Category: News

A rare opportunity has arisen to join the management team at our lovely community pub, The Rising Sun, located in the leafy suburb of Nethergreen, Sheffield. Owned by us here at Abbeydale Brewery since 2005, The Rising Sun underwent a refurbishment a few years ago to add additional dining space and has since grown its existing reputation as a destination real ale pub to incorporate a quality food offering and dining experience. We balance both the traditional and modern in the venue and specialise in real ale and keg beer with 26 lines in total. As well as plenty of Abbeydale beers, we look out for the best of guest breweries too. We work closely with local suppliers – so local some of them are our customers! 

We are looking for an additional Duty Manager to support the General Manager in the everyday running of the venue.

We’re looking for someone who has at least 1 year experience working at no lower than Duty Manager level in a hospitality setting, with food offering, and has experience with the following:

• real ale and cellar management
• stock systems and management
• processing weekly admin
• managing & interpreting basic financials 
• staff training & development
• team leadership
• managing bar & floor shifts to ensure the quality of the overall customer experience
• health & safety procedures
• site audits

You will work closely with the existing Duty and General Managers to ensure the smooth running of the business day to day, to provide an enjoyable customer experience. You will need to lead by example and be organised, responsible, trustworthy, a great communicator and be willing to really take ownership of your role and duties. There is the opportunity for career progression for the right person and we are always happy to discuss personal development and training opportunities.

Holding a personal licence would be beneficial.

We offer 28 days holiday per annum plus staff discount, for use at both the venue and the brewery online shop. The role involves working 45 hours per week on a rota basis which covers daytimes, evenings and weekends. Salary will be £23,000.

The pub is easily accessible by public transport, with reasonable opening hours and a parent company (that’s us!) that invests heavily in staff training and progression.

Please apply by sending your CV and covering letter to [email protected].

Our Hidden Treasures of Sheffield series launched in March last year, just two weeks before lockdown gripped the nation. With pubs now starting to re-open, and our cask production starting to increase (hooray!), we thought a great place to pick back up our weekly cask specials was by bringing back the first of this series, which didn’t get much opportunity to shine last year, but has a story to tell that’s very important to the essence of what we’re all about here at Abbeydale Brewery. 

The Hidden Treasures series is inspired by our strong sense of place. Our beloved hometown has such a rich history, and so much of the everyday is overlooked in favour of more glamorous, visible landmarks. We wanted to shine a light on the bits of our city that we think are truly special, and that you might not necessarily have come across before. The beers themselves will be the classic, sessionable pale ales that we’re so well known for, but that we also don’t get too much cause to shout about every day. Here’s to the humble, the timeless, and the dependable.

For this beer, we’re taking you right back to the pre-Abbeydale Brewery days, as far as the 1950’s, to be precise. Here’s the story of Family Heirlooms and Tuneful Endings…

Before being in the brewery business, Patrick Morton, his dad Hugh and brother Chris all worked together on West Street, where they carried on the quintessentially Sheffield family tradition of being cutlers. Hugh had been there since the 1950s and was joined by his two sons a couple of decades later. 

Manufacturing scissors was the primary operation, and what the Morton’s made were among Sheffield’s finest. The problem with this was that they made things that lasted forever. They were also expensive, and unable to compete with cheap imported scissors which were inexpensive enough to throw away and replace. They tried other things like hand-made Bowie and tool-steel commando knives for the American custom-knife market. Making folding knives was a step too far with the machinery, and probably know-how (and, at least in Pat’s case, patience!), they had available. In the last few years the shop did more scissors, knives, and sheep shears repairs than selling new products.

Mortons, the shop on West Street, soldiered on regardless, selling an amazing collection of bric-a-brac and cutlery, often bought by the hundred-weight at auction from Sheffield’s dying industries.

The writing was on the wall. Pat and Chris both went to Sheffield University within a year of one another in the early 1980s, and Hugh, along with Pat and Chris’s mum, Dolly, finally had the business to themselves. In the 1990s, Hugh eventually gave up with cutlery and he and Patrick set up Abbeydale Brewery in 1996 (Hugh being instrumental in this, having a lot of confidence in a business where people consumed the product and then came back for another!). Dolly was the sales force of our local little brewery in days where the big breweries dominated all beer sales.

