Month: February 2020

This year, the 29^th March sees five of our team – Laura, Jim, Scott, James and Tommy – take on their biggest challenge yet, The Sheffield Half Marathon. The team have been out training hard in all weathers (thanks, Storm Dennis!) and are well on track to achieve their goals. Please head to https://justgiving.com/fundraising/team-abbeydale-brewery to help us in our fundraising efforts – it really does make a difference. 

And so with just 5 Sundays between now and #TeamAbbeydale heading to the start line, we thought it only fit to share with you why we’re asking for your support.

Two years ago when our Events Manager, Carly, joined the team she managed to wrangle 10 of us into taking part in the Sheffield 10K raising over £1500 for Cavendish Cancer Care. After being diagnosed in 2015 with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and back fighting fit she saw an opportunity to build on the relationship Abbeydale Brewery already had with them and give something back. At the time she wrote:

“It is my belief that we need to raise two things to help a charity not only sustain itself, but to grow; money (of course) and awareness. I chose to get involved as I think it’s vital that people are more aware of them, I was lucky that I already was. You get so much information within those first few weeks of a diagnosis, I hope that if someone reads my story it registers on different level in some way.”

Back to the run, and the team were given three options; 1) run it, 2) come down and cheer us on/volunteer or 3) donate… which is what led to ten of us lacing up our running shoes and taking part!

One of those 10 was Laura, our Office & Communications Manager, who having never been ‘a runner’ before got well and truly bitten by the running bug and it quickly became obvious that this was going to be a new passion, despite being in no way a natural runner! After completing the Sheffield 10K in 2018 along with 3 other runs around the county, she decided 2019 was going to be the year she ran over 500km, including once again the Sheffield 10k raising vital funds and awareness for #TeamCav and ultimately joining local running club Steel City Striders.

With what some describe as a beautifully scenic route with gorgeous views…while we’re more inclined to count the inclines (!) this year’s half marathon is sure to be 13.1094 miles of pure Sheffield love. The support, not only in donations, but in the number of Sheffielders who line the way. Thank you in advance for any words (shouts) of encouragement, sweets, songs, and most importantly smiling faces! 

We reckon if each of our beloved Abbeydale fans (based on our Facebook followers!) donated the value of their favourite pint *cough cough Moonshine* we’d raise an astonishing £22,586! If that figure isn’t worth the cost of just one extra beer then we’re not sure what is!

Introducing our Geoglyph series! One of three new cask only ranges for 2020, making use of our extensive hop store to create some deliciously sessionable pale ales with a story to tell.

This is a concept for an artwork series that has come from our Sales Director Dan, who is a huge fan of all things mystery and history. There is a huge chunk of knowledge and understanding that has been lost surrounding the ancient civilisations, and so much to speculate on around them because of this. Think of the Pyramids of Egypt, the Carnac stones in France, Stonehenge, those giant head things on Easter Island. Why are they there, what were they for, what can we learn from them?! We might not have the answers to these questions but we CAN encourage people to think more about them via the medium of beer!

For this series, the artwork will be based around the Nazca lines of Peru. There’s a really interesting background to the Nazca lines, and nobody really knows what they were for, but for an civilisation to spend time and effort on these (each would have taken months to complete) shows how culturally important they thought they were.

You can only really get an appreciation of the size of the geoglyphs from the air, so it is thought that the Nazca civilisation may have done this in an attempt to please the gods, which fits in with some of the other themes that we like to work with here at Abbeydale Brewery.

Another theory is that these were used as star maps, as many of the animals and shapes represented fit with the constellations, so we’ve decided to use this concept as the base for the artwork created by our designer James Murphy.

The first of the series is named after the constellation “Cetus”. Commonly the constellations refer to Greek Mythology, in this case a sea monster. One theory however is that in ancient Peru, the belief system was that this constellation resembled an Orca or a Whale. So that’s what they drew! 

We hope you enjoy this new series, and encourage you to find out more about this fascinating civilisation. Google Earth tends to keep the Nazca lines a little hidden, but we’ve enjoyed hunting for them on this website… we’ve included the co-ordinates of each Geoglyph we feature on our pump clips to help you on your search!

Cheers!

PS – here’s a bonus holiday pic from our Dan… Unbeliever on tour at the Carnac Stones!

Image of the "Hummingbird" Nazca Line courtesy of Monika Neumann from Pixabay who kindly allows usage of her photo.

