Author: abbeydale.admin

*This post was originally shared as a Twitter thread on our @AbbeydaleFunk account by our brewer Jim, which commenced in March 2020. It went down pretty well, so we thought we’d share it a little more widely!

“We thought we’d give you a glimpse into a particularly atypical brewday here by going through the process for this year’s release (editor’s note: now the 2021 release!) of Funk Dungeon: Sheffield Red.

This is the third brew of this beer over 3 years, but each batch has a variation in process and ingredients – as the beer develops in wood, and flavour character shifts in time, we have made adjustments to the base beer to reflect our intended character ready for blending for the main release.

The first step of the process is, as always, mashing in – we don’t brew to any particular regime associated with other styles of sour beer, such as the decoction mash schedules linked with Lambic or traditional Berlinerweisse production – for us it is difficult, and largely pointless.

We mashed in at a higher temperature than normal (around 69-70c, compared to our more usual 64-66c) and for around 45 minutes, compared to the hour that we stick to for most of our wort production. This iso-thermal stand helps to produce complex sugars designed for slow fermentation, so there is plenty for the brett to eat over time and enable further development of the final beer.

We like our Funk Dungeon brews to be a little more experimental with our malt grists, too. Previously we’ve used a high percentage of grains such as wheat, oats, or spelt, and this time we are going for rye, for colour (roast rye) and a little bit of residual sweetness (Crystal rye). A simple water treatment of gypsum for pH adjustment is the final addition, before the mash is left to stand with a slow vorlauf (mash recirculation), for greater wort clarity.

The next step is to start running the wort from the mashtun through to the kettle. We will wash some of the colour and more from the dark malts as we sparge (like a sprinkler system for beer). The sparge temperature then rises to 86C which will denature enzyme activity quickly, again allowing for slow fermentation. There is still some colour and some sugar left in the grain. But for this recipe we are aiming for a reasonable starting gravity, so we’ll stop at PG 1014 and 12EBC. Stopping at this stage also aids clarity later on, as we don’t sparge through too many polypeptides, that could cause flavour faults and haze in the finished beer.

It’s now time to bring that wort to the boil where we’ll also add our first hops. We are bittering to an IBU of 30 using some 2015 harvest Dr Rudi for a grassy, herbal spice character which should marry well with the rye and the oak. It will also give just a little hint of isovaleric "cheesiness" that is so prominent in Lambic and other aged styles.

The boil takes 90-100 minutes which encourages the Maillard reaction (a chemical reaction which leads to a darker colour… the same thing that happens when you sear a steak on a griddle pan), giving us a pleasant caramel that will be present in the final beer, which works well with the dry acidity after fermentation is complete.

Once the boil is complete, we run the wort into our hopback which is where the rest of our hops are waiting. This is a step we perform for pretty much every beer we make at Abbeydale, although not that many breweries have access to a hopback. The late steep of whole hops provides a rounded softer bitterness than if used in the kettle and doesn’t blast off as many of the fruity and floral notes – this is what has helped us become so well known for our delicate, hoppy pales, but turns out it is also useful for a sour red ale!

The next part of the process is something we aren’t quite so familiar with, having only done it once before… COOLSHIP FILLING! Whilst we aren’t inoculating the entire brew length of this brew with wild yeasts, we are aiming to encourage some little floaty beasties to have an influence on the beer overall. (I keep calling it a coolship. But its dimensions are not really suited to chilling the entirety of the wort in a time that is advisable. I am using it more in this case as a yeast capture mechanism, which will be blended with pre-pitched wort.)

At this stage, we’re ready to transfer into fermenting vessel, which has been prepped a little differently to usual. Ordinarily, all yeast matter would be disposed of once a beer has done its time in FV, and a full CIP (clean-in-place) undertaken before refilling, but in this case we are transferring the wort into one of our stainless steel tanks which has only just been emptied of our most recent (at the time) Funk Dungeon brew (this was Through the Sticks, a collaboration with the one and only Little Earth Project) and we’re leaving the yeast bed behind for today’s brew to feed on. Racking straight onto the yeast bed means we should aim to avoid much of the "lag" phase for the yeasts. This “krausening” speeds up fermentation as the yeast goes straight on to consuming sugar.

