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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!

We’re excited to announce the launch of our new Double IPA “Call To Adventure” next week, brewed in collaboration with Manchester’s Beatnikz Republic. And you will surely be able to spot a new artistic theme developing, as we’ve brought the wonderful Theodore Matthews on board for our next artwork series. We chatted to Theo to learn a little more about his creative processes and the inspiration behind his detailed and inventive scenes…

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself – what’s your background and how did you first get into doing what you do?

I’ve always liked to draw but never felt it should be something I pursue what with art being a hard career path to follow (not to mention being quite colour-blind). Despite that I continued to occasionally draw and doodling in school became a large percentage of my academic effort, luckily my teachers were sympathetic and encouraged me to actually go for it and try out doing art. I did a foundation year at UCA not knowing what I wanted to do till my tutor said to me ‘you’re an illustrator’, that was a big moment for me and I followed up my foundation and got my BA in Illustration 3 years later. This is my first commercial work and I’m grateful to the Abbeydale team for bringing me in for this series, I hope everyone enjoys! 

2. How would you describe your own style?

All I know is that people seem to know when something is my work, which I guess means it must be distinctive. I think the most unifying traits of my illustrations are content based: my work tends towards fantasy or science fiction and a sure-fire way to know that something is mine is if there are big swirling clouds around a prominent character. If there’s someone holding a sword and standing in some cloudy wasteland then there’s a good chance I drew it. I mentioned earlier that I’m colour-blind and how that discouraged me from doing art and for a long time I never used colour in my drawing, it wasn’t till I went to university that I made a conscious effort to use colour as much as possible, I’ve still got a lot to learn and experience to get using colour effectively but I am determined to overcome my natural disfunction. 

 

3. What are the main inspirations behind your ideas?

First and foremost I’m inspired by other artists, I love all kinds of illustrations but I think that the clearest source of inspiration for the art I’ve done for Abbeydale is early 20^th century British illustration, the likes of Arthur Rackham and Harry Clarke. Illustration covers a wide range of subjects but I’m most interested in narrative: I think storytelling is important and I try to bring that into my illustrations as much as I can. 

4. Are you a beer drinker yourself? If so – what’s your favourite beer style?

In complete honesty I don’t drink beer very often, but when I do I tend to like something that you can enjoy with food, usually something like a pilsner or IPA. Nothing too complicated I must admit, though I expect this series to convert me!

Call To Adventure is released next week in keg and can. Keep your eyes peeled over the coming months as there is plenty more to come from Theo!

Back in April 2019, we invited our friends ORA Brewing to join us in the brewhouse to create a duo of collaborations, using similar ingredients but produced very differently, experimenting with process and pushing those ingredients to different boundaries.

The first of these beers, Blackcurrant Sorbae, was a kettle sour with a quick turnaround which became one of our fastest selling beers ever made. The second, Chianti BA Blackcurrant Saison, is an altogether different beast, which has taken nine months to realise its full potential.

The only similarity between the two beers is the initial pre-soured wort. For the Chianti BA release, we took the first runnings of the brew, pre-kettle sour, where it underwent primary fermentation with a blend of our house saison yeast plus a pitch of lactobacillus. The fermentation was warmer than usual, around 25C (rather than our standard 22C). Towards the end of fermentation, we dosed whole blackcurrants into the tank and allowed them to sit for a few days.

Now this is where this beer gets particularly special. Once primary fermentation was complete, we transferred everything into three Chianti barriques, sourced and personally selected by our friends at ORA direct from Renzi Botti, one of the most iconic casks producers in Modena, Italy. Dan spent the day with Renzi Botti’s owner, Francesco, carefully choosing the barrels which would give us the desired final flavour of robust fruits coupled with a tasty tannic backbone.

We have aged the beer in these exceptional barrels for around 9 months before packaging into KeyKeg. The resulting beer holds a vibrant rounded acidity and a plethora of soft fruit flavours.  Plus, it’s pink!

We hope you enjoy the beer.

Cheers!

Jim

What a year it’s been! Over 100 different beers created, and 229 brews of Moonshine alone (that’s almost two million pints of our treasured flagship beer!) have seen us take on 2019 full throttle.

This year has also been all about bringing Heresy to the masses! The launch of our very own lager was definitely one of the biggest moments of 2019 for us. It was the culmination of months of hard work and research whilst we dialled in our processes and got the recipe spot on, time well spent we reckon. It’s clean, crisp and quaffable, just the kind of thing our team like to drink after a busy day in the brewhouse, and it seems to be going down well with you all too!

