Month: March 2023

We’re very excited to be celebrating the most exciting developments in UK hop farming for the next twist on our classic Heathen recipe, using Harlequin® hops grown and harvested in Herefordshire to create UK Hop Heathen (4.1%)!

These fantastic hops produce elegant Mosaic-esque tropical flavours, with a refined citrus bitterness and a delicate hedgerow character. On the brewday, we were really struck by the beautiful New World tropicality that filled the brewery – notes of stone fruits, notably mango and apricot, a hint of jamminess and a gently herbal character, with some zesty lemon lightly coming through in the hop back. Other than switching the Mosaic out for Harlequin®, the recipe otherwise remains the same as “regular” Heathen, so we recommend trying the two alongside each other to really pick up on the similarities and nuanced differences between the two!

Our hops specifically come from Townend Farm in Bosbury, Herefordshire, where they are grown and carefully tended to by hop growers Mark and Lesley Andrews. So as the crow erm… drives, they’ve travelled a mere 137 miles to reach us here in Sheffield!

Harlequin® has quite the family history – it’s a daughter of Godiva®, granddaughter of Jester®, and great-grandaughter of Cascade, and got its name from the remarkable patterns that can be found in the bracts that form the structure of each hop cone. Will Rogers, Technical Director at our hop suppliers Charles Faram, tells us more about the development process and Harlequin’s family tree:

“We chose to start with Cascade because it has great disease resistance, good yield, and is also is the hop responsible for craft brewing’s resurgence. When we grow Cascade in the UK, due to our northerly growing area, it ripens very late in the season. In Yakima it is a relatively early variety, ready for picking at the start of September. In the UK, to pick it when truly ripe, we pick it right at the end of September – weather at this time is unpredictable, meaning harvest can be difficult. Hops are diecious (there are female and male plants, but only female plants produce hops) so we made a cross with one of our male plants which demonstrated earlier ripening. The products of this cross were Jester® and Olicana®, both of which ripen earlier than their female parent, whilst also providing interesting tropical notes. Jester® has become the cornerstone of our breeding program as it is a great hop to grow, requiring less fertiliser and pesticides, whilst also producing good and consistent yields. Buoyed by the results of Jester® we decided to make further crosses and Godiva® followed, an incredible, strong plant with delicious grape and tangerine aromas and flavours, whilst also showing drought resistance in addition to Jester®’s virtues. Harlequin® is a further step on this path, having robustness to environmental factors, but most importantly it’s a hop that truly stands out both prior to and during the brewing process. Deliciously tropical with peach and passionfruit flavours, it stands comparison with the high impact hop varieties coming out of areas such as the USA, Australia and New Zealand”.

One thing that’s always been thrilling for us is to work with suppliers who are as passionate about their produce as we are about the beer we brew for you! There’s a gentle revolution going on in the UK hop world at the moment which combines sustainability and taking care of the environment with amazing flavour, and it’s really exciting to see the breadth of character that’s been quietly in development in recent years – it deserves shouting about!

UK Hop Heathen was brewed in cask, keg and can and released on April 3rd – cask was all spoken for by launch day, with kegs running low already and cans not far behind, so don’t hang around if you were thinking of ordering some! Trade customers can drop us an email at [email protected] or give the team a call on 0114 2812712, or cans are live on our online shop as well as from lovely indie retailers nationwide. Let us know if you need a hand finding the beer in your local area!

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale

We’re revisiting the OG Doctor Morton’s beer! Snake Oil was first brewed in 2008, and we’d never have predicted what it started! From “newfangled beers with weird pumpclips” to an extensive and entertaining series of easy drinking pale ales that sit happily within our wider range.

The Doctor Morton’s series was brought into being by our previous designer Ivan, who suggested a range based around medicine-show theme names. Our owner Pat wasn’t so sure at first, but certain customers of ours couldn’t get enough and so he eventually bowed to commercial pressure!

The range began life as the place for our brewers to try new hops in different combinations – almost all were, and still are, what we call here “cask pale specials”. They’ve always been really popular – strong sellers and a talking point for publicans and drinkers alike!