For now the wort will sit overnight and we’ll blend it in FV and give it a week maybe 10 days or so to ferment around 90% of its journey to PG1000.0 before transferring into oak.

We’ll pitch our house Brett blend (which we call Barbarella) into barrels as well. Barbarella has 15 or so different strains of Brett (built over time from a combination of various commercially available blends and some lab pitches) stored in a wooden firkin ready to deploy. The blend is able to be used for primary and secondary fermentation, and is overall an amalgamation of Saccharomyces var. Diastaticus, our house (clean) Saccharomyces, a few lactobacillus strains harvested from grain, and Brett. The main character we see with this is a dry, light lemony refreshing finish.

Once everything is in FV, it’s time to dig the hops and get everything very well cleaned and shiny, ready for the next brew.

Day 2: Fermentation is flying – around 25% of the total expected fermentation has happened in around 18 hours. The pH has dropped like any saccharomyces fermentation, from 4.98 to 4.55, and the Krausen is happily blipping away.

Whilst the beer-to-be is still in the coolship we are recirculating the wort – while largely unnecessary as we are transferring everything into one fermenting vessel, when racking to barrels this ensures even mixing of yeast and bacteria on the surface is mixed thoroughly throughout.

We’ve lost around 7% of the wort to evaporation and the temperature has dropped from 88c down to 27c, which is a little too slow for full spontaneous fermentation, but enough for some bacterial capture (strains of lactobacillus are far more comfortable at the higher end of the temperature band).

With the aim of better understanding the contribution of the coolship to our house saison yeast we are separately force fermenting the wort with a stir plate in the lab – we’ll take a look-see under a microscope after a few days…

Day 6: After almost a week on the stir plate, we’ve had a yeast Krausen rise and fall in the flask. The sacch performed an attenuation of 69%, leaving the beer at 4.94% and the pH dropped quickly. The beer tastes a little lemony, and whatever the coolship welcomed in is certainly a positive addition to the yeast blend overall.

These are strange times at the moment, but for this beer, time will itself be the key and with the right attention it will be ready when you are. When we get through all this and safely out the other side, we’ll grab a beer and think of times gone past and those still to come.”

                                                                                       

….Fast forward to July 2021 and the beer is ready for blending decisions to be made! The beers have been resting in a mixture of French red wine and neutral American oak for anywhere between one and three years. Each and every barrel had a sample taken and was tasted individually to assess their major flavour characteristics to see what they would contribute to the final beer (and to check for any flavour faults). Happily we didn’t find any off flavours in any of the barrels, but some had a more pronounced wood character than others. The volume of each was carefully considered to make sure the resulting blend showcased the very best that the beer could be.

And we’re now into September, and that “resulting blend”, around 50% of which is the brew outlined above, is due to be released next week! Introducing Sheffield Red – Barrel Aged Sour (5.8%). Tart upfront, there’s a burst of acidity from the very first sip. An abundance of red fruit flavours, grape skin tannins and sour cherry notes, all pulled together by a gently oaky backbone.

The beer will be available in keg and can from next week, and will be one of the beers in the spotlight at our Funk Fest mixed fermentation multi-venue beer festival! As well as pouring at some of the participating venues (more on that coming soon) cans will also be included as part of a special festival tasting set, which will be available on our online shop to pre-order very soon!

Cheers,

Jim

Hi, funky beer fans!

The MegaGoat is BACK… in a slightly different format!

Since the last time we held an event at the brewery back in September 2019, things have changed in so many ways. Amongst these, we’ve acquired a canning line and extended our online shop operation, both of which take up lots of space in a venue which was not exactly blessed with spaciousness to start with (as those of you who’ve visited us before will be aware)! With uncertainty still in the air, we just don’t have the room to safely and responsibly welcome people inside.  All of this means that we’re not currently able to hold an event actually within the brewery itself.

