Author: abbeydale.admin

Some of you may remember that back in July 2019, we released Chapter 1 from our Funk Dungeon project in can. That beer was Ryes From the Grave – a statement of intent for the project and the culmination of almost two years of time, care and attention (you can refresh your memory here if you’d like to read more). And now it’s time to Ryes Again…

The nature of our Funk Dungeon means that no two beers will ever be exactly the same – whilst in the rest of the brewery (with our core range in particular) we aim for absolute consistency, barrel aged beers and those made with wild yeasts are much more of their time and are harder to constrain to a set flavour profile. So this isn’t a re-release, but more of a reworking, turning back the pages on the project in an attempt to harness a memory, whilst showcasing where we’re at right now at the same time.

Ryes Again contains a blend of beers aged for up to four years, including some two year old spontaneously fermented Kriek and the very last barrel of the very first batch of our Flemish Red style beer, Sheffield Red – we’re sad to see the end of this one, but pleased it’s found a place in such a special beer for its final resting place. A barrel of stock ale was dosed with fruit from the allotment of one of our lovely Rising Sun regulars (cheers, Les!) – blackcurrants, which were also used in Ryes From the Grave, and a new addition of raspberries layering up yet more character alongside the cherries from the Kriek.

The resulting beer is bold and intense in flavour, 6.0% ABV, with a huge hit of tart berry fruits, oodles of cherry character, and a hint of soft vanillins paired with unctuous marzipan. There’s a spicy, slightly dry finish with an almost balsamic sourness. It’s reminiscent of Ryes From the Grave whilst still holding its own unique character. As with all of our Funk Dungeon releases, we’ve aimed to showcase the influence of classic Belgian styles alongside being inspired by the eclectic and innovative world of contemporary sours, whilst brewing, fermenting, blending and packaging our beers in our own unique way, producing something that is modern beer and yet steeped in tradition.

In terms of the design for the can, it felt appropriate to revisit the artwork from Chapter 1, where we first met our skele friend – a character now synonymous with our Funk Dungeon project. Our designer James Murphy chose to reflect the additional complexities found in this release with a little extra shimmer here and there and added depth to the colouring on the character, whilst also making sure the core colours of the range (purple and green) remained apparent. The main change comes in the background, with a new bright, shimmering cherry-red sky behind our skele friend as he emerges again from his grave.

Whether you were a fan of the original release or are coming to this beer for the very first time, we’d love to know what you think. It’s a style that we feel will develop well over time, too, so we’ll be cellaring a few cans for a special occasion as well as enjoying it fresh (well, as fresh as a barrel aged beer can be!) right now. Cans are available from our online shop, or via an array of independent retailers nationwide, and limited kegs are available for trade customers too.

Stay funky – cheers!

Our latest Funk Dungeon release is here! Introducing Pull of Gravity, a 5.6% apple raw ale which was brewed during a live brewday event as part of Funk Fest 2021, in collaboration with the amazing aeronauts at Ascension Cider.

One of the key focuses of our Funk Dungeon project now and moving forwards is around our locality and celebrating the produce the UK has to offer, so Pull of Gravity has been created using solely ingredients grown in the UK: Plumage Archer heritage barley, juice from pressed Cripps Pink apples (fruit rejected from supermarkets for not conforming to their superficial beauty standards, and rescued by Ascension!), and Olicana hops.

Of all the beer styles we have created in our 26-year history, the raw ale comes the closest to using bygone traditional brewing techniques in theoretical process, although modern technology (thankfully!) means we can measure temperature accurately and don’t need to do things by eye. We mashed in the Plumage Archer (which we also used in recent release Gothic Country, where we wrote a little more about it here) and some torrified wheat along with rye malt for a little bit of wort composition complexity and spicy flavour. The brew was mashed with no water treatment for around an hour, before running off into kettle, used here only as a collection vessel (as the name of the style suggests, with this being a raw ale the key difference between this and every other beer we’ve ever made is that this one didn’t get boiled!) before running off again into the hopback with Olicana at 2.5g/l. Olicana is one of our favourite new UK hops, showcasing lots of really nice citrus and grapefruit and a big hit of spice. But in the relatively low quantity we have used it here, rather than too much bold flavour it adds a nice layer of complexity to a drink that already has a lot going on.

