Month: May 2026

There’s a new big DIPA in town! Introducing JUGGERNAUT, the latest addition to our Brewers’ Emporium range. 8.0% and boldly hop forward, using Citra, Centennial and Mosaic Lupocore. The hops are layered over a clean flavour profile which allows all those gorgeously vivid tropical notes to shine. Full bodied and showcasing true to style flavours and aromas, with a hefty, juicy character, rounded notes of sweet peach and a bitterness in the finish that invites you straight back for another sip. 

The beer overall was dreamed up by our Production Director John, inspired by his trip to the Yakima hop harvest last summer and the DIPAs he tried on his travels, which you can read more about here.

This is the first time we’ve used Lupocore, which is a hop product newly released in the UK. It’s all natural, scientifically engineered, enhanced hop flavour, intended to provide a bold sensory boost! Lupocore is similar in appearance to a T90 hop pellet, but softer and crumblier. This means it can disperse more quickly, thus providing a greater surface area, increasing flavour transfer and getting more out of the hops. It also has better sedimentation qualities, leading to an improved yield and efficiency – maybe not the sexiest way to promote a hop product to the end drinker, but here at the brewery it’s really important for us to get the most from our kit and do so as sustainably as we can, minimising waste and having greater control over our output.

We’ve also used Carapils from traditional maltsters Weyermann to add a little body whilst keeping the malt base clean. This allows the hop profile to shine most brightly, maximising the potential of the Lupocore. It’s our first time using Carapils too, which has been added in place of wheat for body and head retention, so it’s fair to say Juggernaut really is an innovative beer for us! 

Vegan friendly and as with all our beers gluten free, Juggernaut is available now in cask, keg and can – including from our online and onsite shop. Head to Abbeydale Beerworks, our gorgeous new taproom, for the first pour on cask this weekend!

Cheers!

It all began in 2014. We’ve always been (and remain to this day) a cask focused brewery, but our ethos is to ensure we never stand still, and the times they were a’changing, with fizzy beer becoming something we couldn’t – and didn’t want to – ignore.

Keen to crack on, we invested in our first pressurised vessels and a new washer/filler and set about creating a series of one-off beers designed for keg – imaginatively named ‘Pale Ale #1’, ‘Pale Ale #2, and so on.  Our favourite recipe was ‘Pale Ale #6’, which was later renamed Mosaic, after the hop it was brewed with. The initial artwork for Mosaic was originally intended to be a stop gap and the long-term plan had always been to rebrand and rename the beer to bring it into our range of permanently available brews. So, we set about the task of coming up with a new name for this wonderful beer. We wanted something that was worthy of shouting about – something that recognised our past and fitted in with our existing core beers, but that could also help to drive the image of the brewery forward in this excitingly fast paced and ever-changing industry. 

And so it was that back in 2016, we enlisted the talents of an artist called James Murphy, who was asked to create a contemporary design for this new release. One of three ideas he came up with was the now well-known ‘praying hands’ design we have come to love, with the name coming with it… the crossed fingers were felt to be very befitting of a beer named Heathen! Here, too, the ubiquitous rays were introduced – with a bright red alongside a complementary amber to represent the beer colour. On 23^rd May 2016, the first kegs of Heathen went on sale… and would you believe that the very first place in Sheffield to have it on tap was none other than Turners – valued customers for many years, and as of this month the venue which has become our very own brewery taproom! Serendipity or what?!

Ten years down the line, Heathen is now our third biggest seller, behind only Moonshine and (rather more closely) Deception. It was effectively the kickstarter for our now very popular Brewers Emporium range, from which new beers emerge almost weekly, and James now works for us full time as our in house designer, creating all of the artistic output across our many varied series’ of beers. We’ve seen a number of fresh interpretations on our American Pale Ale – Cryo Heathen, Fresh Hop Heathen, and UK Hop Heathen to name just three – and it is a beer we’re as proud of today as we were a decade ago.

Happy birthday, Heathen! We hope you will join us in enjoying a pint, or can, this Bank Holiday weekend.

Cheers!

In celebration of 30 years of Abbeydale Brewery, we’ve brought back – for a limited time only – one of the absolute OGs of our range. Say a fond hello again to Matins!

Matins originally came about as a consequence of brewery founder Pat Morton deciding to “brew a beer from muesli”, deeming it suitable for the sort of liquid breakfast that ought to find its way onto the set of Red Dwarf or Men Behaving Badly (this was the 90s after all – 27^th August 1996 to be precise, only the 8^th brew to ever be put through the original Abbeydale Brewery kit). The inventive grist, which originally comprised flaked oats, flaked rice and something recorded only as “cereal base” long since gave way to pure Maris Otter pale malt, but the aim of a low ABV, deliciously sessionable and easily quaffable beer remained the same.

Pat recalls visiting Lembas, a specialist vegetarian and vegan wholefoods wholesaler located just around the corner from the brewery (which is also like ourselves 100% employee owned), to purchase the 20kg sacks of muesli base. They were quite bemused that someone was ordering such large quantities, especially when they heard its intended purpose was to go in a beer! Pat once started to explain the canonical hours which inspired the name of Matins to Matt from Lembas, who quickly silenced his explanation – his father was a vicar!

Matins was a regular beer for just over a decade, and Pat was very proud of the body and flavour he achieved in a low gravity, pale beer. But sadly in 2008 it had to be dropped as a regular beer and since then has only appeared rarely as a special. “So make the most of it!”, says Pat.

With all this history dating back to our very beginnings as a brewery, we felt it was only fitting that Matins made a reappearance as part of our “Legacy Series”, helping us to celebrate our 30^th anniversary. The original design for Matins was the first pumpclip which featured the ruined abbey motif that became synonymous with our brand and ultimately so much so that it formed our logo! For the 30^th birthday comeback, the artwork has been reimagined in keeping with our traditional core range, reflecting the importance this beer has held in our history.

Matins is a 3.6% pale ale hopped with Mount Hood – an American variety that’s originally bred from the noble German variety Hallertau Mittelfrüher, so its delicate spicy notes and mild, clean character make it perfect for the easy drinking yet flavourful style we were aiming for. It’s also the sister hop to Liberty, which is unfortunately no longer available but was the hop we used in the first batches of this beer in the 90s. The resulting beer is crisp, fresh and well-balanced with a pleasantly herbal, grassy aroma. Like all our beers, it’s gluten free.

Matins is available now while stocks last in cask to trade customers, and is coming soon to can – watch this space!

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale