Year: 2020

Unpredictable. Chaotic. Worrying.

Adaptability. Resilience. Teamwork.

Our industry has faced absolutely enormous challenges over the course of this year, and we’re absolutely no exception. We’ve made it through thanks to our will, determination, careful cash management and various government schemes, a whole lot of pivoting to the point we’re all dizzy, and most importantly all of you!

Of course, we can’t talk about this year without mentioning that we had to take the incredibly difficult decision to close our wonderful city centre bar, The Devonshire Cat, earlier in the year. Whilst this was heartbreaking for all of us, it has enabled us to focus on getting the brewery business, and that of our community pub, The Rising Sun, into the strongest position possible for survival.

And ultimately, we’re still here, have managed to preserve jobs across the business, and have so many positives to be thankful for – so that’s what we’ve chosen to reflect on as 2020 comes to an end.

Firstly, our very own shiny canning line arrived at a very handy time early in the first lockdown, which was a real lifeline for us and meant we had much more flexibility in terms of which beers we were able to release in can (over 40 different varieties), and how often.

We’ve tripled our can sales this year in comparison to 2019, with around 375,000 heading out to you thirsty lot! In terms of a proportion of our total output, cans have gone from under 3% in 2019 to over 16% in 2020. It is worth saying that this is also partly because our overall volumes are down significantly – although we hope to achieve just over half of our 2019 output, which we’re pretty proud of under the circumstances.

Speaking of cans, a huge moment for us was releasing our much loved flagship pale ale, Moonshine, in cans in May. This had been something we had in the pipeline prior to lockdown, but the situation certainly sped up our progress. We were able to follow this by offering the rest of our core range, which had previously only been available in cask, in can too, and they’ve all been really well received – and we’re already coming up to our 100,000th can of Moonshine!

Our online shop has become a much more important part of our business, not only with our canned beers but also due to the introduction of minikegs which have been around 6% of our total output this year. We also have our first dedicated international customer, Bassan Bernardo & Figli, who have helped us get our beers into Italy!

We’ve won some prestigious awards for our beers throughout 2020 too, including a Regional Gold medal for Heresy lager at the SIBA keg awards, and a Regional Gold and National Bronze award for our Daily Bread Best Bitter in can, which we’re really proud of.

Whilst we sadly weren’t able to hold Sunfest at the Rising Sun in July, we did manage to turn Funk Fest, our mixed fermentation celebration, into an online virtual event – Funk Fest At Home! We had a great weekend with over a hundred of you joining us in imbibing our way through some exclusive beers released just for the festival, and other breweries from around the country got involved too. We hope we were able to keep the festival spirit alive whilst we all wait patiently for events to return, but the rise of the virtual beer tasting could well be here to stay too. Whilst we wouldn’t want to see this sort of thing replace the real life social elements of a festival, as an addition to our beer drinking world it could be a great way to ensure events are accessible and inclusive to as many people as possible.

Finally, and most importantly, 2020 has been all about the people! We are so grateful for and proud of all our staff here and our trade customers, who have dealt admirably with everything that’s been thrown at them, and enormously thankful to everyone who’s placed an order on our online shop or bought our beer from other independent retailers. We’ve loved being able to meet (from a safe distance!) so many more of our customers, especially locally, and have done our best to keep the community spirit alive with our “pay it forward” scheme. We’ve also worked with trade organisations to lobby the government for fairer and more meaningful support for the industry, whilst the determination and sense of co-operation that our fellow brewers and suppliers have shown has been truly amazing.

And so we’re going into 2021 feeling cautiously positive – whilst we, along with the whole country and indeed the rest of the world have some way to go to deal with this virus and wait for the new normal (whatever that may come to mean) to emerge, we are optimistic that we can continue to pull together and will always do our best to keep adapting to new challenges.

2021 is also our 25^th anniversary year! Look out for our next blog coming soon on all of our plans (as far as we’ve been able to make them under the current circumstances) for how we’ll be celebrating.

A huge thank you to everyone who’s supported us in any which way this year. We genuinely couldn’t have done it without you.

Cheers! And here’s to a brighter 2021.