We’ve welcomed some new faces to Team Abbeydale, with Sam and Mick joining the sales team (and creating Splendour, one of the fastest selling beers of the year!), Lewis coming on board on the production side of things, and the creative mind behind our Brewers Emporium range, James, becoming our official in house designer!

And talking of our staff, the whole team have spent the year honing their senses and quality control techniques as we’ve all had the opportunity to undertake rigorous training and establish our very own sensory panel. This has had a big impact already and we’re seeing ever-improving process and ultimately beer as a result. Our commitment to training our team is something we’re very proud of and we all look forward to building our collective knowledge in the future.

We’ve collaborated with some amazing breweries and organisations, including our new “Greetings From” US series with our friends NoDa and Amor Artis from across the pond. We’ve also hosted Melissa Cole, Siren Craft Brew, Thornbridge Brewery, Hammerton and Lewis Ryan (the artist behind the can labels for no less than 15 of our previous collaborative brews), to name just a few of our highlights. Away from home, our Office Manager Laura took part in a Pink Boots brewday hosted at Cloudwater for International Women’s Day, and our brewers have created beers “away” with Ridgeside, Beer Ink, Orbit and Beatnikz Republic.

It’s been humbling to have been invited back to some superb events around the UK, from Fyne Fest in Scotland to Peakender hosted by our friends at Thornbridge Brewery, not forgetting our most local festival, Indie Beer Feast (which we’ll be back at in March, tickets available here now!). And our Funk Dungeon barrel ageing and souring project was showcased at Carnivale Brettanomyces, one of the leading mixed fermentation beer festivals in the world. More on that in this blog post! And right here in the brewery itself we’ve hosted two events of our very own… the return of our Piss Up in the Brewery being joined by the second Funk Fest celebration.

As well as all this, we had another successful Sunfest held at our lovely pub The Rising Sun, where not only did over 120 beers get supped but over £2500 was raised for charity too. And talking of charity work, we teamed up with our friends at True North Brew Co. to take part in our first Half Pint Marathon which raised hundreds of pounds for Sheffield Mind too. Drink good, do good!

We’re well and truly ready to head into 2020, and can’t wait to find out what the next decade brings for us here at Abbeydale Brewery.

Cheers!

There’s just five weeks to go until the big day itself, but don’t panic, we are here to help with all of your Christmas beery needs! We’re taking our beers and merchandise out on the road to a couple of festive markets over the next few weeks, so please do come and say hello!

First up, find us with our fairy lights, gift ideas and of course plenty of samples at Bakewell Christmas Markets on the 23rd and 24th of November. The Saturday coincides with Bakewell’s Christmas lights switch on (taking place at 4.45pm), plus street food and entertainment on offer throughout the whole weekend, so wonderful festive vibes are absolutely guaranteed!

We’re also really looking forward to having a stall along with loads of other lovely local, independent producers at the Victorian Christmas Market, held at Kelham Island Museum on Saturday 30^th of November (10am to 7pm) and Sunday 1^st of December (10am to 5pm). We loved this event last year and are thrilled to be back… where else can you get your Christmas shopping done and watch the mighty River Don Engine in action at the same time?!

Our online shop is of course up and running throughout too, where you will find all of our cans available to purchase by the six-pack or case – we’ve also got our brand new 440ml gift packs available, plus merchandise, art prints, cookbooks and more! We can deliver to your door or, for those of you local to Sheffield, you can pop in to the brewery itself between 8am and 4pm Monday to Friday to collect your goodies (do please note that we do not have an actual shop here though, so all purchases need to have been made online in advance!). And if you make a purchase in November, you’ll earn an entry into our special prize draw for every tenner spent… more details here!

Finally don’t forget, if you’re still looking for the perfect spot for your Christmas party or celebration, our lovely pubs can host you with their carefully curated festive menus. Get in touch with The Rising Sun or The Devonshire Cat for further information and to book!

Can anyone actually BELIEVE that it’s November already?! We like to at least attempt to be a little bit organised here at Abbeydale Brewery, and so we thought we’d make it easy for you to get started on your Christmas shopping via our online shop… and be in with a chance of winning a bumper prize in the meantime!

