Introducing the 2024 edition of Swifty! In continuation of our partnership with Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust (more on that here), we’ve brought back this much requested pale ale, but this time with an extra special new twist!
In recognition of the amazing migratory journey that swifts make from Africa to the UK to breed every year, we’ve combined UK grown hops Fuggles with Fonio, an ancient grain grown in Africa.
Fonio is a naturally sustainable crop – it’s capable of growing in poor soil, and its roots even help add nutrients back into the ground, contributing to soil regeneration. It’s easy to grow, requiring no irrigation or pesticides, and drought resistant too, so it really helps to support the ethos of the Wildlife Trust and was the perfect choice to add to this beer. It’s also typically grown by smallholder farms in West Africa, so supports local industry and communities there too. Our brewer Thom who was in charge of creating this year’s version of Swifty also described it as “a dream!” to brew with.
…and as well as all that, it also tastes great too! The Fonio itself gives a lovely light, clean crispness to the beer alongside delicate hints of aromatic lychee and melon, which work beautifully with the gentle spicy hedgerow notes and lingering bitter finish from the hops. A unique and easy drinking pale ale that’s a perfect partner for perusing the new Sheffield Swift City Map!
The cold wet spring has made things particularly difficult for the swift population this year, so it seems even more important to be able to raise awareness and support for these beautiful birds, who we do hope you’ve still noticed gracing the skies with their aerial acrobatics in recent weeks.
The beer is available in cask only (we believe it to be only the second beer made using Fonio to be released in cask in the world!), so be sure to look out for it on the bar of your local pub. 10p from every pint sold will be donated to Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust to help support nature’s recovery.
#TeamAbbeydale is made up of more than just the brewery, so next in our series where we introduce you to our fantastic crew, we thought it was about time for you to get to know the landlord of our pub, The Rising Sun, a little better! He’s been at the helm there since 2018, so will already be very familiar to our wonderful regulars. Over to Garry!
First up, the basics! What’s your name and where do you come from?
Garry Raynes – from Sheffield
What is your role at Abbeydale Brewery?
I’m the General Manager at the Rising Sun, Abbeydale Brewery’s community pub based in the lovely leafy suburb of Nether Green.
What’s your favourite beer?
Absolution
What’s your favourite thing about working at The Rising Sun?
Being close to Absolution at all times
Best place to enjoy a pint?
The Three Stags Heads in Wardlow Mires, or Flagship in Playa Blanca (but they don’t have Absolution)
Where did you have your first (legal!) pint?
Not a clue. I had tonsillitis on my 18th Birthday and was bed ridden. Don’t remember where I went out after I had recovered
Fries: Bacon or Scampi?
Scampi Fries
When you’re not busy looking after the pub, what do you get up to?
I like to read – mainly crime thrillers or autobiographies
Who’s your hero (beery or otherwise!)?
Whoever invented Absolution (Editor’s note – that’ll be Pat! And do you somehow get the impression Garry might really quite like Absolution?!)
And finally… If you were a cartoon character, who would it be?
In this blog post, our Ops Director Toby waxes lyrical about his love for cask ale, sharing his journey, background, and thoughts and feelings on how to present it at its very finest.
The first thing I noticed about Sheffield was the rain. To be fair, I did move here during the 2007 floods, so there was a lot of it. The second thing was the hills, lots of them. Everywhere, and which for my first few days seemed more like rivers, which is not how hills would behave where I grew up.
The next thing though was the cask beer, wherever I went for a drink. I wasn’t used to this, for me ale was mostly flavourless national brands, or (shudder) creamflow and I had no time for it – it was a pain to look after and not worth the effort. But not here. In Sheffield the beer was generally local, excellent and revered in a way that was completely new to me, despite 10 years’ experience of working in bars.
Everyone I met drank the stuff, and the mainstream brands I used to ignore were absent – why would you need them with well-kept Pale Rider and Moonshine made within a few miles? I even got taken to the Devonshire Cat, and discovered the unknown delights of Belgian beer, starting with Westmalle Dubbel and then working my way through the shelves of the Dram Shop in Crookes.