HOWEVER! Building on what we’ve started over the past three years, including 2020’s Funk Fest At Home, we’ve come up with a plan to share the funky beer love and make sure we’re offering something that’s accessible to everyone, alongside encouraging beer drinkers to support their wonderful local venues who have had a particularly tough time of it over the past year and a half. 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… Presenting Funk Fest 2021: Mixed venue. Mixed media. Mixed fermentation.

Taking place from 25^th-31^st October, we’ll be working together with breweries, pubs, bars and beer shops around Sheffield and beyond, who will all be joining us in shouting about some amazing mixed fermentation and wild beers, ciders and even natural wines. If you’re a producer, retailer or venue that would like to be involved, please get in touch with anything you’d like to do to help us spread the mixed ferm word, we’d love to have you on board! 

We’ll also be hosting an online tasting of a selection of releases from our Funk Dungeon project during the week – watch this space for more details!

Please join us in getting involved with the spirit of support, collaboration and funky celebration that Funk Fest is all about. We’re very lucky to have so many outstanding producers of these styles of beer (and more!) surrounding us, and we’d love you to join in the conversation.

Cheers!

Absolution has been in production for as long as Abbeydale Brewery has existed – when brewery owner Pat Morton set up in 1996, he established three pales (Moonshine, Absolution and Matins) and one dark beer (Black Mass) as the initial core range. And Absolution was the very first to make it to release – actually the second beer brewed here, but sadly the first (Moonshine) ended up going down the drain (more on that here)!

And so it was Absolution, our 5.3% golden ale, that went out on that very first delivery, to the legendary Three Stags Heads at Wardlow Mires, exactly 25 years ago on August 16^th, 1996.

It’s been a popular beer around the Peak District ever since and can still be found as a permanent fixture on the bar at pubs including the Three Stags and the wonderful Red Lion at Litton today. So much so that when cavers Robbie Shone, Rob Eavis and Katie Dent, regulars of the pub, discovered a new series of caves deep in the heart of the Peak District in 2009, they named one of the chambers after our Absolution!

The Absolution cave is located in a fairly inaccessible part of the Titan system, described as being “extremely well decorated with numerous short stalagmites clustered together and many straws adorning the roof”* and the colour of the rock there reminded the intrepid explorers of our beautiful golden ale. Of course, we threw a party at the Red Lion to celebrate – and launched a limited edition pump clip featuring a photo of the newly discovered cave. We’d love to hear from you if you were there!

Originally single hopped with Goldings, our Absolution is now a little more complex in terms of hops, with a carefully selected combination of six now contributing to the beautifully rounded fruity flavour. It’s won multiple awards over the years, medalling in the Champion Beer of Yorkshire premium bitter category six times since 2011, including winning Gold most recently in 2020. Incredibly drinkable and very well balanced, with a good level of sweetness, it’s a beer which has truly stood the test of time and one which we’re incredibly proud of as we head into our 26^th (!!) year.

We hope you’ll join us in raising a pint, or a can, to celebrate our Silver Anniversary with us. You can find cans or casks for a party on our online shop, as well as on bars and shelves of independent retailers around Sheffield and beyond – let us know if we can help you find a stockist in your area!

Cheers!

*From “For Fun and Revelations”, Rob Eavis, Descent (206), 2009.

Those of you who are familiar with our Funk Dungeon project will know that these are beers that take time. And our next release has been even longer in the pipeline than most!

All the way back in April 2019, we announced that our Funk Fest beer festival was to include a homebrew competition, with the overall prize being that the winning recipe would be brewed here on our main brewkit.

The rules were simple – anything goes, as long as there’s an alternative yeast at play. We had almost thirty individual entries, ranging from Kveik NEIPAs to brett fermented black forest gateau stouts, with entrants hailing from all over the UK and even one international entry! And so our judging panel (our brewery owner Pat, Funk Dungeon lead brewer Jim, beer writer Katie Mather and Chris & Pete from Torrside Brewery) got to work in trying them all. The quality overall was fantastic, with some remarkable beers entered. But the winner of the competition on the day was James Newman, with an absolutely stunning pineapple weed saison. Comments from the judges included that it was a “lovely proper saison”, “very nicely balanced with an excellent adjunct character”, and “elegantly done”.

