Month: May 2024

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Meet the Team

It’s time to meet another of the lovely bunch that make up Team Abbeydale, and it’s the turn of Robin, who this week celebrates his 10th anniversary of working here… a whole decade! Happy Brewery Birthday, Robin – we’re very lucky to have you!

First up, the basics! What’s your name and where do you come from? 

My name is Robin, and I was born and bred in this fair city we call home.  

What is your role at Abbeydale Brewery? 

Now that’s a good question! How long have you got?! Having initially joined as a member of the sales team, my role has evolved over the years.  I’m now the Export Manager, and amongst other things I am responsible for the monthly duty return, sales analysis, cellar technical support, delivery logistics and a whole host of other things!

What’s your favourite beer style and why?

It genuinely depends what mood I’m in, but I love hoppy pale beers in cask, German lagers and mixed fermented beers. Partial to a good stout now and then too! Particular favourites are Augustiner Helles, Saison DuPont and Fyne Ales Jarl.

What’s your favourite thing about working at Abbeydale Brewery? 

After ten years of working here, it’s clear that it’s the people. It really feels like a family, and the fact that a good third of our workforce have been here longer than me speaks volumes. 

Favourite pub in the world? 

I would have to say The Crow, Sheffield. Perfect mix of traditional pub with an unbelievable rotating keg and bottle offering. The Schneider Weisse tap in the middle of Munich is pretty special too. 

Where did you have your first (legal!) pint? 

Pale Rider in the Fat Cat on my 18th birthday. Was at the time the Champion Beer of Britain, so it felt quite appropriate.

Favourite snack to enjoy alongside a beer?

Definitely Scampi > Bacon in the fries wars, but Jalapeño Snyders pretzel pieces beat all.  

When you’re not busy exporting beer, what do you get up to? 

I trained as a musician, and haven’t completely given up hope of being a rock star at some point in the future 😉 I still play with various bands, and have been excited to be back in the studio recently with Dead Like Harry. I also love spending time with my family, and my two boys keep me hands full! I’ve been known on occasion to frequent Hillsborough to cheer on the Owls although not so frequently since the family came along! 

Who’s your hero? 

Dave Grohl, without doubt. Getting to see the Foos play again in a few weeks time, can’t wait!

And finally… If you were a cartoon character, who would it be? 

I was once described in a review as looking like Animal from the Muppets whilst I was on stage, but I know the Muppets aren’t technically a cartoon, and also Animal plays the drums not the bass! I do love SpongeBob though, and South Park. Maybe Randy Marsh is my hero… 😉

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Gluten free beers

Gluten free beers

Did you know that here at Abbeydale Brewery we produce a wide range of beers which are Gluten Free, including Heathen and Heresy? Read on for an explanation of our processes, how we label these beers, and where you can find all the details you need to make an informed choice.

These beers are not produced without gluten containing ingredients, and do use barley and often wheat and other grains too, as can be clearly seen on the ingredients list of our beers in can. However, we use a gluten reducing enzyme as part of the brewing process – this is a proline specific oligopeptidase enzyme (which you may have heard referred to as Brewers Clarex, Brewers Clarity, or DeHaze) which can reduce the gluten to below the 20ppm threshold required to label a product as gluten free. This means our beers brewed in this way can be safe to drink for many of those amongst us who are sensitive to gluten. This has no effect on the taste of the beer and is not in any way detrimental to the flavour – such a clever little enzyme!

Our beers are regularly tested to check the gluten content at a UKAS accredited laboratory, and we use a lateral flow test prior to packaging by way of double checking the GF status before each and every batch of beer leaves the brewery.

You can always check the Gluten Free status of each of our beers by looking for the logo shown to the left – it is clearly visible on the “Our Beers” page, as well as on our online shop. The permanently available beers of ours which are always produced using a gluten reducing enzyme are Heathen, Heresy, Voyager and Serenity, plus Deception and Black Mass from our heritage range. In addition, many of our specials are also brewed using the enzyme. For our permanently available beers in can, we also clearly display a declaration of the beer as gluten free on the label (look for the logo shown to the left).

For our more unusual recipes and one-off specials, this logo may not appear on the can label itself, as these must be ordered prior to our final lateral flow check which confirms the gluten level is below 20ppm. We will always indicate where a gluten reducing enzyme has been used in the list of ingredients, however we are aware of rare occurrences where the gluten level has remained slightly above the 20ppm threshold in beers with adjunct heavy recipes, for example. We want you to have 100% confidence in our beers, and will always make sure our website and online shop clearly displays the GF logo for all beers which have successfully been evidenced to contain less than 20ppm gluten via lateral flow and/or external laboratory testing to ensure full and complete compliance.

