Category: News

With cans of Moonshine coming very soon (we should have a date for you by next week!) we thought we’d cast back our memories right back to the early days of Abbeydale Brewery, to tell you more about the beer that has become our beloved flagship, our biggest seller (it’s over half of everything we make here!), and Sheffield’s most iconic brew.

Moonshine was the first recipe our brewery owner Patrick Morton worked on when setting up Abbeydale Brewery back in 1996. Absolution was the first beer we actually brewed here, but Moonshine was already much more than just a gleam in Pat’s eye by this point. It was carefully thought out, though the level of its success was beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Following the success of Pale Rider, Pat’s first commercial recipe whilst he was at Kelham Island Brewery, and inspired by the likes of Brendan Dobbin (still a friend) at West Coast Brewing and Sean Franklin at Roosters Brewery, he wanted to reproduce that pale, hoppy, American hop flavour in a more acceptable (at the time) ABV of 4.3%. 

Patrick (and even more so his wife Sue) dislike the flavours given by crystal malts so prevalent in brown beers. Sheffield was a little unusual in having a taste for paler beers than the standard brown bitters enjoyed by the rest of the country, thanks to Stones bitter which was produced (and very popular) locally. So put together Sheffield’s acceptance of pale beers, Patrick’s and Sue’s dislike of crystal malts, love of American hops and drinkable more-ish beers and Moonshine was born.

Moonshine is also light on bitterness, and the emphasis has always been on late-added hops for flavour rather than hops added to the boil (which extracts maximum bitterness, something which can be off-putting to many people’s palates). Originally 100% Willamette hops, the recipe for Moonshine has changed ever so slightly 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.

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 then 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, but not too bitter beers. From there, many have moved, with us, on to more adventurous styles, including developing a taste for bitterness, high ABVs (remember Last Rites at 11% is essentially a very strong version of Moonshine), completely over the top hoppiness and even sour beers! Many others have loyally stuck with their first love… pale, now gently hoppy, not too bitter, more-ish Moonshine."

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, Moonshine has 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. It’s come a long way since that very first pint was sold on 2nd September 1996.

Today at Abbeydale Brewery we’re really proud that we can continue to produce such a consistent and popular beer as Moonshine, alongside the other pale ales we’re renowned for but also the more weird and wonderful styles that we love to play around with too. And we are very proud indeed to have been an early part of the uprising that has led to such a massive variety of beer being available in the UK today. And so, as we gear up for the next stage of the revolution and get ready to launch our flagship cask product in can, we hope you’ll continue to follow our progress. We’re SO excited to see where this takes us next…

As the bank holiday weekend approaches, we have put together some colouring sheets for you to get creative with!

The templates feature our favourite American Pale Ale – Heathen, an unknown Brewers Emporium beer and a blank can for you to go wild with!

We’re looking forward to seeing how you get creative and have fun with your designs, so please share them with us across instagram, twitter and facebook. There will be a prize for the design that impresses/amuses us the most, so get them to us by Monday 20th April to be considered.

Click on the image below to download the printable colouring sheets.

 

Three sheets in total, combined within one pdf file. Each sheet is standard A4 size (21 cm w x 29.7cm h). Images can be printed or coloured digitally.

Prizes available for 18+ and UK only.

Here’s what we’re doing at Abbeydale Brewery to try to bring a little bit of sunshine to your days.

We’re aware that we should all be doing our best to stay at home at all times right now, and your favourite watering hole is "out of bounds". Please don’t forget that you can still get hold of our beers to enjoy at home from our online shop at abbeydalebrewery.co.uk/shop and we can bring your favourite beer right to your door!

We are continually updating the offering on there (starting with the return of MOONSHINE MINIKEGS, which are available now, along with minikegs of our other core beers!). We would love to hear your ideas for anything we could add! Our can stocks are running a little low currently, but we’re working hard to get things back in stock!

We offer a courier service for delivery, taking all the stress out of ensuring you can get your beer easily. We’ve also just introduced free local delivery for all orders of over £25, so if you’re based in Sheffield and place a qualifying order please select this option. In light of the government announcement of Monday 23rd March, we have suspended the option of collection from the brewery with immediate effect. We aim to get all orders out within 2 working days, but please bear with us (especially if you’re not particularly local to the brewery) as we are collating orders by area. We are of course very carefully following all government guidance and have strict procedures in place to ensure we are all kept safe, and will continue to monitor the situation and do our best to adapt as quickly as possible. We know how important sitting down with a beer is, so we’ll continue to do everything within our power to keep it flowing!

We’re all in this together, and so we wanted to do something to help the rest of our amazing industry community. As such we’re starting a little initiative – for every order on our online shop from a member of the public totalling over £40, we will commit a forward credit of £10 to the pub you would normally drink our beer in, which the pub can claim from us when this has all blown over*!

Our pubs, The Rising Sun and the Devonshire Cat, are now closed in line with the government’s ruling of Friday 20th March. We will really miss them (along with all of our other wonderful pub customers) but we’ll keep you all updated when the times comes that we are able to re-open safely.