Unfortunately at the time of the festival, we were right at the end of the pineapple weed season, and so the brew had to wait until mid 2020. And then Covid hit and threw the whole world into disarray.

We finally managed to welcome James to the brewhouse in October 2020, by which point James, Jim, and various other members of Team Abbeydale had freezers full of foraged pineapple weed which we had gathered throughout the summer of lockdown.

The recipe was adapted very slightly to suit our processes whilst still retaining the character of the original brew, using our house saison yeast blend and adding a higher proportion of Nelson Sauvin to act as a filter bed for the pineapple weed in the hopback. A ceremonial addition of the last bottle of James’ award-winning beer into fermenting vessel, and our collaboration was officially go!

The beer has spent 9 months in neutral American oak barrels and prior to blending and carbonating ready for can was dry hopped with Nelson Sauvin to enhance aroma. More pineapple weed was added at this stage for a final flourish too, this time from the 2021 season and gathered by Jim whilst on holiday at Little Earth Project and their beautiful campsite in Suffolk.

The result is a light and refreshing beer, with gentle tartness balanced by a good hit of hop character and a floral, herbal backbone from the pineapple weed. The residual house culture in our barrels give a pleasant balanced lemon character, which means the acidity is higher than the original competition entry, but we feel this creates a great fusion between James’ original recipe and the personality of our Funk Dungeon.

The beer is named Blind Devotion, taken from a Miss Havisham quote from Great Expectations… we thought that a pineapple weed bouquet was just the kind of thing a skele-bride might clutch, and the idea spiralled from there into the design you see on the can, created by our wonderful designer, James Murphy. Cans are available to purchase via our online shop, as well as from independent retailers nationwide.

Cheers!

PS – while we’re here, we’re very happy to announce that fledgling plans are starting to take shape for Funk Fest 2021! Mixed venue, mixed media, mixed fermentation. Keep your eyes peeled for more news coming soon.

The next in our Hidden Treasures of Sheffield series features the River Don Steam Engine (nicknamed “Big Davy”), the most powerful working steam engine in Europe, capable of delivering a whopping 12,000 horsepower. Originally built for rolling armour plate for Dreadnought warships in the First World War, the engine now lives at Kelham Island Museum, where it still runs twice per day.

As a team, to put this series together we’ve thought hard about those areas, monuments, buildings and bits of history that help to form what Sheffield means to us. We’ve chosen to include this incredible piece of machinery in this series due to a personal connection to it and a link to the pre-Abbeydale Brewery days… here are the memories of our brewery co-owner, Sue: “It is an incredible engine. I started at River Don Works where it was housed as a graduate trainee in 1977. I was recruited by Hugh Wentworth-Ping, who was responsible for saving the engine, raising the £20K scrap value to pay British Steel and getting the engine transferred to Kelham Island Museum. I remember my interview with him to this day. He was a larger than life character, extremely outspoken and unrelenting in the face of incompetence. But those who were prepared to stand up to him got on very well with him. That’s what I did in my interview. There were 5 people on the panel and he kept talking over them and interrupting them. In the end I said to him rather crossly something along the lines of “I’m sorry but I can only answer one question at a time, do you want me to answer yours or the one posed by the other member of the panel?” He guffawed, subsided and behaved himself. When I took up the job he was always great with me and helped me a lot, though I was always careful to answer him boldly. Most of the rest of the team were scared witless by him!

As for the engine itself, it was mothballed when I got there, since 1974 I think. I was shown over it by the engineer responsible for it. When it became apparent that it was being sold in 1978, Hugh arranged for the news magazine programme which went out daily after the news, “Nationwide”, to come and film it in action. He actually arranged for it to be hooked up to the old rolling mill to it and got some plate to roll, complete with birch twigs to throw on as the metal went through the rollers. The crew spent the day getting background shots around the works, particularly the Melting Shop which was the most spectacular (and dangerous). I was asked to escort the camera crew in the Melting Shop and make sure they got what they wanted whilst also making sure they didn’t cook or otherwise injure themselves.