By the 2000’s Abbeydale Brewery was well established and growing. Chris (following a stint in IT), worked alongside Patrick, and Hugh finally retired. Chris was the Rising Sun’s first landlord when Abbeydale Brewery took it over from the Sheffield University Union. However, deciding that he much preferred to drink it rather than have much to do with making beer, Chris eventually left the business and now runs his own web software business, Plan Alpha Systems. Pat was joined by his wife Sue, and the two of them continue to lead us ever-forwards to this day.

So what about those tuning forks sculptures? They appeared without fanfare when the now ‘Morton Works’ was redeveloped into flats and a bar (the name always amused Hugh, as he’d only ever leased the building!).  You can find them on West Street, at the top of Bailey Lane between ‘Morton Works’ and what used to be called the Labour Exchange. No-one seems to know much about why they are there. This is where we come in to bring a lost story back to life!

Here’s the answer to the puzzle. In 1974 Chris became an apprentice tuning fork maker for Ragg Tuning Forks, then on Little London Road in Woodseats. He still got to do grinding and hitting things with hammers; so that satisfied the Sheffield ‘gene’. A couple of years later Chris, utilising Pat’s knowledge of physics and electronics, sorted out how to get an oscilloscope and a frequency generator to do the final tuning-fork tuning. Tuning fork making got underway for a while at the factory on West Street. The discovery of hundreds of part-manufactured tuning forks became a real inspiration for the builders who found them when redeveloping the building, and clearly they deemed them important enough to commemorate forever as a part of Sheffield’s industrial heritage.

Who made the tuning fork sculptures?  We’d love to know…

Family Heirlooms and Tuneful Endings is a 4.1% pale ale, hopped with Eureka, Enigma and Dr Rudi hops. It’ll be available in cask only from the week commencing 3rd May.

So confirmation has now been received that pubs are able to open for outside service from Monday 12^th April – that’s next week! And we’re happy to announce that one of the pubs that will be doing so is our very own community pub, The Rising Sun. The Moonshine has been safely delivered (hooray!) and the team have been working incredibly hard to make their beer garden a welcoming space to while away the day with a pint or two!

The pub will be re-opening for drinks only initially, although we’ve got our pals at Proove Pizza on board who will be setting up their outdoor pizza oven every weekend to enjoy alongside a beer. (The plan is to re-open the kitchen when indoor service is able to recommence, hopefully from the 17^th May – so we’ll have our legendary Sunday dinners back just as soon as we can.) And no need to book, so please just head down to see landlord Garry and the team – and keep an eye on the pub’s website and social media for all updates regarding opening hours and so on.

Of course the Rising Sun is not the only one to be throwing open if not its doors then at least the garden gates, and our team of drivers are back to full throttle and have been busy delivering delicious fresh cask and keg beer to pubs around our city and beyond! Sheffield CAMRA and This Is Sheffield are just two organisations that have been putting together lists of places that are able to re-open local to us, so do check that out too, and let us know where you’ll be heading for a beer!

Our online shop remains operational as always for beers at home, so if you’re not feeling quite ready to head out just yet, we’ve got you covered with a yummy range of cans. Our newest beer is an easy going session IPA called Emergence, brewed especially to celebrate being able to cautiously yet joyfully move into the new normal – the perfect beer to share in good company!

Anyway, here’s hoping for some beer-garden-friendly sunshine to enjoy – although I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a pint whatever the weather!

Cheers,

Laura

With pubs allowed to re-open their outdoor spaces and re-commence takeaway of alcohol from Monday 12^th April (albeit with a number of conditions to fulfil), we thought it would be helpful to issue an update for our lovely trade customers – we’ve really missed you, and we’re ready and waiting to help you through the next part of the roadmap into the new normal.