We’ve put together this hamper full of goodies, which could be yours simply for placing an order throughout the month of November. The contents of the hamper retail at over £65 and include…

• A copy of “The Sheffield Cookbook: Second Helpings” which includes one of our very own recipes!
• A badge set featuring the artwork from six of our collaboration beers
• A stainless steel growler (holds 2L/3.5 pints of tasty beer… if you’re able to collect we’ll even fill this up for you!)
• A stainless steel “Glogg” pint glass
• “Brews of the World” card game, think beery Top Trumps! Features Last Rites, always a good one to have in your hand!
• Plus a selection of 440ml cans

Every £10 spent on abbeydalebrewery.co.uk/shop will earn you one entry into the prize draw (so as an example, a 6-pack of Heresy at £16.50 gets you one entry, or a case at £60 bags you six virtual raffle tickets!).

The winner will be contacted via email in the first week of December and will have one week to claim their prize to ensure we can get it to them before the big day.

Merry shopping!

Back in April this year, those of you who joined us for our second annual “Piss up in the brewery” event may remember a very special one-off beer brewed for the occasion. Our brewer Sam rustled up a rich and boozy imperial stout, infused with maple syrup, cinnamon, and loads and loads of Stroopwafels! The renown of “Smashwafel”, as it was known, quickly spread and it became our most requested beer of the summer.

So we are very excited to announce that we’ve scaled up the recipe and this week are releasing 2019’s Lost Souls imperial stout as a Smashwafel special!

A complex malt base with black malt, crystal, caramalt, Munich (the only addition from the original recipe, just to add another layer of biscuit-y pastry loveliness) and chocolate malt provides a deep and robust body. Comically large bottles of maple syrup, organic cinnamon quills, and of course plenty of actual Stroopwafels themselves were added to the hopback. Our house yeast would have struggled with this beast, so we enlisted the help of some London ESB to work its magic, all the way to our desired 10.6% ABV.

The result is a sumptuous and delectable imperial stout with a balanced bittersweet character, velvety smooth with decadent caramel flavours.

The cask was all spoken for on the first day of sale, but at the time of writing we have plenty of kegs remaining, so get in there quick if you’d like one for your venue! (Gold star if you can spot the little stroopwafel addition to this year’s edition of the artwork!)

Cheers!

Sheffield CAMRA’s 45^th Steel City Beer and Cider Festival kicks off TONIGHT at Kelham Island Museum, and we are very excited to be involved once more as keg bar sponsors!

Running from 5pm this evening until Saturday night, there’s an absolutely huge array of beers on offer, including six beers on cask and seven on keg from ourselves. Coinciding with the sapphire anniversary of the festival, Sheffield CAMRA are also celebrating the 500^th edition of their Beer Matters magazine, so we’ve rustled up a very special one off cask of an 8% IPA for the occasion!

Our full list is as follows…

ON CASK: Very Real Ale DIPA hopped with Galaxy & Nelson Sauvin (8.0%), Dr Morton’s Bag O Nuts pale ale (4.1%), Damnation pale ale (4.5%), Pilgrim pumpkin spiced ale (5.0%), Salvation Cranachan stout (4.5%) and Serenity session IPA with Galaxy & Vic Secret (3.8%).

ON KEG: Heathen American pale ale (4.1%), Wanderer lime & lemongrass saison (5.5%), Raisins to be Fearful Belgian inspired fruited Dubbel (7.0%, collaboration with Torrside Brewery) and Voyager IPA with Mosaic, Cascade & Idaho 7 hops (5.6%).

And also on keg, from the Funk Dungeon: Hop Bretta Vic Secret (3.9%), Red Wine BA Gruit (7.1%) and Slam Dunk Da Funk fruited dark sour (5.3%)

Do check out the festival website for copies of the full beer lists as there’s so much to try, we can’t wait to get stuck in. The website also has all the information you need about session times and entrance prices.

Other highlights of the weekend include an IPA tasting with the legendary beer writer Roger Protz at 8.30 tonight (ticketed event, click here for details), some excellent live music including local band Kingfisher Blue at 6pm on Friday night and Sunfest favourites the Loxley Silver Band on Saturday afternoon, and our friends at Seven Hills WI will be supplementing the tasty selection of food stalls with their homemade cakes to raise money for their charity of the year on Saturday too.

Please also cross your fingers for us in the Champion Beer of Sheffield awards which take place at the festival this evening! There’ll be quite a few of us from the brewery down there this evening so do come and say hello if you spot us!

Cheers!