So why did this matter? Well I’d moved to Sheffield, not knowing a soul, to set up a new bar. I went to work for True North (then called Forum Café Bars) to revamp the Halcyon on Division Street into something new. After just a few days here I decided that beer had to be part of what we did, and not just any beer – good, local beer. The plans for the bar changed, Sheffield was obviously a very down to earth, real place with no time for pretensions and I loved that. In went sofas, vintage tables, rugs, guitar music and most importantly beer. That was the Old House, and it made me fall in love with Sheffield and its beer.
The only problem was I had no idea really what cask beer was or how to look after it, so I needed to learn. Alex Liddle, then manager of the Forum, now boss at True North, was the person that showed me. Organised, meticulous and patient, Alex showed me how to treat the beer, what happened to it over time, and the importance of patience and not disturbing it. Alex also happened to be from Kent, so we opened the place with Spitfire and Bishops Finger, all freshly vented and soft pegged on crisp new tilters.
It took about 2 hours of the opening night to realise my mistake. People would drink these beers, but mainly just so they could tell me how much better the local beer was and how I needed to get in some “proper stuff”. The next morning I rang the 2 places that were mentioned the most, the sadly departed Kelham Island and Abbeydale Brewery. We quickly went from 2 cask lines to 4 and sold more of the stuff than I thought possible. People would come in, relax, chat to us and casually work their way through the range, it felt like a second home.
We stretched out into lots of guest breweries, always independent, always interesting, but Moonshine never left the bar. It couldn’t, or I’d spend all night getting told to put it back on.
I was to spend the next 8 years setting up venues across Sheffield – bars, pubs and restaurants. Diverse places like the Wick at Both Ends and the Broadfield, all with a different clientele, but always cask beer came with me, and always, always Moonshine was on the bar.
Over the years some great Sheffield breweries came, such as Triple Point, St. Mars of the Desert and Loxley, and many have sadly gone – including Kelham Island (although some of its beers remain), Sheffield Brew Co. and Exit 33 – brewing is not an easy way to make money.
So how do you look after cask beer then? If you ask 100 landlords or managers, you’ll get 100 different answers. Some based on science, some on craft, and sadly, some not completely right. You can taste the results in the beer, almost like you’re consuming the craft and effort put into it. It’s what separates real ale for me and makes it a uniquely British art form. Here’s my take on how I feel it works best:
Freshness
The first thing for me is freshness. Oxygen is the enemy of fresh. It’ll bind on to those delicate flavour compounds and flatten out all the interesting notes – producing a cardboard flavour. Whether it’s wine, beer, or food, keep the oxygen away. Beer should always be treated in a way to prevent air ingress. Soft peg while serving, hard peg or closed valve as soon as you’re not. It matters.
Venting
This is the process of opening up the cask, if the beer is already lively (lots of CO2 present) then you might get wet doing this. First, tap a hard peg into the shive (in the side of the cask), then take a mallet and with one strike, put the tap through the keystone in the top of the cask. Make sure it’s airtight, then put the cask in place to settle. Over the next few days you’ll need to regularly check it, bleeding off excess pressure (from CO2), and always with some blue roll on standby in case it gets too lively. Then leave it well alone til you need it.
Conditioning
First up, what conditioning is. It’s the process of yeast fermenting available sugars, kicking out CO2, flavour compounds, and yes, a little more alcohol. This CO2 gives cask beer the sparkle that lifts it and produces a blanket that sits on top of the liquid to keep the oxygen away (oxygen creeps in to the cask when you pull a pint through). Opinions vary but personally I want my beer to be 2 weeks old (from being put in cask) before tapping, and spend 2 weeks in cellar gently maturing and building up it’s carbonation. All without being disturbed, so all the yeast can slowly bunch up and sink out, leaving clear beer.
Sparkler
Ah, one of the great national divides. Generally speaking, Northerners use sparklers, Southerners don’t. Some say it’s a matter of opinion, I say the Northerners are right, but I’m from Lancashire so I would say that. Sparklers force the beer through tiny holes which aerate it, giving a smooth and creamy mouthfeel.
Cleaning
Cleanliness is essential. Bacteria will make beer taste poor, and beer lines need cleaning regularly. All your cellar dispense kit should be sterilised, and rinsed in running water weekly. You can either clean the lines weekly, or between casks, but always if you’re changing the beer you have on.