You may be aware that we haven’t ceased brewing at any point over the past year – although we have of course been quieter, and with many of our brews headed straight into can, we are now increasing production and are getting plenty of fresh beer ready to deliver to you in time for the proposed opening date. We aim to have all of our core beers in stock in cask (including 18s, for those of you who prefer these) as well as a good selection of keg products for you to choose from. Plus we’ve got a huge variety of cans (including of course our familiar flagship Moonshine!) if you’re looking to introduce or expand a takeaway facility for your customers.

Like our business has, we are very aware that your business is likely to be thinking on its feet and making changes to what was once the “usual”. We understand that you may have different operating times and stricter policies, so please let us know if your delivery requirements have changed and we will do our very best to accommodate these. From our perspective, we will be doing our best to keep the regular delivery days you are used to (get in touch if you need a little reminder), and our drivers will of course be adhering to social distancing and strict hygiene measures themselves.

Just in case you are not already aware, we have a provisional order system which new and existing customers alike are very welcome to make use of. This secures your beer for you but with no obligation for you to take it. So if you are planning to re-open on the 12th, let us know and we can reserve your stock – but don’t worry if  you experience any delays, we will happily keep it safe in our cold store until you are ready to receive it. (Of course, this also applies to those of you who will be staying closed under step 2 and are waiting until step 3 or later too).

We hope you are all safe and well – we are here to help, so do get in touch if you have any questions. Our office has been a little quieter than usual with some staff on furlough, however we are now staffing up and bringing the team back. Please be aware that your usual contact may be working flexibly with some time spent working from home, but you can reach us by email or you’re more than welcome to speak to anyone within the team, any time. We are ready and waiting to take your call.

This week, 8^th-14^th March, is Sheffield Beer Week. Usually, the whole city would be buzzing with events and special beer releases – and although it isn’t possible in the same way this year, festival organiser Jules is still putting on a virtual celebration and encouraging us all to come together to share our memories.

The very first Sheffield Beer Week took place in 2015, and we were very excited to get involved. We invited Rat Brewery over to collaborate with us to brew Big Foot, a Red Rye IPA which was one of our earliest keg beers, and held a cask vs keg event at Shakespeare’s. Now it might be the fact that six years have passed since then, or perhaps because of course lots of sampling had to occur in order to make an executive decision on which was best, but none of us can remember whether cask or keg won!

In 2016, the year of our twentieth birthday, we teamed up with (then Sheffield based) beery events duo Karma Citra and beer bloggers Mashtun and Meow to create Wet Yer Whiskers, a 5.5% white stout, as well as hosting the online #CraftBeerHour to talk about our anniversary plans, and joining in a celebration of women in the beer industry along with the team at the Devonshire Cat.

2017 was a huge year for us, as during Sheffield Beer Week we launched our Brewers Emporium range! We can’t quite believe it’s been four years since Heathen officially became part of our core offering, and the rest of the range has come so far with close to 100 beers being released under the Brewers Emporium “banner” since then. We also had a very special reunion day in the brewhouse in 2017, as we welcomed back three brewers who’d previously worked at Abbeydale to create Four Degrees of Separation, one of our very first beers to go into can and also one of the biggest IPAs we’d ever made at the time, making use of our extensive hop store.

We went historical for 2018, teaming up with beer historian Ron Pattinson and Sheffield Beer Week’s Jules to revive a heritage recipe, 1868. And the Rutland Arms hosted one of our all time favourite events – a boozy brunch beer and food pairing, where we made three different small batch beers exclusively for the occasion (AND blended one into a special Bloody Mary!), each paired with a delicious vegan dish. Amongst the beers we created was a Bucks Fizz QIPA (quarter IPA), which we made just a single keg at the time, but we’re excited to share that this is one of the beers planned in for our 25^th anniversary celebrations this summer, and we’ll be making a full batch of it! Finally, along with Jules, we headed into the peaks to create “Stepping Stones” with Thornbridge Brewery, our first "away" collaboration for Sheffield Beer Week. 

For 2019, we welcomed the wonderful Melissa Cole to create a Belgian Inspired pale ale. Melissa also worked with us to curate a beer and food paired menu to celebrate the launch of her book “The Beer Kitchen”, which we held at the Devonshire Cat (decadent chocolate mousse with kriek cranberries, paired with Methuselah BA stout, was a definite highlight!)