Team Abbeydale x

Photo credits: Mark Newton Photography

So after an absolute whirlwind of a year, we’re very grateful to have made it to December and have tried our hardest to have plenty of festive cheer on offer! Hopefully we can bring some Christmas magic to an occasion which is undoubtedly going to look a little different this year. At least we can make sure there is still beer!

We’ve got some ace gift ideas available on our online shop, including for the first time a limited edition mixed case featuring 24 different beers! We reckon it’s the perfect selection box for grown-ups and a great treat for yourself or a beer loving pal.

And if you’re a on the lookout for a Secret Santa present, there’s a selection of gift packs available which each feature three different beers, plus our range of merchandise, from glassware and other goodies to make your home bar feel more like the real deal, to t-shirts and even notebooks!

In response to feedback, we’ve also introduced gift vouchers, available from £5 to £50 and a perfect choice for somebody who you know is a beer fan but aren’t sure exactly which styles they’ll love the most.

Plus of course, our cans and minikegs are plentiful (and we’ve currently got pre-orders running for Moonshine in minikegs to guarantee that you’ll have 5L of our flagship pale in perfect condition to sup on for the big day!)

Details of our festive order deadlines are now shown on our online shop too, we’ll be here right the way through to Christmas Eve for collections – we do recommend getting your order in with plenty of time if you can, especially if you require nationwide delivery as our courier partners, APC, are really busy at the moment!

We’re also running a competition over on our social media to win an amazing hamper full of festive goodies, from ourselves and some of our fellow Sheffield independent businesses! The contents of the hamper retail at over £85 and include…

• A selection of Abbeydale Brewery beers
• A copy of “The Sheffield Cookbook: Second Helpings” which includes one of our very own recipes!
• A stainless steel “Glogg” pint pot
• “Brews of the World” card game, think beery Top Trumps! Features Last Rites, always a good one to have in your hand!
• An Abbeydale Brewery notebook
• Funk Dungeon snapback
• Birdhouse Tea Co. “Hoppy Days” tea infused with hops
• Forge Bakehouse Sour Cherry, Apple & Brandy jam from their festive collection
• A tote bag from our neighbours Turner’s Bottle Shop

Simply head to Facebook or Twitter and follow the instructions on the competition posts (dated 28^th November) to be in with a chance to win! (18+ and UK only, closes Monday 14th December).

There really has never been a more important time to support small independent businesses than now, and it is so very appreciated!

Keep safe, be merry and look after one another!

Cheers,

Team Abbeydale x

With the new, new Tier 3 restrictions coming into force for South Yorkshire from Wednesday, it continues to be tough times for our industry and we’re no exception. But we’re resilient, inventive and adaptable, and very much focused on surviving this.

We’re still here, we’re still brewing, and we fully intend for that to continue!

We stand in solidarity with our amazing trade customers, who have put so much effort into adapting to the ever changing guidance and going above and beyond to keep their customers safe. The new tier restrictions are yet another blow, with more venues remaining closed during what would usually be the busiest time of the year for us all. 

We are here to support all of our trade customers as much as we are able. We are still able to service our usual delivery areas (as far as we are aware!) so it will be business as usual for any customers who are not under higher levels of restrictions. And for businesses operating as a takeaway or looking to re-address their product balance we have a wide range of product in can and minikeg, so please get in touch if this would be of interest. Our drivers will of course follow all guidance and maintain the highest levels of hygiene and social distancing measures.

Pubs and breweries are just the tip of the iceberg, with the entire supply chain affected – from the farmers who grow our barley, to the hop merchants supplying us with the very best hops from around the globe, to the cellar technicians and security guards for whom the humble pub forms a critical part of their work. They, like ourselves, have for the most part been unable to access much in the way of government support. We’re all in this together and we will continue to do our utmost to support the whole industry however we are able. For now that means focusing on survival and battening down the hatches whilst we keep working hard to keep the beer flowing, whether it’s to be drunk in a pub with a "substantial meal" or at home. So please know whenever you’re cracking open a can or enjoying a pint, that you’re supporting a massive array of businesses and all of the people employed by them in doing so… drink good, do good!

As of 2nd December our pub, the Rising Sun, will be re-opening for takeaway drinks only from 4.30-9pm weekdays, 1-9 on Saturday and 1-6 on Sunday. Our landlord Garry has really missed you all, so please pop in if you fancy taking a little bit of the pub experience home with you!