After the hopback, we blended the raw ale with our freshly pressed apple juice before leaving for primary fermentation in stainless steel. We made the decision on the day not to pitch our house yeast straight away and see the kind of natural, spontaneous fermentation we’d get – by the next day the wort was vigorously and happily fermenting. Within 5 days the majority of primary fermentation had finished, and after another few days for the krausen to settle down a bit it was time to fill our barrels. We’ve used a mix of 6 ex-bourbon barrels, 2 ex-red wine casks and an IBC, where the beer has sat for around 9 months, drying out with brettanomyces fermentations and souring with the presence of both lactobacillus and pediococcus.

The resulting beer is clean, sweet and fresh, with (as you might expect) a prominent apple character. Delicate, juicy and floral – very easy drinking and sings of the orchard, with a gentle level of funk and light acidity coming through in the finish.

The artwork for chapter 11 from our Funk Dungeon project was, our designer James recounts, “A fun one to work on and particularly challenging to fit in everything within the loose brief!” The brief in question was inspired by the Misfits and the name of their song “Hybrid Moments” reflecting the hybrid nature of the graf style and also the collaboration between ourselves as a brewery and cider producers Ascension – which also works with the loose musical theme we like to see represented across all of our funky releases. Plus, of course, there simply had to be hot air balloons on there! The name of the beer comes from another of the Misfits songs, Black Hole, which James felt would work well within the range’s aesthetic (as well as giving a nod to the apple of Isaac Newton!). James adds, “there’s not so many ‘easter eggs’ within this one, just a broad range of hot-air balloon designs we hope you’ll agree would look amazing in reality (and one of them does, as we’ve included Matt from Ascension’s own balloon!).” Of course, Mind Your Head is still there for you to find, as it is on all of our Funk Dungeon labels – let us know when you’ve spotted it!

If you’d like to try this very special beer for yourself, it’s available now in 440ml cans from our online shop or via independent retailers, and kegs are available to our trade customers too. 

Cheers!

We’re very excited to announce that our charity partners for the duration of this year are Roundabout, a Sheffield based youth housing charity who do huge amounts of incredibly valuable work within our community. And we’ve teamed up with them to create their very own beer!

Fresh Start is a 4.1% dry hopped pale ale with Enigma, Simcoe and Vic Secret hops. Expect a vibrant, tropical character with a full bodied mouthfeel and a berry fruit flavour in the finish. The name “Fresh Start” was put forward by the Roundabout team and is reflective of the ethos of the charity and the difference they can make to the lives of young people in South Yorkshire.

In previous years, our charity beers have always launched at Sunfest, the beer festival at the Rising Sun which was held annually until 2019. And whilst we haven’t been able to bring the festival back this year, we felt the “would have been Sunfest week” was as good a time as any to bring 2022’s charity beer out into the world! So the beer will be available from 4^th July and is to be released in cask only – please give our friendly sales team a call on 0114 2812712 if you’d like some for your bar. We’re donating 10p from every pint sold to Roundabout, so you’ll be doing good just by drinking it!

A little more information on our charity partners – Roundabout are a local youth housing charity who provide shelter, support and life skills to young people (aged between 16-25) who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. We’ve been very fortunate to meet a number of their wonderful team, some of whom even joined in on the brewday! As well as the beer, do keep your eyes peeled as we’ll be supporting Roundabout with other fundraising activities later in the year too. For further information about the charity, please head to their website – and you can also donate to their work here.

Cheers!

We’re absolutely delighted to share the news that our wonderful community pub, The Rising Sun, has been awarded the 2022 Pub of the Year award by Sheffield & District CAMRA!

The criteria for judging the award covers a whole range of things – of course, the beer is very important, but it also takes into consideration the wider experience offered by the pub, including the knowledge and enthusiam of the staff, and the service, friendly atmosphere, and community focus they provide. With the people coming into it just as much as what goes in our customer’s glasses, it truly is a real honour and testament to the hard work of the team that this award has been won, especially after what has been an incredibly challenging few years for our industry.

This is the first time the Rising Sun has won this accolade, joining a prestigious list of wonderful venues include Shakespeares, The Kelham Island Tavern and our very first customers, the Three Stags Heads.