And finally for Sheffield Beer Week 2020, we made what turned out to be our last collaboration before lockdown swept the nation – working with Out & About and The Queer Brewing Project to brew “Not Just A Phase”. We’re excited to announce that we’ll soon be teaming up again to brew a Grapefruit Radler – an idea which came into being during post brewday beers last February!

We’ll be participating in the virtual launch event for this year’s Sheffield Beer Week over on the dedicated Instagram page from 6pm this evening (Monday 8^th March), so please join us there. And share your memories by using #SheffBeerWeek on Twitter and Instagram throughout the week!

The next in our series of 25^th anniversary celebratory beers is back… and it’s Last Rites!

One of our most iconic beers and first brewed in 1997, our deliciously boozy (yet still very drinkable) barley wine has truly stood the test of time. Heavily hopped using a similar combination of hops to Moonshine (Willamette, Cascade and Chinook), Last Rites was originally created from the first runnings of our flagship pale ale. It’s always been dry hopped too – this batch has Cascade and Mosaic added for an extra level of citrussy oomph!

Weighing in at 11% ABV, Last Rites is one of the trickiest beers in our line-up to brew, particularly during the cold winter months, so as usual we haven’t made things easy for ourselves… but we simply couldn’t imagine as important a milestone as our silver anniversary without it! Smooth and robust with a huge depth of flavour and a lingering finish, it’s one to truly savour and a beer we’re very proud of.

Last Rites is available now on our online shop and to trade customers, and for the first time we’ve added Brewers Clarex to the recipe meaning it’s labelled as gluten free (if you’d like to know more about this process, head to this blog post).  

So whether it’s a nostalgic favourite or a beer that’s new to you, please join us in raising a glass to 25 years of Abbeydale Brewery. Cheers!

So February 14^th is looming and whether you like to celebrate Valentine’s Day or not we reckon it’s a great excuse to treat the one you love!

We all need to stay at home at the moment, but we’re here to help create a romantic night in… with three delicious beers! And so we’ve put together a new limited edition gift pack inspired by a three course meal.

STARTER: The Hero’s Showdown – 4.5%. A Watermelon & Hibiscus pale ale, delicate and refreshing with a gently aromatic fruity character and just a hint of tartness alongside. Wonderfully thirst quenching and a great beginning to an evening, this would pair well with a light first course such as a whipped goat’s cheese or a seafood salad – and who doesn’t like melon as a starter?!

MAIN COURSE: Wanderer Oat Cream IPA – 6.2%. Bold, juicy, creamy and laden with Mosaic hops, this IPA is robust enough to stand up to all manner of main courses with just enough sweetness to cut through a rich meal. It’d be the perfect accompaniment to a classic steak and chips, or would work well as a contrast to spicy dishes from curry to tacos.

DESSERT: Salvation Sea Salt & Caramel Stout – 4.5%. Flavourful without being too heavy, this beer is inspired by an ever-popular combination – it would make a lovely pud simply enjoyed on its own but could also work beautifully alongside a tasty dessert. Whether you consider the beer a smooth operator to enjoy with a sharp and zesty passionfruit panna cotta, or a sumptuous partner to a decadent chocolate fondant.

Head to our online shop to pick up one of these – designed to work well whether shared with a loved one, or supped by yourself – you deserve it!

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale

We reach an important milestone this year, as the brewery celebrates its 25^th anniversary! Just one of the ways in which we’ll be marking the occasion is via the release of commemorative beers, all marked with a special emblem. The first of those is a returning beer which formed part of our core range from 2006 to 2016… and it’s available now! Welcome back Brimstone!

Brimstone is an American Brown Ale, well hopped with Amarillo. As we mentioned in our earlier blog post, Brimstone is a particular favourite of our Sales Director Dan. And in his words… “For me the reason why Brimstone was so special was because it looked like a traditional brown bitter but drank like a pale ale. Due to our particular disliking of crystal malt, the beer was coloured with chocolate malt, flavouring beautifully with chocolate and toffee, which when coupled with Amarillo hops (the Sabro of its time!) balanced it with a dreamy, marmalade like flavour. At 3.9% it was perfectly sessionable. You couldn’t compare any beer like it that was on the market at the time. It was a “bridge beer” for many that wanted to explore more than the normal cask bitters that were more readily available and truly experience what American hops tasted like. It was revolutionary in my opinion.”