And of course, our online shop remains open as usual and we can bring your favourite beer right to your door, wherever you are in the country as we deliver nationwide! Delivery is free with all orders of 24 cans or two minikegs (or more!), and collection is free from the brewery itself with no minimum order, for those local to us. Collections are available Mon-Fri 2-6 and Saturday 10-4.

Support your local independents, pals – and together let’s make sure that Christmas isn’t cancelled!

Cheers,

Team Abbeydale x

Photo credit: Mark Newton Photography

Our most outrageous beer yet has been (re)brewed and is making its way out into the wild for the second year in a row! Strawberry Tigers & Rooftop Jacuzzis is a 12.4% strawberry, chocolate, smoked, cherry wood-chipped imperial dessert stout, brewed in collaboration with craft beer artist, graphic designer and homebrewer Lewis Ryan, aka Lewy.

You’ll be familiar with Lewy’s work from many of our past beers, including our collaboration Autumn/Winter 2018, and Spring/Summer 2019 series’, and can find out more about him in this blog post. 

When we first got to know Lewy back in 2017, one of the first pieces he showed us was the artwork for Strawberry Tigers – a homebrew recipe that he’d created. We loved it, and it was that which sparked off our relationship, so it makes perfect sense that we’ve now been able to upscale Lewy’s recipe to brew his beer on our kit.

The artwork itself has also undergone a few creative tweaks since then to pair perfectly with the beer it represents… the jacuzzi is an illustration of our beloved hopback (our original mashtun) and the background scenery takes inspiration from our surroundings here on Abbeydale Road. It’s also the shiniest label our printers reckon they have ever seen, with metallic printing influenced by the Dufex technique, and of course plenty of Lewy’s Pinkest Pink!

And the beer? Well, we reckon it does just what it says on the tin! Full bodied, puddingy rich and fruity sweet, with the complex flavours working together in balance and harmony. And whilst we haven’t been able to do a launch event this year (last year at Industry Tap, with a live set from Lewy’s band, was one of our 2019 highlights!) we do have a couple of extra special ideas up our sleeves, so watch this space for more details coming soon.

Cheers!

As lockdown takes hold of the nation once more, we just wanted to let you all know what we’re up to – we’re still here, still brewing, and still here for you – whether you’re in need of a beer or even just a chat!

Our lovely community pub The Rising Sun has closed its doors again in line with the new regulations, and so we are no longer in a position to offer collections of online shop orders from the pub. However we’ve done yet more pivoting and have been able to move this service to the brewery site – so for those local to us, click and collect is available! Orders must be placed online in advance, but then we’ll have your beer ready and waiting for you with a smile (behind a mask, but we promise it’s there!). We’ll be open for collections 2-6 Monday-Friday and 10-4 on Saturdays. Any order placed by midday Monday-Saturday will be ready to collect from 2pm that same day! We’ll look after your order until you’re ready to come and grab it, so don’t worry if you can’t make it on the day you place your order. 

Deliveries will of course be continuing, both locally and nationwide, and are still FREE with all orders of a case of cans or two minikegs. So don’t forget that you can get hold of our beers to enjoy at home without having to leave the comfort of your settee, we will very happily come to your door!

With pubs sadly closing for the next few weeks, we’re diverting some of the stocks we had ready for cask into 5l minikegs, so keep an eye on the online shop for more of those coming soon! Alongside this we’ve got even more cans on the way, as well as of course all your regular favourites. We’re doing our very best to keep busy and keep the beer flowing!

We’d love to encourage you all to support your local independent businesses this month – now could be the perfect time to crack on with your Christmas shopping! We’ve got the first of our gift ideas launching this weekend with gift boxes and Moonshine minikegs pre-orders on the way! But of course, it’s not just us – we’re hugely lucky even just in the Abbeydale Road area of Sheffield to be surrounded by amazingly resilient and creative businesses, so please if you are able, consider doing your shopping with smaller companies for whom your custom is so, so valuable.

Thank you so much for your support – at the risk of sounding like a broken record, it really does mean a lot to us all. We genuinely couldn’t get through this without you, and we hope we can bring a little bit of cheer to these challenging times.