We hope this award helps to cement the pub’s status as a great destination venue for local regulars and visitors to Sheffield alike (and if you are unfamiliar with the area, there’s loads of information and suggestions for a beery weekend away on the Rising Sun’s website!).

The presentation evening is taking place from 8pm on Tuesday 14^th June (Facebook event here) – we do hope you can join landlord Garry and the Rising Sun team to help us celebrate!

The pub now goes forward as the local winner to the regional rounds as a Yorkshire Pub of the Year finalist… wish us luck!

Cheers,

Team Abbeydale

For the last two years, we have been sending pallets of our lovely beer over to the wonderful folks over at Bassan, Bernardo & Figli, in the little town of Thiene (Tee-en-eh), and a few weeks ago I was lucky enough to make the trip over to visit them and strengthen the bond between us. We first encountered the company over 10 years ago when Tommy and Angelo visited the brewery and enquired about us sending them some beer. Back in 2012, we were a 100% cask brewery, and although they do take some cask beer (both Acorn and Ilkley casks were in the warehouse!), it wasn’t the right time for us then.

Fast forward to early 2020 (pre lockdown), and Angelo and Tommy came to visit us again.  By then, we’d managed to send a few pallets around Europe, with no consistency or real vision… but following a very necessary and thorough tasting of our beers, they left desperate to start importing our beers to Italy in cans and kegs.  A few weeks later, the order landed in the inbox, transportation was arranged, and the beers were ready to ship! But then along came a virus…. The morning the first shipment should have departed, Italy was placed into full lockdown (9^th March 2020), and all the hard work in preparation for the shipment went up in the air. How long was it going to be delayed? Were we next? Would they still want the beer after lockdown? And all the other unanswerable questions were flying around. Thankfully, in June of 2020, they were in a position to receive an order, and away the beer went!  Several more orders followed in the second half of the year, and we had learnt to efficiently process the necessary paperwork. And then along came Brexit…. From January 2021, the rules changed, and the fairly straightforward process of making the declarations was gone, meaning that any export to Europe had to go through the same channels as the rest of the world, plus a whole host of other red-tape hoops that were unnecessary when we were part of the EU.

Not much happened with anything either here or in Italy in those first few months of last year, so it was near the end of May before our next shipment made its way to Thiene, with a far greater focus on cans than kegs at this time.  Further orders were shipped, but we were now getting snagged by long queues at Dover, and/or delays with Italian customs clearance. A journey that was taking 4-5 days was now taking up to 3 weeks. The majority of beer styles taste best when drank fresh, especially the hoppy pale ales we are well known for, so this extra time delay was concerning, as we couldn’t guarantee storage conditions.  Unfortunately this did lead to some beer spoilage, but with over 1000 mile and a language barrier, identifying the exact cause was not easy, and it was agreed the easiest way was for me to go and visit! International travel though was not easy to arrange, and Italy still had fairly restrictive measures in place for hospitality. 

On to the start of 2022. With the relaxation of COVID restrictions, the prospect of travelling became easier and when our contact Stefano again raised the idea of visiting, the wheels started moving, especially as Italy’s hospitality restrictions were ending at the end of March. A date was set for early April, flights were booked and passport was located (thankfully still in date!). 

An early morning flight from East Midlands to Treviso was boarded and I was able to appreciate the beauty of the Swiss and Italian Alps in their magnificence from 37000ft and basked in glorious sunshine.  I was greeted at the airport by Stefano, and it was a delight to meet him face to face rather than over Zoom. Following a fantastic lunch at BEAT, with Voyager on the bar, we went to visit the offices and warehouse at Bassan, Bernardo & Figli.  Here I met more of the team, including catching up with Tommy and Angelo and we had the opportunity to test the Heathen that needed sampling. I was very impressed to find out they employ four permanent cellar technicians that are on call 7 days a week. What excellent dedication to customer service.

Tommy and Angelo became my partners in crime for the rest of the trip, and they wanted to take me to some of their best customers, and our biggest fans! They took me to check in at my hotel in Bassano del Grappa, a delightful historic medieval walled town. Our first stop was further South near Padua to Brenthaus Beer & Food. They had the last remaining keg of Cryo Heathen on the bar, and considering it was nearly 6 months old, the beer was tasting fantastic! Big shout out to Marco for hosting us, he said he got through lockdown by drinking our Moonshine cans! I also got my first taste of cask in Italy here, with Ilkley Olicana on the bar.