Vertical serve vs. horizontal serve
Another controversial one, some people swear by the traditional method of laying the cask on a tilter and over time the spring lifts the beer to help empty it out. I prefer and recommend vertical serve, where the cask stands upright and you draw through a float on top of the beer. Vertical serve gives fresher beer for me, so wins out, it also has less wastage and in an emergency, will settle out to be bright quicker.
And what about beer clarity? This is a massive topic, and one that requires its whole own post – watch this space, and all will become… clear!
The bottom line is looking after cask ale is both art and science, cask beer is a living, breathing thing after all. At the brewery we have an in house lab and plenty of equipment to give us precise and accurate analysis, but we still rely more on the human palate and a lot of training more than anything else.
So that’s it. I’m sure every single cellar manager in the country will be waiting to tell me where I’m wrong – maybe we can talk about it over a pint of Moonshine.
Enjoy your pint, someone has put a lot of effort into it.
From protecting habitats for hedgehogs, to campaigning against wildlife crime and helping everyone get closer to nature; Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust cares for local wildlife and the wild spaces that we all depend on.
Whilst in the past we’ve selected a new charity for each financial year, in January we were made honorary corporate members of the trust and it just seemed to make sense to continue our partnership in full. Plus, Swifty, our charity beer for last year, has been requested so many times that we felt bringing it back was entirely justified – just like the swifts themselves have begun to return to our town recently! More details on this year’s brew will be on the way soon. In the meantime, do take a look at the newly launched Sheffield Swift City Map, which is a tool we can all use to support the efforts of local swift conservation feoups.
2023 was a fantastic year for Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust, who successfully raised funds to secure the purchase of Ughill Farm, 132 hectares of farmland based on the western outskirts of Sheffield. This means the Trust can now begin to trial nature-friendly farming practices on the site, as part of their aim to see 30% of nature in recovery by 2030 and something which will benefit the wider community for generations to come. We’re looking forward to learning more about this project as the year progresses, and see how the site changes with the seasons.
It’s in collaborating with the local community that the most good can be done to safeguard and enhance the environment, and we’re really excited to continue working with Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust to help raise awareness of the easy steps every single one of us can take to give wildlife in our area the chance to thrive.
It’s time to meet another of the lovely bunch that make up Team Abbeydale, and it’s the turn of Robin, who this week celebrates his 10th anniversary of working here… a whole decade! Happy Brewery Birthday, Robin – we’re very lucky to have you!
First up, the basics! What’s your name and where do you come from?
My name is Robin, and I was born and bred in this fair city we call home.
What is your role at Abbeydale Brewery?
Now that’s a good question! How long have you got?! Having initially joined as a member of the sales team, my role has evolved over the years. I’m now the Export Manager, and amongst other things I am responsible for the monthly duty return, sales analysis, cellar technical support, delivery logistics and a whole host of other things!
What’s your favourite beer style and why?
It genuinely depends what mood I’m in, but I love hoppy pale beers in cask, German lagers and mixed fermented beers. Partial to a good stout now and then too! Particular favourites are Augustiner Helles, Saison DuPont and Fyne Ales Jarl.
What’s your favourite thing about working at Abbeydale Brewery?
After ten years of working here, it’s clear that it’s the people. It really feels like a family, and the fact that a good third of our workforce have been here longer than me speaks volumes.
Favourite pub in the world?
I would have to say The Crow, Sheffield. Perfect mix of traditional pub with an unbelievable rotating keg and bottle offering. The Schneider Weisse tap in the middle of Munich is pretty special too.
Where did you have your first (legal!) pint?
Pale Rider in the Fat Cat on my 18th birthday. Was at the time the Champion Beer of Britain, so it felt quite appropriate.
Favourite snack to enjoy alongside a beer?
Definitely Scampi > Bacon in the fries wars, but Jalapeño Snyders pretzel pieces beat all.
When you’re not busy exporting beer, what do you get up to?