Team Abbeydale x

Sheffield Beer Week, which took place in March 2020, was the last real beery celebration that we all had prior to lockdown taking hold of the nation. As part of this, we discovered that Tom and Dani from the incredible Little Earth Project would be visiting our hometown for an event, and so we absolutely jumped at the opportunity to invite them to brew something special with us. That something special turned out to be… a lichtenhainer!

A lichtenhainer is a lightly smoked sour beer which is relatively rarely seen on shelves and bars. Our version contains hundreds of fresh lemons, along with bunches of rosemary foraged from the Little Earth Project farm and our gardens in Sheffield (does it still count as foraging if it’s from your garden?!), all of which was added hot side on the brewday along with aged Dr Rudi hops at 3g/l. The codename for this beer prior to release was “Project Gravy”, so we’ll let you imagine for yourself the aroma in the brewhouse!

We primary fermented with our house yeast before barrel ageing in eight 180l neutral American oak barrels for 7 months. The barrels were third fill by us, with our house yeasts and bacteria happily infused in there ready to work their magic on this beer.

The intention was always to barrel age the beer and release it at our Funk Fest annual event – which this year, we had to hold virtually. We still managed to make the first pour a festival exclusive, with us holding a Zoom event alongside Tom and Dani to drink the beer together along with our festival “attendees”!

The smoked malt (we chose beechwood), whilst giving a gentle lick at the end, doesn’t overpower and contributes to creating a beer which is overall light, zesty, and surprisingly rounded, with a well balanced herbal finish and a good whack of sharp acidity. It’s less smoky than a traditional lichtenhainer, so don’t be put off if you aren’t usually a fan of a smoky beer – one of our Funk Fest At Home attendees described it as having a “friendly” level of smoke character! It’s also a slightly higher ABV (5.1%) than would usually be seen in this style, which was a deliberate choice to ensure we were more likely to have a stable end product.

This is the kind of beer that everyone picks up on a different element first… let us know your tasting notes and what you find to be the dominant flavour (our favourite so far is "it’s making the inside of my cheeks rain")! And whilst sweet, sour and smoke have overtaken savoury on the flavour, our festival attendees reckoned this would be a great beer to pair along with food and we’re definitely going to try a beer butt roast chicken!

For anybody who would like to watch the tasting session as it happened at Funk Fest At Home (recorded live during the festival on October 30th), simply click play on the video below!

The artwork for this beer has been created by our designer James Murphy, and features our skellie friend on a camping trip. The hare in the foreground is inspired by our post-brewday trip to the Three Stags Heads in Wardlow Mires, which was the last pub we were able to visit before March’s lockdown. 

Through the Sticks is available now on our online shop, and to trade customers too, so look out for it popping up on the shelves of your favourite independent retailers!

Our Funk Fest At Home boxes are now SOLD OUT (more details on those can be found here), but that’s not the only way you can get involved! Funk Fest has never been just about Abbeydale Brewery and our Funk Dungeon – the spirit of the festival has always been one of collaboration, mutual support, and encouraging conversation around sour beers and mixed fermentation in general. We’re very lucky to have so many outstanding producers of these styles of beer surrounding us, and we’d love you to join in the conversation.

So, with that in mind, local retailers and other breweries too are getting involved, and supplying the “guest” beers for our little at-home festival! Whichever mixed ferm beverage you choose to crack open for the occasion, feel free to join in using #FunkFestAtHome and #FunkFestFringe on Twitter and Instagram over the festival weekend of 30th October-1st November, and be sure to send us your photos and reviews on Facebook too!

We expect this list to keep changing as we get closer to the festivities, so keep your eyes peeled and we’ll be sure to keep this regularly updated. Here’s what we know so far!

Hop Hideout have put together a cider box with virtual orchard tour! The tour will be at 4pm on Sunday 1^st November with Ross Cider. You can pre-order your box now here.

Beer Central have lots of exciting new sours to release, so watch out for them coming soon! Sean and the team will be recommending something new from innovative UK producers alongside traditional Belgian examples of the style.

Archer Road Beer Stop and The Green Shop are both offering 10% off sour and mixed fermentation beers in the run up to the festival, from 23^rd October to 1^st November.