Our second stop was a bit further North to Goto Storto, nearer Treviso. This was a lively place with an almost dive bar feel, with an excellent choice of music too. Two Abbeydale kegs on the bar here, with Fremantle Aussie Pale and Hopback Vic Secret both on top form. Some delicious pizza plus some tasty Italian craft beer from Birra Brùton.  Big thanks go to Mattia for his kindness and the T-shirts.

Lastly, we made last orders (and a lock-in, shhhhh!) at Black Lotus in San Martino di Lupari, just South of Bassano del Grappa. This was set up much more like a traditional British pub, and were spoiled with a choice of three Abbeydale beers on tap! Hopback Vic Secret, Salvation Irish Stout and Sheffield Rocks all pouring. Marco and his team were again wonderfully generous hosts, especially when cracking open the whisky! A few of the staff from Goto Storto also arrived for the late drinking including Andrea, the very smiley bar man! After nearly 24 hours on the go, I finally crashed back at the hotel around 4am, very tired and rather tipsy!!!

Having unsurprisingly missed breakfast, Tommy found us a little pizzette (a sweet mini pizza really), and then a visit to a traditional grappa distillery, Nardini which is at the entrance of the famous 13^th Century Ponte Vecchio wooden bridge in the heart of Bassano del Grappa, for a little Mezzoemezzo (half grappa, half soda with a twist of lemon). A little pick me up to get the fuzziness clearing for the day’s work ahead!

Upon returning to Thiene around lunchtime, I met with the entire sales team of the company and proceeded to give what they termed an ‘Abbeydale Masterclass’ which was an in depth tasting of our beers, which allowed the rest of their staff to learn more about what we do and who we are. I took some very special beers with me including the recent Voyager There & Back Again, and some Hinterland that I’d filled straight from the tank before it had been canned. I might have* sneaked a couple of cans of our Ryes From The Grave, canned in 2019, from our very special stash, but don’t tell Dan or Toby!

*and by “might have” read “absolutely did”!

The evening started with a visit to the nearby Cutty Sark, a Scottish themed pub, and the décor was quintessentially traditional pub. Sheffield Rocks was on the bar and going down a storm with the locals. Had a lovely pint of Acorn Old Moor Porter too, albeit from Keykeg, not on cask. As we were leaving, a local musician arrived to start setting up, I’ve been told to bring my band next time I visit!!!

My last pub stop of the trip was in the heart of Bassano del Grappa (and staggering distance from the hotel!). Samsara had a lovely atmosphere, great service, delicious food and Heathen on tap! Paulo behind the bar was a true gent, and it was lovely to have a more sedate end to our visits. By the time we left around 11pm, it seemed that half of Bassano del Grappa was there, but Angelo did tell me it was half price Thursday!!!

Friday morning gave me the opportunity to explore a little more of the town and even a quick stop in the Grappa museum from the other distillery in town, Poli, which gave fascinating insights into the history of both distillation in general and grappa as a distillate.

Before I knew it, I was being picked up and on the way to the airport to come home. A whirlwind of just over 48 hours, over far too quickly. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and Stefano, Tommy, Angelo and the rest of the Bassan, Bernardo & Figli team, plus everyone at the pubs we visited treated me like royalty and I can only say a huge ‘Grazie!”.  My Italian was incredibly limited, and not everyone had a good grasp of English, but that didn’t matter. Their passion for beer, and our beer in particular, was evident, and this is what drives good business relationships. We live and breathe beer day in day out, and this is matched by our Italian friends. They are a family owned and run company, so are we. Our beer is in safe hands and we can’t wait to continue our adventure along with them.

Saluti!

Robin

It’s time for Chapter 10 to be released from our Funk Dungeon small batch barrel ageing project, and this time we’re showcasing a blend of European seasonal brewing and American style dry hopping techniques. Introducing Gothic Country: dry hopped heritage saison!

The base beer is formed of specialty malts from Crisp Malt, using Plumage Archer (a heritage floor malted grain) and toasted malted oats. Both of these grains are new to us in the mixed fermentation side of the brewery so we were really excited to see the outcome of the flavours after extended ageing in barrel. 