I trained as a musician, and haven’t completely given up hope of being a rock star at some point in the future 😉 I still play with various bands, and have been excited to be back in the studio recently with Dead Like Harry. I also love spending time with my family, and my two boys keep me hands full! I’ve been known on occasion to frequent Hillsborough to cheer on the Owls although not so frequently since the family came along!
Who’s your hero?
Dave Grohl, without doubt. Getting to see the Foos play again in a few weeks time, can’t wait!
And finally… If you were a cartoon character, who would it be?
I was once described in a review as looking like Animal from the Muppets whilst I was on stage, but I know the Muppets aren’t technically a cartoon, and also Animal plays the drums not the bass! I do love SpongeBob though, and South Park. Maybe Randy Marsh is my hero… 😉
Just in case you haven’t noticed, we are pretty fond of cask beer here. We’ve made rather a lot of it in 28 years. Cask beer is something to be treasured – a link with our history, the essence of our present, and a crucial part of our future too. It deserves to be celebrated.
We know we aren’t the only ones who think this way (if we were, we wouldn’t sell over two million pints of cask beer every year!), and so we’ve recently introduced a new range to our offering which allows us to share this love of all things cask with our friends from breweries across the country that pay it just as much reverence as we do – appreciating the art of understatement, the joy of simplicity and the unadulterated pleasure that comes from a perfectly poured pint of cask beer.
The Travel Poster series is inspired by the home towns of our collaboration partners, and the varied look of this range takes inspiration from the British Railways branding of the early/mid-20th century and esteemed travel posters throughout history. Our designer James has revered this style and aesthetic for a long time, and we’ve been waiting for the right moment to introduce this look – and showcasing it by shining a distinctive light across a range of beer styles, all of which consider the history and traditions of cask ale, seemed just the right fit.
James has been delving deep into researching the areas the breweries visit us from represent, coming to have an even deeper appreciation for this beautiful country and celebrating our diverse landscape.
So far we have created “Explore the River Aire”, a New Zealand hopped ESB, with Anthology (who hail from Leeds), “Walk the Loxley Valley”, a delectable Sabro pale ale with Loxley Brewery (based in north Sheffield), and “Discover Ossett”, a collaboration with Ossett Brewery (from erm… Ossett), which was a hybrid between our beloved Deception and Ossett’s incredibly popular White Rat. Each beer has its very own beautiful, original artwork that depicts the area the visiting brewery calls home and comprises a style that plays to our collective strengths. In addition, we used a little creative license and collaborated with ourselves to make “Swing by Beauchief”, a charming homage to the area where the abbey that our brewery logo is based upon stands – this recipe was an Abbeydale classic, the sort of well-hopped pale ale that we’re best known for.
Next up we’re incredibly excited to be working with Fell Brewery, based in the stunning Lake District, which again gives great scope for another eye-catching cask clip to showcase another tasty beer – “Fall for the Lakes” (see what we did there?!). We’re teaming up to produce a Transatlantic Pale Ale (a small tribute to Fell’s brewer Scott, who hails from upstate New York and joined us for the brewday), hopped with UK grown Harlequin and American classics Simcoe and Chinook to create a vivid and vibrant beer with notes of pine, passionfruit, peach and pineapple. Due for release the week commencing 20th May, so keep your eyes peeled for this one.
So there you have it. The Abbeydale Brewery Travel Poster series, created in the spirit of collaboration and community, designed not only to have great flavour but to invoke a little nostalgia too. Best enjoyed in your local pub with a gentle sense of wanderlust. We can’t wait to see where the next adventure will take us…
Introducing Blood Orange Sour, created in collaboration with our wonderful neighbours Locksley Distilling Co. and a fresh release from our Funk Dungeon mixed fermentation project.
This special beer has been made with Sicilian Moro blood oranges, which are left over from the production of Locksley’s absolutely delicious “Morocello” citrus liqueur (which you can read more about and get yourself a bottle of here). They only need the zest for this unique twist on a limoncello, meaning the rest of the fruit is in need of a loving home – which is where we come in! Reducing food waste and making something else delicious from this fantastic produce – it’s a win win.