I was there when they ran the engine for the last time that night. It was spectacular. I still love going to visit the engine, remember Hugh and all the other characters I met in the steel industry. It is a very impressive sight.”

You can see the engine in action for yourself by visiting Kelham Island Museum, it is well worth a trip (and head to their website to learn more about the history of this magnificent and mighty machine)! The beer behind the pumpclip is one of our classic pale ales, a 4.0% easy drinking and sessionable beer with a citrussy body and a gentle bitterness to finish.

In celebration of our 25th anniversary, we wanted to take the opportunity to cast our memories right back to the early days of Abbeydale Brewery, and tell you a few tales about our heritage, our beginnings, and how far we’ve come. And so, exactly 25 years to the day since we first mashed in the very first Abbeydale brew, we simply couldn’t miss the opportunity to share the story of Moonshine – our flagship beer, our biggest seller, and a true Sheffield icon!

We first told a version of this story in April last year, when cans of Moonshine were an imminent reality, but still the only way of getting hold of our 4.3% pale ale was on draught. Now a lot has changed in the past year and a bit, and with pubs being sadly closed for a great deal of that time, Moonshine in can has been a real success. Just like the popularity of the cask version was responsible for enabling us to grow and thrive between 1996 and 2020, the release of it in 440ml cans was a key contributor to us continuing to survive throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. And in the fourteen months that have followed since our cans of Moonshine launched, we’ve sold over 130,000 of them!

Moonshine was the first gyle (batch) that was created on our brewkit, on the 26th July 1996. Now you might have heard us say that Absolution was the first beer we ever brewed here (it’s even on the cans!), and this is true in that it’s the first that made it to release – a fact I only discovered when I found the very first brewbook! Our brewbooks document each stage of our brewing process, and although we now have a bespoke database (built by brewery co-owner, Sue Morton) to monitor our brews thoroughly and efficiently, each step is still lovingly written by hand too, and we’ve kept every single one of the 110 books which hold every tiny detail of the thousands of times we’ve mashed in. Anyway – imagine my surprise on seeing the fateful words “Gyle 1: Moonshine” written in the front of Brewbook #1, with Absolution relegated to the second brew! However, this first batch never made it into cask, with the first three batches of Moonshine being not-quite-right. We’ve been committed to the highest standards since our very first days, and so those fledgling barrels of what was to become our most popular beer were destroyed. (The story of Absolution is coming soon too – a beer that behaved itself impeccably from the off!)

Moonshine was the first recipe our brewery owner Patrick Morton worked on when setting up Abbeydale Brewery, being exactly the type of beer that he most liked to drink, and inspired by the pale, hop-forward American beers which were just reaching our shores in the mid 90s – but at a slightly more sessionable ABV. At the time, he never believed it would come to be such a success – named Sheffield’s most likely cask ale to be found on bars around the city throughout the last decade, most recently in the Sheffield CAMRA (Campaign For Real Ale) 2019 Beer Census (the 2020 version of course could not go ahead due to the coronavirus pandemic), Moonshine has also been the recipient of numerous awards over the 24 years of our history. Beginning with winning Sheffield’s Steel City Beer Festival on its very first appearance in 1996, it’s also been awarded Champion Beer of Yorkshire 2012, runner up Champion Beer of Yorkshire 2017, and won a national bronze medal in the Golden Ale category at the prestigious Champion Beer of Britain Awards in 2018.

Moonshine is light on bitterness, with the emphasis on late-added hops for flavour rather than hops added to the boil (which would extract a higher level of bitterness). Originally 100% Willamette hops, and with a character still very much driven by Willamette, the recipe for Moonshine has shifted gently over the years, blending in other hop varieties including Citra, Centennial, Delta and Chinook, at carefully adjusted volumes to ensure the flavour of the beer itself remains as consistent as possible despite seasonal variations in the raw ingredients. Hop forward in 1996, as trends have changed it’s now perceived as quite gently hoppy, but still with a deliciously refreshing, more-ish character.