We always used to say that “There’s nothing more social than beer” and we’re really passionate about not letting this go despite the challenges our industry and the wider world is currently facing. Our business has been built on the strength of our community and it’s critical to us that all work together at this time. Please reach out to friends and family using phones, emails, chats, etc. And where we can, let’s help each other. If you ever fancy a bit of a chat, we’re here. Please feel free to reach out to us (who’s up for a Skype drinkalong at some point?!). We at Abbeydale would like to thank all of our customers for their loyal patronage and in these challenging times we send each and everyone our very best wishes.

We can’t wait to join you all for a pint when this is all over.

Team Abbeydale x

 

*Max. credit per venue of £100 available

This Sheffield Beer Week (March 9th-15th), we’re keen to be involved with and help to spread the important message of inclusivity, accessibility, acceptance and friendship for all who are involved in the beer industry. Brewers, publicans, bottle shop owners, beer writers, and of course, beer drinkers.

And so our special release for this year is Not Just A Phase, a 4.3% pale ale brewed in collaboration with Sheffield’s very own Out & About, and The Queer Brewing Project (head to their pages to find out more about their hugely valuable messages, and the work they’re doing to bring them to the industry as a whole). It’s both a call to arms and a celebration of diversity, and is also both vegan and gluten free, released in cask and keg formats.

We welcomed award-winning Lily Waite of The Queer Brewing Project along with Michael and Heather from Out & About to the brewhouse on a stereotypically Sheffield rainy day in February, where we were all treated to a lovely straightforward brewday (not often the norm on collaborations!) powered by cheese toasties from our friends at Dead Donkey.

Not Just A Phase is hopped with Amarillo, Chinook and Mosaic, to bring a zesty orange and grapefruit character, with a hint of sweetness in the backbone from the use of Munich malt and Caramalt. Overall, a deliciously quaffable, refreshing and fruity pale ale that’s incredibly accessible, and as Lily puts it “this beer is a bunch of queers planting a flag in the ground that the LGBTQ movement across the beer industry is, well, not just a phase”.

Coming later in the year we’re teaming up again to produce something from the Funk Dungeon project too! Watch this space for more details…

The official launch party of Not Just A Phase is taking place at the Devonshire Cat on Friday 13^th March, as part of a tap takeover showcasing a variety of other beers that have been brewed by LGBT+ people. All are very welcome!

Photo credit: Lily Waite

We’ll also be pouring our collaborative brew at Indie Beer Feast this coming weekend (March 6th and 7th) alongside a whole host of other tasty treats, so do pop along for some pre-Sheffield Beer Week shenanigans! Tickets are still available for both Friday sessions at the time of writing although advance tickets for Saturday have now sold out. Please do pop by and have a beer at our bar!

Cheers!

This year, the 29^th March sees five of our team – Laura, Jim, Scott, James and Tommy – take on their biggest challenge yet, The Sheffield Half Marathon. The team have been out training hard in all weathers (thanks, Storm Dennis!) and are well on track to achieve their goals. Please head to https://justgiving.com/fundraising/team-abbeydale-brewery to help us in our fundraising efforts – it really does make a difference. 

And so with just 5 Sundays between now and #TeamAbbeydale heading to the start line, we thought it only fit to share with you why we’re asking for your support.

Two years ago when our Events Manager, Carly, joined the team she managed to wrangle 10 of us into taking part in the Sheffield 10K raising over £1500 for Cavendish Cancer Care. After being diagnosed in 2015 with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and back fighting fit she saw an opportunity to build on the relationship Abbeydale Brewery already had with them and give something back. At the time she wrote:

“It is my belief that we need to raise two things to help a charity not only sustain itself, but to grow; money (of course) and awareness. I chose to get involved as I think it’s vital that people are more aware of them, I was lucky that I already was. You get so much information within those first few weeks of a diagnosis, I hope that if someone reads my story it registers on different level in some way.”

Back to the run, and the team were given three options; 1) run it, 2) come down and cheer us on/volunteer or 3) donate… which is what led to ten of us lacing up our running shoes and taking part!

One of those 10 was Laura, our Office & Communications Manager, who having never been ‘a runner’ before got well and truly bitten by the running bug and it quickly became obvious that this was going to be a new passion, despite being in no way a natural runner! After completing the Sheffield 10K in 2018 along with 3 other runs around the county, she decided 2019 was going to be the year she ran over 500km, including once again the Sheffield 10k raising vital funds and awareness for #TeamCav and ultimately joining local running club Steel City Striders.

With what some describe as a beautifully scenic route with gorgeous views…while we’re more inclined to count the inclines (!) this year’s half marathon is sure to be 13.1094 miles of pure Sheffield love. The support, not only in donations, but in the number of Sheffielders who line the way. Thank you in advance for any words (shouts) of encouragement, sweets, songs, and most importantly smiling faces! 

We reckon if each of our beloved Abbeydale fans (based on our Facebook followers!) donated the value of their favourite pint *cough cough Moonshine* we’d raise an astonishing £22,586! If that figure isn’t worth the cost of just one extra beer then we’re not sure what is!

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