Craft & Berry will have 20% off sour beers online (using code FUNKFEST20) and in-store, between the 26th and 31st October

Turner’s Bottle & Tap are offering 10% off their range of sour beer in can over the festival weekend, from 29^th October to 1^st November.

Walkley Beer Co have some great sours available and will also be joining us to launch our Little Earth Project collaboration, Through the Sticks.

And look out for new releases from Wilderness Brewery and Woodman’s Wild Ale, both of whom have supplied their incredible beers to our festival in the past and have some great things in the pipeline. We’d also recommend seeking out beers from Little Earth Project, who are joining our virtual tasting of our Through The Sticks collaboration on Friday 30th October, and London Beer Factory, who have helped us create three amazing beers which launch over the festival weekend. And a final shout out here for Yonder Brewing & Blending, who very kindly helped us to source the bottles for our festival tasting sets!

We’re also hoping to support a Funk Fest Fringe which we’d initially planned during the two weeks surrounding the festival but are now extending out to whenever venues are able to do so (whilst of course remaining mindful of the ever changing situation – so apologies that this information is currently a little vague, please consider it a work in progress!), featuring the following venues:

London Beer Factory’s The Barrel Project hope to host the London launch of our three collaboration beers, live brewed during Funk Fest 2019!

We’re in the process of finalising (well, as final as final can be in the current circumstances) plans with Wigan Central, Broken Seal Tap Room (Stevenage), The Stoneworks (Peterborough), Walkley Beer Co, Boozehound, Jabeerwocky, Bar Stewards, The WIsewood and The Raven.

Plus the team over at Sheffield Hopcast will be recording a special episode of their podcast focused around sour and mixed ferm beers to be released in early November, so be sure to give that a listen!

Finally, The Crow Inn had planned a Berliner Weisse event, featuring a special beer from ourselves and different flavours of syrup made by the Rutland Arms kitchen for you to choose your perfect combination! This is currently on hold due to Tier 3 restrictions but we’ll let you know as soon as we can regarding a re-arranged date.

If you’re a retailer or venue that would like to be involved, it’s not too late! Get in touch with anything you’d like to do to help us spread the mixed ferm word, we’d love to have you! 

Christie (Brewer) here shedding some light on what’s gone into, and how we made the most recent release in our Deliverance DIPA series. Weird day in the beer world today but hopefully by the time this goes live the trade can still buy it and online shop customers can still get their orders in.

Firstly, the premise: so as the name suggests it’s an Australian hopped DIPA. Hop-wise we’ve exclusively used Galaxy and Vic Secret hops, Galaxy’s there for the fruit and Vic Secret’s there for the sharper citrus ‘make this still taste like beer vibe‘.

No bittering hops in this one as the late hopback additions of Vic Secret have plenty of potential bitterness so we’ve still got some bite to the beer.

The dry hop additions were on day 2 (Vic Secret) and day 3 (Galaxy) of fermentation so we’ve got a little bit of bio transformation from the hops giving you some of that ripe pulpy goodness (and haze).

Yeast wise, for this style of beer Lallemand’s London ESB is our go to, we get swift fermentations, it finishes a little sweet and the lag phase (time it takes the start kicking off) is practically non-existant.

With the malt we brewed this one pretty differently to the way we’ve made oat heavy beers in the past. We always use rolled porridge oats rather than malted oats as we find they are much more effective at giving you the protein heavy porridge vibes that you’d expect from oats. As you can imagine though, the density of porridge isn’t particularly workable so the dreaded stuck mash is always a worry. To avoid that this time we made our own oat milk by mashing in the oats on their own at a lower temperature partially breaking down the Beta Glucan which makes it set like glue. We then blasted this on its own into the copper to hold while we dug out the mash tun, mashed in again with all the barley and wheat and then brought to the boil together. We’ve used oat milk that we have bought for a few beers in the past, but we wanted a much bigger volume for this beer (and also it really hurts your fingers opening hundreds of cartons of oat milk…!)

I wanted to get a slightly more orangey hue from the wort as well, so we gave it an extra long boil to get the colour via the Maillard reaction, without the addition of more biscuity malts.

With lots of lipids from the oat milk, haze from the hops, orangey colour and soft carbonation, the aesthetic intention is for it to pour and look not dissimilar to mango juice.