Pat and Sue have always described Moonshine as a cross-over beer. Says Sue, “Often people used to tell me they didn’t like beer, but they liked Moonshine. I reckon that what they often didn’t like was crystal malt and very bitter flavours in brown, bitter beers. So Moonshine converted many non-beer drinkers and lager drinkers to real ale and pale hoppy beers. From there, many have moved, with us, on to more adventurous styles, and many others have loyally stuck with their first love, Moonshine.”

It’s come a long way since that very first pint was sold on 2nd September 1996 – it forms over half of our overall production (something which remained true when the majority of our sales were beer in can during the latter part of 2020 – a fact which took us a little by surprise!) and it’s a beer our brewteam craft up to 5 times each week (Jamie holds the record for having Moonshined the most!).  When pubs re-opened following the coronavirus pandemic, it was the first pint the whole team flocked to… oh, how we had missed it!

Today at Abbeydale Brewery we’re really proud that we can continue to produce such a consistent and popular beer as Moonshine, alongside our ever-expanding range of other beers and styles. And we are very proud indeed to have been an early part of the beery revolution that has led to such a massive variety of beer being available in the UK today.

We hope you’ll join us in raising a pint or can this week! If you’d like to treat yourself to some cans, click here to find them on our online shop, or look out for them on the shelves of many of the independent retailers we supply – get in touch if we can help you track down your closest venue!

Cheers!

Laura, on behalf of Team Abbeydale

After the return of Brimstone and Last Rites earlier in the year, we’ve got a whole host of absolutely mega beer releases coming out in honour of our 25^th anniversary! The plan is to bring out a beer each week from now until the end of August, covering the entirety of our birthday month.

To get things started and make sure we’re all in the party spirit, welcome Celebration! This beer is a ridiculously refreshing 2.8% Mimosa Quarter IPA, brewed with Citra, Amarillo, and an innovative new product from our pals at Yakima Chief Hops – Cryo Pop™! Created with cutting edge technology, this blend contains hop varieties which hold beer-soluble compounds capable of surviving the intense brewing process, meaning they deliver a supercharged punch – or ‘pop’! – of aroma, which we thought was just perfect for our beer, inspired by everyone’s favourite first cocktail of the day! To boost up that Mimosa character, we’ve also added a whole 200L tub of orange juice to complement the citrussy notes found in the hops.

This beer actually began life back in 2018, when our Christie rustled up a one-off keg for a beer and brunch pairing event for Sheffield Beer Week at the Rutland Arms. We’ve taken the same Bucks Fizz based inspiration and scaled it up for this full release – originally paired with mushrooms cooked in prosecco butter on toast (YUM) we reckon this would also be the perfect partner to a BBQ in the sunshine!

Celebration is available now on our online shop as well as heading out to independent retailers and bars around Yorkshire and beyond. We’ll be launching pre-orders for mixed cases of all of our special birthday brews very soon, along with tasting sets for an online mini birthday party, so keep your eyes peeled for further details.

Crack open a can and join the party!

Cheers!

Did you know we’ve recently launched our very own subscription box? The perfect way to get a monthly delivery of an exciting mix of our brand new specials and familiar favourites, and other treats and little extras too!

We like to keep the exact details of what’s going to be in each box a surprise, but if you head below there’s a little peek at the first two boxes to give you an idea of the sort of goodies you will receive.

Our subscription boxes are just £29 per month, and this includes delivery as we’ve extended our free delivery offer to them too. Subscriptions can be amended or cancelled at any time – there’s no minimum commitment and we plan to keep the club going indefinitely.

If you’re interested in joining our Sub Club, head to our online shop, where you will find it right at the top of our "Beers" page. Once you’ve completed the transaction on there, which covers your first month’s subscription, we’ll then be in touch to get you all set up moving forwards… and that’s it! A delicious box of beer delivered to your door each and every month, without you having to lift a finger.

We reckon it’s a great way to treat yourself, or the gift that just keeps on giving for the Abbeydale Brewery megafan in your life!

Cheers!

We’ve tried to cover all the basics above, but if you have any questions we’ve popped our Ts&Cs here. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, as always do feel free to get in touch – email [email protected] or give us a call on 0114 2812712.