Plumage Archer is a heritage grain and was the world’s first commercially produced crossbred grain in 1905, but had fallen out of trend by the 60s as developments in grain crossbreeding led to others being preferred by brewers and farmers alike. However it didn’t do so until it had passed on its genes to some of these newer varieties – it’s the grandparent to our house malt, Maris Otter! It’s said to work well in hop forward styles, so was a great choice for this release which is the hoppiest yet to come out of the Funk Dungeon. (And if you want to know more about the history of this lovely little grain, Crisp have written all about it here.) The toasted oats are a small batch release again from Crisp, and were chosen for this recipe as they offer a pleasantly deep nuttiness similar to toasted almonds or hazelnuts and in this beer work really nicely with the toasted character of the barrels the beer was aged in. 

After mashing and boiling as we normally would a pale ale, we cast through the hop back with Mosaic and chilled through the heat exchange, before barrel fermenting in 8 barrels, keeping a little bit to one side in stainless steel to enable us to top up the barrels after primary fermentation. This avoids making a mess of the brew house with krausening beer during primary and gives us the ability to limit too much oxygen in the head space of the barrel. After brimming the barrels in September last year, we set them to one side to sit with our house brett blend and the residual barrel bacteria. The full blend has been aged in a mixture of neutral American oak casks and some slightly punchier second use Rioja barrels.

Towards the end of fermentation, around 2 weeks before blending into brite tank for canning, we dry hopped with some aged Amarillo T90s pellets. The aroma of these hops was really interesting, still punchy and strong, but with less of the fresh orange characteristic we would expect initially when the hops are fresh, more dried peel and a touch of fresh grass, which works really well alongside the Plumage Archer backbone.

The inspiration for the Gothic Country design should hopefully be recognisable to many. Grant Wood’s famous 1930’s painting; American Gothic portrays "the kind of people [he] fancied should live in that house". It depicts a farmer standing beside his daughter – often mistakenly assumed to be his wife. The image has been reimagined numerous times over the last century and as Gothic Country was aged in American Oak barrels and is hopped with Amarillo, this archetypal American farmland scene felt appropriate to ape for our Heritage Saison. Our two characters and skele-goat are posing out in front of their expansive property, unaware of the ghosts that also appear in the image – a nod to the literary aesthetic American Gothic that features ghosts and monsters in many of its tales.

The finished beer is 5.6% and has a refreshing clementine like acidity and pithiness, amplified by both the brett fermentation character and the Amarillo dry hop, all balanced with the tannic barrel character. Light and spritzy, relatively low on our “goaty” funk scale but with a pleasant tartness in the flavour and with a crisp finish. It’s available now in can and keg, so look out for it on bars and on the shelves of independent retailers (or you can pick some up direct from our online shop) – we would love to hear your thoughts!

Cheers,

Jim

Meet your new Obsession!

We’re well known for our hoppy pale ales and IPAs here at Abbeydale Brewery, and are extremely fortunate to have built up good relationships with some magnificent hop suppliers during the 26 years we’ve been making beer.

Our brewers love playing around with different combinations of hops, but we identified a bit of a gap in our extensive range of beers centring around single hopped beers… And so we’ve created Obsession! A new series, using the same hops in each of the different formats they’re available and adding them throughout the brewing process to really get the most out of them, allowing their character to stand out and discover what makes each of these wonderful varieties unique.

For the first in the series, our brewer Jamie has selected Simcoe – a popular and punchy American hop which works well for both bittering and aroma.

The malt base has been kept straightforward (predominantly our house malt, low colour Maris Otter, with just a little added Vienna malt for sweetness and a shimmer of golden colour) which provides a clean backbone to allow the hops to shine. We used our house yeast too, again for a nice clean flavour, and as is usual for the majority of our Brewers’ Emporium beers we have added Brewers Clarex, resulting in a gluten free beer (more info on that here).

