’s been a challenging learning curve with the unexpected never far away, but we’re really proud of how the project is developing and have received some great feedback on the beers released so far. Our Bretted Tangerine Pale and chuckleberry sour “Chuckle Vison” in particular have gone down really well, and we have some crackers coming up including a bretted Scotch Ale brewed to an 1868 recipe and a Berliner weisse which has undergone primary fermentation in barrel.

For all updates be sure to follow the brewery on Facebook and our dedicated @abbeydalefunk twitter page.

Cheers!

Jim

The Hanging Bat are well known for showcasing the finest beers from around the world, with a recent focus on introducing new breweries to their avid drinkers. Our beers are making it further and further afield these days, particularly since the introduction of cans to our beery offerings, and word is starting to spread. So when Hanging Bat Manager Adam got in touch wanting to learn more about our beers by hosting us for a full tap takeover and collaboration brew, we absolutely jumped at the chance. And last week our brewer Scott, office manager Laura and sales rep Janie headed up north to show Scotland exactly what we’re all about!

If you haven’t been to the Hanging Bat, make it top of your “to visit” list for your next trip to Edinburgh. It’s a frankly fantastic bar, with 14 keg lines and 6 cask, plus an astonishing bottle selection showcasing an excellent selection of rare Lambic beers amongst other tasty treats. Delicious BBQ food is on offer too and they brew their own beers on site (more on that in a moment). You NEED to go.

Anyway, back to the beers! For our tap takeover, we totally filled up the keg board with many of our weird and wonderful concoctions, along with four casks to showcase our core range. And it was a pretty stunning line up, even if we do say so ourselves!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The evening was a great success, with our beer going down well across the board. The crowd were really interested in our brews and especially our new souring project, and the vegetarian friendly “You Scratch My Back” pork scratching stout seemed to blow a few minds! Shout out to the staff behind the bar who really took the time to get to know our beers and were a wonderful group to spend the night chatting beer with!

But that’s only half the story. We were also there to concoct something special on their 50l kit with brewer Johnny! A Baltic porter with blackberries and Buckfast steeped bourbon barrel oak chips, to be precise. And somewhere along the line, Johnny and Scott decided that what they really wanted to do was mash in at 10pm and go for the longest mash in Hanging Bat history!

The beer was held at 66.6°C overnight and fourteen hours later we were back to finish off the brew, to be greeted by a thick, sweet and chocolatey wort, a real liquid cuddle and a very tasty breakfast.

Onto the boil where Magnum hops were added for bittering, with East Kent Goldings and 1.6kg of foraged Edinburgh blackberries (a real labour of love went into picking those!) added five minutes before flame out. The Buckfast chips are to be added later. It’s aiming to be a big boozy beast, so Edinburgh folk keep your eyes peeled for “Bucked Up”!

A massive thank you to Adam, Johnny, and the rest of the team at the Hanging Bat for hosting us, and to all the lovely folk that came down to try our brews, including another first – a schooner of Moonshine!

Cheers,

Laura

Sheffield has a brand new beer festival coming to town, and we are very excited to announce that we will be a part of it!

Indie Beer Feast is a new one day festival to be held in the majestic setting of Abbeydale Picture House, across two sessions on Saturday 10^th March. So it’s the perfect way to kick off Sheffield Beer Week, which starts officially on the 12^th and runs through to the 19^th!

We’ll be pouring alongside other magnificent breweries from all around the UK including Black Iris, Moor Brewery, Torrside, Brew York and Magic Rock, and Little Bao Boy, Signor Arancini and Meltworks are rustling up some tasty street food to keep those tummies happy! There’s even a gin bar on hand just in case you fancy a break from all that lovely beer.

The beer list is still to be announced, but watch this space – we might just be planning a cheeky first pour of a very exciting new beer!

Tickets are £6.50, which includes entry to your chosen session and a special Indie Beer Feast glass. We hear they’re flying out so grab yours now! https://events.ticketsforgood.co.uk/events/497-indie-beer-feast-sheffield