This week we are very excited to announce the launch of Heavy Nettle and Hop Cult Armageddon, two new releases brewed in collaboration with local vegan bar and eatery Church – Temple of Fun.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with Church, it’s an arcade bar and live music venue established by Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oliver Sykes, located in Kelham Island. Food comes from the kitchen of Make No Bones, who before they set up in Church were just over the road from us in the Heeley area of Sheffield, so we’re very familiar with their ethos and tasty food (the avocado wings being a favourite of many of the team here!)

Anyway, onto the beers! Both very different, but both inspired by the spirit of the Church venue, both vegan friendly and both coming in at 6.66% ABV.

First up is the latest release from our much acclaimed Funk Dungeon project – Chapter Three! Heavy Nettle is a spicy saison with the addition of rye malt and brewed with locally foraged nettles (the things we do for our craft!), before being laid to rest for 6 months in third use American oak barrels, which now have a fairly neutral character but give just the amount of wood character we were looking for. Secondary fermented with our house Brett blend for a rounded and funky finish, the name pays homage to one of our Funk Dungeon brewer Jim’s favourite BMTH songs (as well as getting a little bit of a pun in there too, obvs). Gentle acidity and earthy undertones bring a unique character to this one and we’re really pleased with how it’s turned out.

And secondly we’ve created Hop Cult Armageddon, a New England style IPA brewed with a large quantity of oats and wheat, with heaps of Amarillo, El Dorado and Ekuanot hops added throughout fermentation. Fermented hot with an Ebbegarden strain of Kveik yeast for additional fruity warmth which gives an interesting take on the New England style. Juicy and rounded with a balanced bitterness, and we reckon the perfect accompaniment to a Make No Bones Syko burger! We plan to do some taste tasting later this week, we will be sure to let you know how we get on…

We reckon our artist, James Murphy, has outdone himself with these two designs. The same base image has been used for each piece of artwork, however the original brief was just for the Heavy Nettle can, where James decided to use the given concept of our skeleton friend joining a motorcycle gang and give it a 1950’s feel. The idea for making Hop Cult Armageddon a part of this came later, and pretty much trashed the retro idea (sorry James!) but we looked to bring the characters ‘to life’ for the first and possibly only time! To honour the important Norwegian yeast addition, our characters have donned brutal facepaint in homage to some of their favourite Scandinavian Black Metal bands. We all have one!

Feel free to play “spot the difference” and see if you can work out which little “Easter eggs” have been hidden within the can labels, there are a few in there…

We’re planning a launch event and Meet the Brewer session at Church on Thursday 20th March too – pop down for a sample!

Cheers!

This week we’re unveiling the first of a new artwork series for 2020, showcasing one of our very favourite pieces of kit, our beloved hopback! 

Originally used as a mashtun, this humble little wood-clad vessel has been with us since the early days of the brewery (although it is a little bigger than our very first ever mashtun!) Since our brewery upgrade back in 2010, the hopback is now used to infuse the wort with oodles of lovely hops after the beer has been boiled and made it out of the kettle, to ensure our beers benefit as much as possible from delicate hop oils and aromas that would otherwise be boiled away and lost. Using whole leaf hops at this stage also acts as a filter bed (our hopback has a bespoke, specially made filter plate as part of it) which helps to remove surplus proteins from the wort and aids clarity in your pint. A lot of breweries don’t have this luxury, so it’s a very special part of our brewing process and was absolutely instrumental in allowing us to build our reputation as creators of delicious, hoppy pale ales!  So we’re very much looking forward to giving it a bit of glory on our pumpclips this year – you can see how it’s been re-imagined by our in-house artist James Murphy just to the right!

Here’s a little throwback image, showing our was-mashtun-now-hopback (and brewery owner Pat!) in its previous state…

For the first beer we’ve chosen Southern Cross hops to showcase; bred from a cross between the New Zealand Smoothcone variety and a 1950’s research variety comprised of an early North American ‘Cali’ – English Fuggle cross; Southern Cross was released from New Zealand’s HortResearch hop breeding programme at Riwaka in 1994. It’s a mid-season maturing hop and produces a cylindrical, long cone structure reaching 5cm in length.

With excellent essential oil profiles, low Cohumulone and consistent Alpha acid levels, Southern Cross is “a hop with many talents”, which imparts a soft bitterness with a subtle resinous quality, delivering a delicate balance of citrus and spice when added toward the end of the boil. By adding it at hopback stage post-boil, we can make the most of the aroma characteristics which include lemon peel and pine needles underpinned by clean spicy notes.

Thank you to our hop suppliers Charles Faram for the information on these beautiful hops!