Brimstone was retired back in 2016 due to Amarillo being in too short supply to keep it as part of our core range, and Double Brimstone was the first beer we released in honour of our 20^th anniversary that same year (more on that here, for those wanting to take a little trip down memory lane!), so the timing of this release seems rather fitting! And for the first time ever, it’s available in canned format.

We first heard about the existence of the Amarillo hop through an odd coincidence. Brewery co-owner Sue’s first cousin, Iain Hill (her mother’s brother’s son), is some 15 years her junior and has lived his whole life in Canada. He and Sue have only met occasionally over the years when he visited England with the family to visit his grandmother. But he became a brewer! Iain now runs Strange Fellows Brewing in Vancouver, along with business partner Aaron Jonckheere. Iain visited England as part of a work trip in the early part of the millennium, and made a quick visit to Sheffield to see our brewery.

As part of the many conversations about beer, Iain mentioned a new hop he was using from Oregon, called Amarillo, and recommended it to Pat. Pat immediately contacted our hop supplier Charles Faram and was able to secure some. And from this, Brimstone was born! We believe it was one of the first UK beers that Amarillo was used in (just as a couple of years later we’d be amongst the first to make use of Nelson Sauvin in Deception).

Brimstone to this day remains the only beer for which we have won a national tender and was successfully rolled out to all Greene King pubs at a national level in October 2011 – something which was partly facilitated due to its success as a house beer at the Museum, Orchard Square in Sheffield City Centre. It also featured as a house beer at the Dog & Partridge on Trippet Lane and the nationally award-winning Kelham Island Tavern and has had a few different “faces” as the house beer of pubs including the (now sadly closed) Mill of the Black Monk – as per the image to the right – and the Old Bowling Green in Winster.

As well as being perfectly happy flying solo as a sessionable and tasty beer, Brimstone cooks very well too, serving as a marvellous ingredient addition to stews, pies and the like. As a food pairing, we recommend a contrasting spicy dish like a rich and warming lamb tagine, or firecracker chicken wings with big, bold flavours. Alternatively, work with the structure of the ale and pair with a chocolate orange mousse or Millionaire’s Shortbread for a delicious dessert.

Brimstone is available direct on our online shop as well as to trade customers, for a limited time only!

After a very unpredictable 2020 for the whole population – including our beloved beer industry, and us here at Abbeydale Brewery (more on that in this blog post), we’re finding things to look forward to in 2021. One thing we can be sure of is that we will be celebrating our 25^th anniversary! We feel very fortunate to be here and certainly feel it’s a milestone well worth celebrating.

Throughout the year we’re planning on releasing a series of anniversary beers, which will be marked with our special commemorative logo (shown on the right!). We don’t want to give toooo much away just yet, but suffice to say we’ve got some amazing surprises up our sleeves with some completely new brews and some twists on popular favourites on the way.

We’re kicking off the year’s special releases with two returning beers… the first of which has been brewed this week! Our Amarillo hopped American Brown Ale, Brimstone, was a much loved feature of our core range from 2006 until 2016 before we had to take the difficult decision to retire it, but it’s back as a limited release in early February… including in can for the very first time! It’s a favourite beer of our Sales Director, Dan Baxter – who himself has worked for the company since 2007. Starting out at one-time Abbeydale pub The Moon, he began working at the brewery as a brewer and salesman in 2008 (following in his grandad’s footsteps, who used to work at the old William Stones Cannon Brewery on Rutland Road), and he’s never looked back. Dan’s very excited to get Brimstone back in his life, and we hope you are too! 

Also in February we have the return of Last Rites, our always popular dry hopped barley wine – we can’t wait to welcome it back to our line-up.

What would you like to see us get brewing in our 25^th anniversary year? Let us know in the comments below!

Cheers,

Team Abbeydale

Unpredictable. Chaotic. Worrying.