This weekend should have seen us hosting Sunfest up at our very own pub, The Rising Sun. With lockdown restrictions having been in place over the past 16 months, and the pub closed for much of this time, sadly for the second year in a row it hasn’t been possible to run an event which delivers what we want it to, and what you’ve come to expect from our annual beer festival – but we thought we’d spend some time reminiscing over Sunfests gone by.

This past couple of months would have been an absolute hive of festival fuelled activity, with hours and hours of work going in behind the scenes. Picking the beers of course is one of most time consuming but most rewarding jobs – we’ve always had an emphasis on seeking out new beers and often even new breweries! As you will see below, the beer selection has grown over the life of the festival, but we started as we meant to go on with over 60 beers on for the very first event back in 2007. Once the beers are picked, the next big project has to start – the programme! Our festival bible and a real labour of love. As the festival gets closer, the whole Abbeydale team from the brewery and the pub pitch in to get everything ready, culminating in set up day at the start of the festival week. We learn a new lesson every year (and then desperately try to remember what it was by the time the next year comes around). A mammoth task fuelled by a round of bacon butties and the occasional shower in a lively beer!

And finally, it’s time for that first half pint in a festival tankard – personally, I always kick off my Sunfest with the annual charity beer. Supporting local charities is something we’ve always done, creating a special beer raising funds as well as partnering with charities over the festival weekend (the festival and associated charity beers combined have raised over £20,000 for local charities over the years) – we’ve tried to include links to charities below so please support them if you are able. Edale Mountain Rescue was the first of these in 2007, and we brewed the original version of Salvation for them. A far cry from the stouts that feature under this series today, this was a 4.3% hoppy pale ale. It was the first beer to sell out in the beer tent, very much setting a trend for the charity beer over the years. A total of 63 beers were featured at the first Sunfest, including 12 of our own beers – the very first time this many Abbeydale beers had featured together! (And 2007 seems a bit longer ago when you consider that at the time the beer prices ranged from £1.00 to £1.50 per half!) It was a rainy weekend (the year of the Sheffield floods), but the start of something very special.

The second Sunfest saw us support Sheffield Hospitals Charitable Trust, at the suggestion of Rising Sun regular Roger, who subsequently became a voluntary salesman for us, telling pubs around Derbyshire about his beer “Pain in the Arch”. The beer list was notable for a high number of beers from the Cotswolds, thanks to our driver Dave taking a busman’s holiday to source and collect them… it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it!

2009 is the only year I can’t find a programme for, but I’m reliably informed that we supported the Shepherd Wheel Restoration Fund this year as we’ve got a mention on their plaque!  

By year four the beer selection had reached 100 and we were treated to a particularly sunny weekend. We worked alongside Rain Rescue this year (who have kept us all entertained with their annual dog show ever since) to come up with one of my favourite beer names for our charity beer, “Waggin’ t’Ale”.

Another long standing relationship was solidified in 2011 as Whirlow Hall Farm Trust helped us create Dr Morton’s Cow Polish, as well as keeping our bellies full with their amazing BBQ and hog roast, which is always a treat at the festival each year. Our Dan missed the hectic week before the festival despite having sourced the beers due to a pre-booked family holiday… we let him off once we found out that on this holiday he proposed to his now wife, Lucy!

A revolutionary moment occurred in 2012, as for the first time we had keg beer on offer!  The programme here begins: “It is over six years since Pat said to Rob [then GM of the Rising Sun] at the bar one Friday evening “I think we should have our own beer festival.” “Yes,” agreed Rob complacently, “we could easily put twenty beers on”. “Actually,” said Pat, “I had something rather bigger in mind…”

By 2013 we’d upped the keg offering to 6 lines, including an Abbeydale one for the very first time! The beer in question was Ascension, 6.0%, a one-off which was specially dry-hopped for the occasion and came with the disclaimer in the programme, “no, we are not doing keg!” – how times do change, as by 2014’s festival we were onto a beer made for keg ON PURPOSE (just the one, mind you), the beer in question this time being Pale Ale #3. The hardcore Abbeydale fans amongst you may be aware that these this series is what led onto the development of Heathen, our first “core” keg beer, originally known as Pale Ale #7.