We added the flesh of the fruit (approximately 150g per litre) directly into barrel with a simple sour base beer, where it spent a year ageing in a single French White Oak barrel with our house brett blend. We chose UK grown Opus hops, which lend notes of sticky orange to boost and back up the citrus character. The fruit gives a fresh, sharp acidity to the beer along with a gentle blush of soft pink hue. The finished product is tantalisingly tart, coming in at 6.0% ABV and is both vegan and gluten free.
Most of the base beer, a straightforward kettle sour, had been destined for use in our Unbeliever series – but we brewed some extra wort to ferment and store in barrel ready for something special to come along… and the Moro oranges definitely qualify. The result is not hugely funky but it is SOUR, coming in at a sharp pH of 3.3. Distinct orange flavours are complemented by a light sherbet berry character and a bit of funk in the finish. Tart, light and refreshing.
For the illustration, our designer James took the Blood Orange name literally, along with the thirst-quenching nature of the beer, creating a vampire skellie! James says of the inspiration, “a vampire was the character I felt fit the image of drinking a “blood-like” liquid, with the blood orange resembling an anatomical heart at first glance, but without being too gruesome!”
This beer was originally previewed at Little Earth Fest last year, and the first keg of the finished beer was released at 2024’s Indie Beer Feast. 750ml bottles are now available from a selection of independent retailers and via our online shop.
And just by way of a small post script to this particular chapter of our Funk Dungeon story… the bottling of this special release took place around the same time as we were receiving this year’s batch of fruit from Locksley’s, and so the cycle begins again! We’ve chosen to add the Moro oranges into a heritage grain saison wort this year, so it will be super interesting to see how the flavour develops in a different base beer. Watch this space, coming not-very-soon…
We’re incredibly proud to announce that we are involved in this year’s Mayday Project, organised by McColl’s Brewery and sponsored by hop merchants BarthHaas.
The Mayday Project sees seven UK breweries come together to create 6 unique collaboration beers, all of which are due to launch across the country on Friday 26th April in both keg and can. The aim of the project is to raise awareness of men’s mental health, get people talking and reduce the stigma. 15p from each pint or can is donated and split between three Mayday charities.
The beers are:
McColl’s Brewery x Abbeydale Brewery Signal – 5.5% Extra Hoppy Bier
Roosters Brewery Co. x McColl’s Brewery Perfect Circle – 4.3% Session Cold IPA
Brew York x McColl’s Brewery A Problem Shared – 5.8% West Coast IPA
Attic Brew Co. x McColl’s Brewery Life Raft – 3.8% Session Pale
Anspach & Hobday x McColl’s Brewery Parachute Pale – 4.5% Pale Ale
Twenty-five venues will be pouring all six beers simultaneously (head here for full details of where you can find the beers – local to us in Sheffield we have the Wonky Labrador and the Rutland Arms participating), while cans will be available in 6-packs (containing 1 of each beer) from the McColl’s webshop.
We loved our day up in Bishop Auckland with McColl’s and BarthHaas rustling up “Signal”, a dialled up hybrid that is hoppy like an IPA yet co-fermented to sit closer to a Belgian Saison – inspired by McColl’s incredible “Lowlands”, recently described by the Craft Beer Channel as the “UK’s Taras Boulba” and exactly the sort of thing that our Robin, who had the privilege of joining the brewday, really enjoys. Signal is a dry and bitter bier that is light and refreshing, dry hopped with Hallertau Blanc, Huell Melon and Enigma hops that offer notes of lemongrass and ginger, plus a delicate farmhouse character in the finish.
The three charities involved were chosen for their practical, proactive and genuinely effective means of encouraging men to tackle the issues they face, often feelings of isolation, loneliness, guilt or a loss of pride and community. They are: Men’s Pie Club from Newcastle who work to combat social isolation and a lack of belonging in men, and the associated mental health issues. They do this in a simple way by providing a time and a space (and all the equipment) to make pies, maybe have a cuppa and a natter as well.
Second up is ManUp? from Ipswich who are on a mission to challenge the adapted term ‘Man up’ – don’t just brush yourself down and get on with it! Beyond that they want to abolish the stigma surrounding men’s mental health and have a great number of resources to achieve this.
And finally we have Bristol based Grieving Pint, who provide regular and accessible sessions for young men to speak about their mental health, over a pint, actively promoting collective and responsible drinking.