Adaptability. Resilience. Teamwork.

Our industry has faced absolutely enormous challenges over the course of this year, and we’re absolutely no exception. We’ve made it through thanks to our will, determination, careful cash management and various government schemes, a whole lot of pivoting to the point we’re all dizzy, and most importantly all of you!

Of course, we can’t talk about this year without mentioning that we had to take the incredibly difficult decision to close our wonderful city centre bar, The Devonshire Cat, earlier in the year. Whilst this was heartbreaking for all of us, it has enabled us to focus on getting the brewery business, and that of our community pub, The Rising Sun, into the strongest position possible for survival.

And ultimately, we’re still here, have managed to preserve jobs across the business, and have so many positives to be thankful for – so that’s what we’ve chosen to reflect on as 2020 comes to an end.

Firstly, our very own shiny canning line arrived at a very handy time early in the first lockdown, which was a real lifeline for us and meant we had much more flexibility in terms of which beers we were able to release in can (over 40 different varieties), and how often.

We’ve tripled our can sales this year in comparison to 2019, with around 375,000 heading out to you thirsty lot! In terms of a proportion of our total output, cans have gone from under 3% in 2019 to over 16% in 2020. It is worth saying that this is also partly because our overall volumes are down significantly – although we hope to achieve just over half of our 2019 output, which we’re pretty proud of under the circumstances.

Speaking of cans, a huge moment for us was releasing our much loved flagship pale ale, Moonshine, in cans in May. This had been something we had in the pipeline prior to lockdown, but the situation certainly sped up our progress. We were able to follow this by offering the rest of our core range, which had previously only been available in cask, in can too, and they’ve all been really well received – and we’re already coming up to our 100,000th can of Moonshine!

Our online shop has become a much more important part of our business, not only with our canned beers but also due to the introduction of minikegs which have been around 6% of our total output this year. We also have our first dedicated international customer, Bassan Bernardo & Figli, who have helped us get our beers into Italy!

We’ve won some prestigious awards for our beers throughout 2020 too, including a Regional Gold medal for Heresy lager at the SIBA keg awards, and a Regional Gold and National Bronze award for our Daily Bread Best Bitter in can, which we’re really proud of.

Whilst we sadly weren’t able to hold Sunfest at the Rising Sun in July, we did manage to turn Funk Fest, our mixed fermentation celebration, into an online virtual event – Funk Fest At Home! We had a great weekend with over a hundred of you joining us in imbibing our way through some exclusive beers released just for the festival, and other breweries from around the country got involved too. We hope we were able to keep the festival spirit alive whilst we all wait patiently for events to return, but the rise of the virtual beer tasting could well be here to stay too. Whilst we wouldn’t want to see this sort of thing replace the real life social elements of a festival, as an addition to our beer drinking world it could be a great way to ensure events are accessible and inclusive to as many people as possible.

Finally, and most importantly, 2020 has been all about the people! We are so grateful for and proud of all our staff here and our trade customers, who have dealt admirably with everything that’s been thrown at them, and enormously thankful to everyone who’s placed an order on our online shop or bought our beer from other independent retailers. We’ve loved being able to meet (from a safe distance!) so many more of our customers, especially locally, and have done our best to keep the community spirit alive with our “pay it forward” scheme. We’ve also worked with trade organisations to lobby the government for fairer and more meaningful support for the industry, whilst the determination and sense of co-operation that our fellow brewers and suppliers have shown has been truly amazing.

And so we’re going into 2021 feeling cautiously positive – whilst we, along with the whole country and indeed the rest of the world have some way to go to deal with this virus and wait for the new normal (whatever that may come to mean) to emerge, we are optimistic that we can continue to pull together and will always do our best to keep adapting to new challenges.

2021 is also our 25^th anniversary year! Look out for our next blog coming soon on all of our plans (as far as we’ve been able to make them under the current circumstances) for how we’ll be celebrating.

A huge thank you to everyone who’s supported us in any which way this year. We genuinely couldn’t have done it without you.

Cheers! And here’s to a brighter 2021.

Team Abbeydale x

Photo credits: Mark Newton Photography