Simcoe has been added in leaf, T90 pellets and Cryo form at different stages of the brewing process, to allow this dual purpose hop to truly shine. T90s were added towards the end of the boil for added aroma and a hint of bitterness, with the leaf being the predominant format used at the hop back stage, allowing it to infuse more gently, a little like a massive cup of tea! More polyphenols are extracted when using whole cones, which gives depth and body as well as hop complexity in the finished beer. The Cryo hops were added on day 2 during active fermentation (whilst the beer was still on the yeast) – this allows complex chemical interactions between the hop oils and the yeast, causing biotransformation of the hops and resulting in bold flavour compounds having the opportunity to emerge. A further dry hop with more T90s was added on day 3 of fermentation.

As a new series of beers, our designer James was briefed to come up with something which reflected the inspiration for this series – our love of hops! And the artwork has evolved substantially since its conception. James’ original idea, a dagger through a heart, was subsequently deemed a “crap tattoo” style (James’ words!!) which it was felt wasn’t befitting of our range in 2022! Thus the idea was developed to more closely reflect the craft of hop growing itself, and now features a bill hook (a tool used to cut down the hop bines when harvesting) and an oasthouse (a building designed for kilning/drying the freshly picked hops – on this label, a North American style of oasthouse is shown to go alongside our American Simcoe hops). You can see a bill hook in action in the photograph below – with thanks to Paul at Charles Faram for the permission to use this image.

Expect a clean and refreshing IPA with juicy fruit sweetness and zesty grapefruit on the aroma, and flavours encompassing resinous pine, plenty more citrus (particularly reminiscent of clementine), and just a hint of summer berries, followed by a hearty, bitter finish weighing in at 85 IBU and 5.8% ABV. Bold, well balanced, and bittersweet, truly capturing the essence of Simcoe. Available from Friday 15th April in keg and 440ml can (including via our online shop) while stocks last! 

Cheers!

Introducing the newest release from our hop forward, cask led, pale ale series: Hopback CF247!

An experimental British hop from our wonderful suppliers Charles Faram, CF247 comes from the same family as Jester®, Olicana® and Harlequin®. It’s a sticky, oily hop with low bitterness, coming in at 7-8% alpha and promising notes of tropical fruits, red berries and a bit of dank! This is a hugely exciting time in the world of British hops as the scope of flavour and aroma continues to expand harvest after harvest. There’s absolutely loads to develop and discover and we feel very honoured to be joining in on the journey.

We were lucky enough to host a collaboration brewday with the incredibly lovely Beth from Charles Faram – our first “home” collaboration in over two years! After the all important first mashing in of the day (Yorkshire Tea for us, Earl Grey for Beth), we were ready to go.

It’s a single malt beer as well as being single hopped – the only grain we’ve used is our house malt, low colour Maris Otter, which gives a good clean pale ale base allowing the character of the hop to be the superstar in the glass.

Using a hop for the first time takes the brewer on a journey, learning about their nature and with different elements of their flavour profile coming out at each new stage of the brewing process. As we prepared the hops ready to be added into our hopback we gave them a good rub to see what characteristics we could pick out. We found an absolute cornucopia of fruit on the nose, with wafts of juicy pineapple sitting alongside homely and comforting raspberry jam. Once in the hopback and infusing into the hot wort, spicier elements came through alongside that jamminess, with a fresh wave of citrus fruit – almost reminiscent of lime pickle! And in the finished beer, there’s a grassiness in the aroma and a real lip smacking flavour, with greengage sweetness and berry fruits (we’re really pleased that those lovely jammy notes have made it all the way through to the final beer). This is all rounded off by a zesty freshness and a gentle bitterness in the finish, at a sessionable 4.2% ABV.

Watch out for it popping up on a bar near you.

Cheers!

Introducing Voyager – There & Back Again, our first ever TRIPLE IPA! Weighing in at 11.2%, making it the biggest beer we’ve put on full release to date, and available right now!

For our 25^th anniversary last year, we released a small series of riffs on our classics, with Cryo Heathen, Fresh Hop Heathen and Double Deception all going down an absolute treat. Revisiting the recipes for our core beers and having the freedom to play around with them a little is something the team really enjoyed, so we’re carrying on the theme with this incredibly special release of our flagship IPA.

The brew itself was a logistical challenge as we required a lot of sugar from our grain for the yeast to feast upon to reach such a lofty ABV. A huge 1300kg malt bill (predominantly our house malt, low colour Maris Otter from our suppliers Crisp Maltings, with just a little Caramalt for added sweetness and colour) was just too big for our mash tun to handle, so this meant a double brew day for Christie (and on a Sunday too!). But as ever he was up to the challenge and our wort was soon safely through and ready for some hops!