So to cut a long story short, we made our own oat milk, then boiled it up with the wort giving us the super protein heavy, sweet and dense base to then inundate with juicy Australian hops. Heavy hitting but not too boozy, please enjoy responsibly.

Christie xx

Hi, funky beer friends!

It will come as no surprise to hear that we are sadly not able to hold a Funk Fest event here at the brewery this year. HOWEVER – we don’t want to let the momentum that the festival has built up over the past two years completely fade away, so we’ve come up with a little bit of a plan…

Introducing Funk Fest At Home! Taking place over Halloween weekend (Friday 30^th October – Sunday 1^st November), we’re going to be releasing a selection of extra special beers alongside a small series of online tutored tastings and a virtual brewery tour (so you can see inside the Funk Dungeon itself for the very first time, all from the comfort of your own settee!).

Pre-orders of the boxes launch at 1pm on Monday 5th October and can be purchased exclusively via our online shop. Here’s what you will be able to find inside them…

Attendees of Funk Fest 2019 may remember that during the festival we were lucky enough to brew with London Beer Factory and their mobile coolship. We produced one wort during the brew which was then split into three batches to explore different approaches to fermentation – so as well as the spontaneously inoculated coolship version, there’s also a bretted variety and one which was pitched with our house saison blend. We’re excited to announce that these three same-but-different beers will be released in bottle, exclusively for Funk Fest At Home! We’ll be guiding you through the three beers in an online tasting session too.

Alongside this we’re also launching our collaboration with the incredible Little Earth Project, “Through The Sticks” – a Rosemary & Lemon Lichtenhainer. This beer will be on full release from early November, with festival “attendees” being amongst the first to taste it.

And finally, we’ll have a fully spontaneously fermented Kriek, with 100g/l of sour cherry puree added to a delicious saison-esque base. This one’s another festival exclusive, available in hand filled and individually numbered bottles.

But that’s not all! Funk Fest has always been more than simply an Abbeydale Brewery showcase. We’re really keen to support the wider industry, in keeping with the spirit of the festival and in celebration of the wonderful producers of these styles of beer. And so we’re working together with a number of local bottle shops who will be joining us in shouting about some amazing mixed fermentation and wild beers, ciders and even natural wines in the run up to the festival.

And whilst we can’t all get together at the moment, we’re hopefully planning to support venues to host a mini “Funk Fest Fringe” between 28^th October and 6^th November (obviously keeping a close eye on the ever changing situation), with some small scale events featuring special Funk Dungeon releases or showcasing other mixed ferm producers, so watch this space for more details on that. (And if you’re a venue reading this who’d like to be involved, please get in touch!).

We’re gutted not to have been able to have a Funk Fest event at the brewery, but we hope that our plans will go some way to bridging the gap in a safe and responsible way, and still allow us to keep up the spirit of support, collaboration and funky celebration that Funk Fest is all about.

Cheers!

Fresh Can Friday just got a whole new meaning, as this week we launch our new crowlers! After kicking off with our amazing Lost Souls – Smashwafel Imperial Stout this week, we’ve got another rare beer coming soon for pre-order, so keep your eyes peeled.

Our machine is a Crowler Nation Platinum Pro – an absolutely top of the line machine which we’ve had imported from Wisconsin, America.  We’re very proud of it! It’s essentially a seamer – a machine that seals a can lid onto a can. The operator rinses the can, floods it with CO2 (to keep air out) then fills with tasty beer, puts a lid on and gives it a whizz through the machine for a perfect seal.  Our crowler cans hold 32 US oz (946ml), so we reckon they’re perfect for sharing with a friend.

Crowler machines are hugely popular in American taprooms and bars where people can get superfresh beer at the point of dispense and take it away with them to enjoy at home. We’ve been inspired by so many of our friends across the pond over the years, and whilst we haven’t been able to take a trip in a while we’re excited to bring a little bit of American bar culture to Sheffield to help us make our beers available in more formats and to more people than ever before.

Check out the current selection of crowlers via our online shop (subject to availability, so do keep an eye on there for what’s new!). 

While the beer is best enjoyed fresh (we recommend within a couple of weeks from filling), the crowler can lid is airtight so it should keep well for around 6 weeks if cared for properly. Always store your crowler cans somewhere cool (in the fridge is fine) for best results.

Cheers!