A huge thank you to McColl’s for inviting us to be involved, and to BarthHaas for their support. Please join us in raising a glass in support of this amazing project on Friday 26th April.
Introducing Bretted Best Bitter! This exciting new Funk Dungeon release is a collaboration with our pals Will and James from the fantastic Manchester-based Balance Brewing & Blending, who specialise in mixed-culture wild and sour beers.
Working with a Manchester brewery meant we just had to create our take on a bitter! Brewed using entirely UK grown ingredients in keeping with one of the key drivers behind the Funk Dungeon project, this one uses Chevalier heritage grain, with crystal malt and a rigorous dry hop with aged Keyworth Early. The pleasant malt sweetness balances beautifully with a bold, slightly funky hop character. Pitched with each of our house blends of yeasts, a complex mix which has produced a delightfully refreshing and light beer with a delicate tart finish, coming in at 3.4% ABV and pH 3.8. It’s also both vegan and gluten free.
On the brewday, the Chevalier didn’t give us a great deal of sugar and the resulting wort wasn’t particularly fermentable by our house yeast, which wouldn’t have been ideal for our “clean” beer! However, it was perfect for this project as it gave plenty of potential for refermentation in barrel. This refermentation was sloooooow, with the beer spending nine months in European Oak barrel, allowing for exciting layers of flavour to develop over time.
After packaging, the beer has spent a further 4 months in bottle prior to release, to allow for a rounding out of flavour and time for a gentle carbonation to develop.
The other side of the Pennines to us here in Sheffield also had a major influence on the design for this collaborative brew. Hence the main feature of the illustration is a skellie suffragette – loosely inspired by the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst which can be found in St Peter’s Square, in the city centre of her home town of Manchester. The statue, sculpted by Hazel Reeves, portrays Pankhurst standing on a chair, which was perfect for us to emulate and be inspired by to bring in a playful element using the literal meaning of the word “balance” – and with it being “the Rainy City” we couldn’t resist adding in an umbrella!
The beer launches at the Balance Taproom, on the (rather aptly named for the occasion) Sheffield Street in Manchester, on Friday 26th April. Our Funk Dungeon lead brewer Jim will be there along with Will and James to chat about the beer and enjoy a few tasty mixed ferm drinks together. Please join us! There’s an exclusive pin heading to the event, and it will then be available in keg and 750ml bottle from Monday 29th April (you can pre-order now, including from our online shop).
PS – We’ve also still got a couple of barrels of this beer resting in the Dungeon which will be released at a currently undetermined point in the future! We plan to spend some time in the beautiful Peak District which lies in between our two breweries to forage some fun additional ingredients for these, so watch this space for Bretted Best Bitter pt. 2…
Next in our series where we introduce you to the people behind the beers, it’s the turn of Christie – Quality Manager here as well as the chap most likely to give you a glimpse behind the scenes on our social media channels or tell you about our beers at a Meet the Brewer event!
First up, the basics! What’s your name and where do you come from?
Christie, Huddersfield
What is your role at Abbeydale Brewery?
Quality Manager (brewer with a calculator)
What’s your favourite beer style and why?
I’ve got simple taste with beer, can’t go wrong with easy drinking cask pales or a pint of lager (with or without a lemonade top). In terms of a single beer though, I often really crave a pint of Acorn Barnsley Bitter. But saying that my favourite beers to make are IPA’s.
What’s your favourite thing about working at Abbeydale Brewery?
It’s a manual job where I get to use my hands with a sprinkling of creativity.
Best place to enjoy a pint?
Rutland Arms (Sheffield city centre)
Where did you have your first (legal!) pint?
The Nook in Holmfirth
Favourite snack to enjoy alongside a beer?
Those jalapeno pretzel piece things, or a pork pie.
When you’re not making beer, what do you get up to?
I’ve got a very needy allotment!
Who’s your hero (beery or otherwise!)?
Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse
And finally… If you were a cartoon character, who would it be?
A true Sheffield institution founded in 1996 and employee owned since 2024, Abbeydale Brewery blends heritage and tradition with creativity and innovation, showcasing these values across an unparalleled range of beers.