We’ve kept the same hop combination as for “regular” Voyager – Citra, Centennial and Mosaic, which were all added to our hopback as well as being used as dry hops – Citra and Mosaic in T90 form, and some Centennial Cryo to really boost all those amazing citrussy flavours. The Centennial Cryo was added midway through fermentation to provide a bit more hop interest and a little bit of juice – the flavour at 11.2% is boooooozy, so that extra fruitiness helps to round out the flavour of the beer. 

Rather than our house yeast (which is best suited to our usual 4% ish pale ales and the like so would not have had a nice time with this beer at all), we fermented our first ever triple IPA with the old classic US05. This keeps everything nice and clean and when making a beer this strong there aren’t many yeasts you can rely on to chew through all the sugar as effectively and reliably as US05 (unless you’re going down a funkier route). 

Overall, it’s the same old beautiful Voyager, but beefed up in pretty much every way possible! The same West Coast bitterness meets East Coast fruitiness that you know and love, but with all those tasty tropical notes singing even more loudly and an added intensity in the finish. And as with “regular” Voyager, we’ve added Brewer’s Clarex as part of the brewing process to mop up the gluten (more on how this works here), so it’s a rare treat of a GF TIPA!

The artwork shows our good ship returning from its momentous journey, continuing the “same but different” theme of this very special beer. And yes, the name is indeed a reference to The Hobbit. If we take one more step it’ll be the farthest away from home we’ve ever been…

Cheers!

Sheffield Beer Week is BACK from March 7^th to 13^th, and we’ve got two beers released for the occasion themed around our fantastic beery city – plus a whole host of events for you to get involved in!

In keeping with the local theme, we’re very excited to introduce our new dry hopped heritage pale ale, Sheffield Rocks (4.1%). Our homage to our hometown’s wonderful brewing history – the essence of the archetypal Sheffield beer for the twenty first century! Brewed in collaboration with local brewing legend Stuart Noble, using 100% UK ingredients and dry hopped with Pilgrim and UK Cascade. Read more here! And we’ve also re-released a familiar favourite, but with a new name and fresh new look. Huckster Cryo, our collaboration with our friends down at Kelham Island, Peddler Market, IS BACK – now part of our Brewers Emporium range as Wanderer – Cryo NEIPA (6.0%). Expect all the hazy, juicy, tropical good vibes you know and love in this pillowy New England IPA, packed with Sorachi Ace, Galaxy, Vic Secret and Ekuanot Cryo hops. Both of these new beers are available in cask, keg and can, so look out for them on bars and shelves across our city and beyond!

And we’re incredibly excited to have some real life, in person events booked in too! We’re kicking off with Indie Beer Feast, which is a fantastic precursor to everything Sheffield Beer Week has to offer, taking place on Friday 4^th and Saturday 5^th March at Trafalgar Warehouse in the city centre. We’re pouring alongside absolutely loads of brilliant breweries from all of the UK, as well as local favourites Lost Industry and St Mars of the Desert. Tickets are almost sold out, although there may be a limited number available on the door for each session – keep an eye on Indie Beer Feast’s Twitter page for updates!

On Tuesday 8^th March, two of our very favourite things come together in a special Beer & Snack pairing at the Riverside, Kelham Island. Five keg beers (exact details to be announced, but we can confirm our Sheffield themed releases will be featured), each paired with a delicious tasty treat! Our Dan will be on hand to talk you through each pairing and tell you all about the brewery and our beers. Head here to get your tickets! 

And we’re taking a little bit of Sheffield Beer Week on tour, as on Thursday 10^th March we’re heading down to London! The magnificent King’s Arms in Bethnal Green is hosting us for a Meet the Brewer and Tap Takeover. Join us from 5pm (no tickets required, just pop along!) – there’s a line up of 9 of our beers available across cask and keg, including an exclusive release of Black Mass in keg, for the first time in our 26 year history!

There’s absolutely loads going on all week across Sheffield too, so do make sure you check out the full event listings on the Sheffield Beer Week website. Team Abbeydale are sure to be out in force, so we hope to see lots of you for a beer or two!

Cheers!