You will not find the logo on the pump clips for our cask and keg beer. This is because, whilst the beers produced as GF are made in the same way no matter what format they’re released in, we cannot guarantee that the beer is being served through a gluten free line, which may affect certain customers (although some pubs and bars may choose to dedicate a line to GF beers). As with our canned beers, our website is a great resource to check which beers have been evidenced to contain lower than 20ppm gluten at the point of package. (Please note, we do not produce all of our beers to a GF recipe and would always advise checking on the website).

The vast majority of beers labelled as gluten free that you see on bars and shelves of pubs and bottle shops around the country will have been produced in a similar way to that described above (so you will still see grains such as barley clearly highlighted as allergens in our ingredients lists).

Whilst there are gluten free beers available that have been brewed with no gluten containing ingredients, these are few and far between. The reason for this is that gluten free grains generally do not hold the same characteristics as those more commonly used in brewing, and so a wider change of process and a huge amount of investment would be needed for us to be able to utilise grains such as rice and sorghum effectively on a large scale. At the moment, this isn’t a direction we are in a position to take, so we have looked at other ways that we can make our beers as accessible to as many people (over the age of 18 of course!) as possible. We are aware that this isn’t a one-solution-fits-all scenario, but we hope to provide sufficient information to let you, the drinker, make an informed decision about our beers, and therefore hopefully enable more of you to enjoy them!

We hope this system helps to reassure you that we are taking the utmost care to ensure the safety of our customers, alongside of course offering a great range of flavourful beers that are accessible to as many of our drinkers as possible. We’re keen to ensure that you are fully informed about the processes our beer undergoes before it reaches the glass – as part of this, we’re also more than happy to answer any questions you may have, and are very willing to take feedback on board if there’s anything you think we could communicate more clearly, so please get in touch (you can email us at [email protected]) if you have any suggestions or think there is anything we are missing.

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale

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See Britain By Ale

Just in case you haven’t noticed, we are pretty fond of cask beer here. We’ve made rather a lot of it in 28 years. Cask beer is something to be treasured – a link with our history, the essence of our present, and a crucial part of our future too. It deserves to be celebrated.

We know we aren’t the only ones who think this way (if we were, we wouldn’t sell over two million pints of cask beer every year!), and so we’ve recently introduced a new range to our offering which allows us to share this love of all things cask with our friends from breweries across the country that pay it just as much reverence as we do – appreciating the art of understatement, the joy of simplicity and the unadulterated pleasure that comes from a perfectly poured pint of cask beer.

The Travel Poster series is inspired by the home towns of our collaboration partners, and the varied look of this range takes inspiration from the British Railways branding of the early/mid-20th century and esteemed travel posters throughout history. Our designer James has revered this style and aesthetic for a long time, and we’ve been waiting for the right moment to introduce this look – and showcasing it by shining a distinctive light across a range of beer styles, all of which consider the history and traditions of cask ale, seemed just the right fit.

James has been delving deep into researching the areas the breweries visit us from represent, coming to have an even deeper appreciation for this beautiful country and celebrating our diverse landscape.

So far we have created “Explore the River Aire”, a New Zealand hopped ESB, with Anthology (who hail from Leeds), “Walk the Loxley Valley”, a delectable Sabro pale ale with Loxley Brewery (based in north Sheffield), and “Discover Ossett”, a collaboration with Ossett Brewery (from erm… Ossett), which was a hybrid between our beloved Deception and Ossett’s incredibly popular White Rat. Each beer has its very own beautiful, original artwork that depicts the area the visiting brewery calls home and comprises a style that plays to our collective strengths. In addition, we used a little creative license and collaborated with ourselves to make “Swing by Beauchief”, a charming homage to the area where the abbey that our brewery logo is based upon stands – this recipe was an Abbeydale classic, the sort of well-hopped pale ale that we’re best known for.

Next up we’re incredibly excited to be working with Fell Brewery, based in the stunning Lake District, which again gives great scope for another eye-catching cask clip to showcase another tasty beer – “Fall for the Lakes” (see what we did there?!). We’re teaming up to produce a Transatlantic Pale Ale (a small tribute to Fell’s brewer Scott, who hails from upstate New York and joined us for the brewday), hopped with UK grown Harlequin and American classics Simcoe and Chinook to create a vivid and vibrant beer with notes of pine, passionfruit, peach and pineapple. Due for release the week commencing 20th May, so keep your eyes peeled for this one.

So there you have it. The Abbeydale Brewery Travel Poster series, created in the spirit of collaboration and community, designed not only to have great flavour but to invoke a little nostalgia too. Best enjoyed in your local pub with a gentle sense of wanderlust. We can’t wait to see where the next adventure will take us…

  • About Us

    A true Sheffield institution founded in 1996, Abbeydale Brewery blends heritage and tradition with creativity and innovation, showcasing these values across an unparalleled range of beers.

    Abbeydale Brewery brochure

  • Contact Us

    Abbeydale Brewery Ltd
    Unit 8, Aizlewood Road
    Sheffield
    S8 0YX
    Telephone: 0114 281 2712
    Email: [email protected]

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