Although it was the first to be brewed and released, Snake Oil was not the first to be “invented”… many of the other suggestions were so off the wall that it was felt we needed to make sure people had a slightly more straightforward introduction to the series and understood the medicine bottle style theme. Most of the other beers which are now familiar names have somewhat more of an obscure name, such as Duck Baffler – what on earth is one of those?! – or they include some kind of joke or pun… Angler Management springs to mind! Brewery co-owner Sue recollects her favourite: “when making a beer flavoured with ginger, we gave a specific instruction that the beer should simply be called ‘Ginger Beer’ so that people would for once know what they were getting.  What did we get? Djinn Jar Beer!”

We’re continually evolving the range and adding new beers so the good Doctor can carry on his work inspired by the travelling salesman of yesteryear. Although the look has in recent years been updated by our designer James (now including a miniature portrait of Doctor Morton himself, our brewery owner Pat), we’ve kept a strong hold on the wit and eccentricities this series brings. They’re instantly recognisable, a distinctive range which sits happily alongside our other offerings.

Cheers!

Celebration time here at Abbeydale HQ, as our beloved Black IPA, Black Mass, has WON the Overall Champion prize of the bottle and can competition at the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) National Finals!

Black Mass initially came out on top in the Speciality IPA round of the North East regional bottle & can awards back in December, which meant that it qualified to go forward to the national finals, held in Liverpool at Beer X, the UK’s largest beer and brewing trade event. The judging panel is made up of fellow brewers and some of the country’s best beer experts, who blind taste every entry.

Our brewers Christie and Jamie made the trip across to the other side of the Pennines, where we first discovered that we won the Speciality IPA category on a nationwide level – something to be very proud of already – before scooping the TOP PRIZE in the overall bottle and can competition!

It’s hugely special for a beer that we love, and that we’ve been making for our entire 26 year history, to be at the absolute top of its game and gaining recognition at the highest level. We’re massively proud of our amazing team of brewers!

So what’s all the fuss about? A bit of a beast at 6.66%, it’s smooth and full-bodied on the palate. A hop forward character coupled with delectable flavours reminiscent of bitter chocolate, fruitcake and raisins, meets aromas of fresh pine alongside coffee and just a hint of burnt toast – it’s classic and familiar yet simultaneously unique and boundary defying. We took the plunge to relabel the dark, hoppy enigma that is Black Mass as a Black IPA last year (more on that here), so it’s absolutely wonderful to see this decision vindicated.

And if you haven’t tried it before, what are you waiting for! Cans are available via our online shop as well as from many of the lovely indie retailers we supply (let us know if we can help finding a supplier in your local area).

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale

We’re very excited to announce that we’ve teamed up with the wonderful Locksley Distilling Co to make our very own Heathen inspired gin!

Based just down the road from the brewery at the historic Portland Works, we’ve long been fans of Locksley’s flagship Sir Robin of Locksley Gin, and owners John and Cynthia REALLY know their stuff when it comes to flavour – their Raspberry and Cardamom gin and Morocello blood orange liqueurs are sensational, and Cynthia’s cocktails are absolutely legendary, so we really couldn’t wait to work with them to create a spirit that combines their gin expertise with our beery know-how.

We knew we wanted to make a gin inspired by one of our most well-known beers, so we took samples of Willamette, Mosaic and Nelson Sauvin hops which were made into nano-batches of distillate in Locksley’s vacuum still. The hops were cold distilled, which meant we got all of the flavour without isomerising the hops, so that the bitterness doesn’t carry through. The effect of this was mind blowing – the three distillates were so distinct from each other and truly captured the essence of the hop. Mosaic was the unanimous favourite (the other two were declared “too weird”!), which meant we were going to be making this a Heathen inspired gin!

Our chosen hop distillate was added to Locksley’s classic London Dry style base – the botanicals for which are juniper, coriander seed, cassia bark, angelica root and liquorice root. We thought about what flavours Mosaic hops add to beer and what would complement this in a gin – they’re renowned for their punchy tropical character, so after rigorous taste testing (such an arduous task!) we settled on papaya and pink grapefruit. This was all meticulously blended and bottled at 40.0% ABV.

Batch 1 absolutely flew out, so we’ve had batch 2 distilled! It’s an exclusive run of just 60 bottles, and it’s available now on our online shop (as well as from Locksley’s direct). It’s also available at our pub, the Rising Sun, so do pop in to try the perfect serve, over ice with tonic, and garnished with a slice of fresh pink grapefruit. And who’s going to be the first to try a beery gin cocktail?! We reckon it’d work wonderfully with a good splash of Heathen, topped up with grapefruit soda!

Cheers!