2015’s Sunfest was our first opportunity to show off the newly (nearly) refurbished Rising Sun – you might remember there being lots of signs of workmen being busy, as work recommenced on the Monday morning following the festival, meaning getting takedown done efficiently was more important than ever before! We partnered with the James Brownhill Memorial Fund this year (and again in 2019). Ethna from the sales team curated the beer list this year, which meant that we had plenty of her favourite stouts on (including a keg of our very own Midnight Special Porter) – and very delicious they were too!

And just like that, the festival was 10, as we hosted Sunfest X in 2016. This coincided with the brewery’s 20^th birthday, so a double cause for celebration. “Not Just Jam” with Seven Hills Women’s Institute was our charity beer this year, raising funds for Light Sheffield. We included plenty of beers brewed by women this year too! The keg list had by this point increased to 20 – including the first outing of Heathen as one of our official core beers, at the forefront of our Brewers Emporium range.

2017 was my third Sunfest as part of Team Abbeydale and I was put in charge of curating the beer list. I decided we needed to show off a bit more, it is our festival after all! So this was the first time we filled an entire bay of racking with our own beers, including a number of event exclusives brewed especially for the festival. Our charity partners this year were Cavendish Cancer Care who we’ve worked with many times over the years (in fact, a few of us are running Sheffield Half Marathon for them this September, so this seems like a good opportunity to give our fundraising page a cheeky mention!). Landlord Garry joined the pub team in time for the 2018 festival (at which we supported local children’s hospice Bluebell Wood), and by 2019 we had our very own lager, with Sunfest giving us the perfect opportunity for a big Heresy launch party! The festival exclusive pilot recipes continued over these most recent years, with everything from table beers to DIPAs to dandelion and burdock doppelbocks being trialled, helping to inspire full scale brews along the way (or not, as the case may have been…!). And although the balance shifted a little, dropping the cask a little to a choice of 72, we upped the keg accordingly meaning that over 100 beers have continued to be on offer each year – one of the largest selections in the city.

And that little whistlestop tour through the years brings us to 2020 and 2021, where Sunfest has taken a hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic. All that’s left to say is a huge thank you to everyone who’s been involved over the years.

Please share your memories in the comments below!

Cheers,

Laura

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve been asked to create a special collaboration in support of Indie Beer Shop Day, which this year takes place on Saturday 17^th July.

Inspired by Record Store Day, Indie Beer Shop Day is an annual celebration which showcases the independent beer shop sector in the UK. Last year witnessed the first Indie Beer Shop Day, where Donzoko Brewery released Indie Graft in celebration of the sector. This year, the concept has built up momentum, with twice the number of independent retailers getting involved (over 100 altogether!) and with us being one of three breweries nationwide selected to release official Indie Beer Shop Day beers, which will be available exclusively from participating retailers from 2^nd July.

We’ve named the beer itself Independence, in keeping with the theme! A 4.0% pale ale single hopped with Idaho 7, vegan and gluten free, intended to be deliciously sessionable and very accessible. Refreshing with delicious flavours of stone fruits, alongside tropical notes, hints of pine and a bitter finish.

Make sure you pick up a can before the day itself on the 17^th, when we’ll be taking part in a special virtual beer tasting evening hosted by the legendary beer write, Pete Brown. Find out more about where you can purchase it from here, and look out for the other two national collaborations from Pilot and Double Barrelled Brewery too!

Throughout the pandemic, with pubs closed for vast swathes of the past year, the support of independent beer shops was a critical part of our survival as a brewery, and the relationships we were able to maintain, build upon, and even create, were and continue to be hugely important to us. The indie beer shop sector is a vital link and valuable connection between us as a brewery and the customers within our community.

In addition, participating beer shops have all been invited to arrange events and local collaborations too, so there’s all sorts going on! For every £1 spent in a local business, around 50-70p recirculates back into the local economy, so be sure this July to support your independent retailers on your local high street.

Use the hashtag #IndieBeerShopDay to get involved on social media too!

Cheers!