30 Years of Abbeydale Brewery
We’ve spent the past month doing a little countdown to our “official” birthday of August 16th, which was the date the very first cask left the brewery destined for its new home. That beer was Absolution, and the pub was the Three Stags Heads in Wardlow Mires – still a customer of ours to this day (and the only place in the world you can find our Black Lurcher!).
Each day, we’ve focused on each year since our foundation, looking back on not just what was going on here but also the wider context we were working in. We thought it would be nice to keep all that history in one place as a way to reminisce, reflect on our achievements, and think about just how far we’ve come since Gyle #001.
Turns out there’s quite a lot to say when you’ve got thirty years to cover, even when it’s just a snapshot each time – so we recommend settling down with a beer before getting stuck in to reading!
1996 – Patrick Morton founded Abbeydale Brewery, and beers including Moonshine, Absolution and Black Mass first came into being! The Spice Girls hit number 1 for the first time with Wannabe, and Dolly the sheep was born.
1997 saw the first appearance of Last Rites! The first brew of our barley wine took place on February 15th. Meanwhile, Katrina and the Waves led the UK to their last Eurovision Song Contest win (to date…)
1998 – Absolution won Gold at the Peterborough CAMRA Festival on its first entry there! Jumanji became the first DVD to hit the UK market, the Ford Focus was named Car of the Year and Nigella Lawson’s “How to Eat” cookbook was launched, inspiring a nation of home chefs.
In 1999 the closure of Wards brewery meant we had to go from scrounging yeast (including by Pat’s wife Sue who’d head down with a bucket on a Saturday mornings) to starting our very own house yeast. Our culture is what gives our beers their own unique character and it’s something we spend a lot of time every day taking care of, so this was a really important step in our history. In the wider world, the debut episode of Spongebob Squarepants aired – momentous indeed.
The UK’s wettest year on record, 2000, saw the first release of Simcoe hops, a pioneering flavour for the craft beer revolution! The Nokia 3310 was launched at the turn of the millennium, too.
2001 was the first time we brewed Belfry, hopped with US Cascade – a very popular beer which remains a seasonal special to this day. Shrek won an Oscar!
The introduction of Small Brewers Relief in 2002 changed the face of UK brewing significantly, with the duty reform it brought in designed to allow small independent breweries to compete more fairly with larger breweries and multinationals. The intention was that duty savings could be reinvested into infrastructure and growth – something that we were able to take great advantage of, and which made a big difference to the next few years of business. By reducing one of the barriers to entry to market, it also meant lots more new breweries could open with a more accessible business model, helping to make the industry more vibrant and exciting. (This is very much an “in a nutshell” overview… please let us know in the comments if you’d like to know more about this!)
In 2003 we were really getting a name for our ever changing cask beer releases, something which has continued to this day, with new cask only specials coming out almost every week! Redemption was just one of those this year, whilst Ugg boots were the biggest trend of the year.
2004 was the year of Holy Water! An incredibly popular 6% pale ale, which we have recently brought back as part of our “Legacy Series” showcasing beers from our extensive archives. MySpace became the first social media site to hit one million users.
2005 was a big year for us. Sue joined husband Pat at the helm of the business, building us a completely bespoke brewing and sales management system which no commercially available software would be able to match for decades. And we took ownership of the Rising Sun, just in time for Christmas! This also meant Sooz started working for us, who’d been bar staff at the pub since before we took it over. She’s now our financial controller and longest serving member of staff. Flip phones were all the rage, although we were all still on landlines!
Pat and Sue took a trip to Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, in early 2006, to visit the new brew plant being built (although it wasn’t to arrive for quite some time… watch this space!) Stuart Noble began working with us, and four members of the team including Pat took and passed the GCB (General Certificate in Brewing) with Stuart’s tutoring. Stuart has been a great friend to the brewery ever since, tutoring, training, advising and helping to improve processes and quality. And does anyone remember being lucky enough to get an Xbox 360 for Christmas ths year?!
The smoking ban came into force in 2007 – although the Rising Sun had brought this in earlier! Speaking of the Rising Sun, the very first Sunfest took place this year (see the pic to the left for the original set up!), with Edale Mountain Rescue as our very first charity partners. Daily Bread was launched in 2007 too, in response to customer demand at our very own pub – knocking John Smiths off the bar! And our Company Secretary Dawn became part of the team, bringing much needed method to our madness!
In 2008, Dan (now Co-Managing Director) joined the business, and the first batch of Deception was brewed against the backdrop of the Beijing Olympic Games! It went on to beat some beer called Punk IPA in a local competition…
2009 – Black Mass was named Champion Beer of Yorkshire. Dan recalls this batch being the result of an unusually horrendous brewday, but it seems to have worked out pretty well! A new cave was discovered in the Peak District and gained the name “Absolution” as it was thought to be the same colour as our beer! We FINALLY took delivery of the newly upgraded mashtun and kettle that we first met in Nova Scotia in 2006 – the mashtun is the one still found in our brewhouse today. The installation was overseen by our new Production Manager, John, who joined the business in this year. And whilst nationwide, beer sales were down, a cask revival was underway!
A very proud moment came in 2010, when not only did Deception win Champion Beer of Sheffield at the Steel City Beer Festival, but Pat was awarded a CAMRA Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contribution to Real Ale at the same time! Outside of the beer world, the first iPad was released and Instagram was launched to the public.
We all got down on Fridays in 2011 thanks to Rebecca Black’s catchy tune (there’s your earworm for the week, you’re welcome), and Absolution joined the list of Champion Beer of Yorkshire winners! It was also the first year that we released Duck Baffler, a pale ale brewed exclusively using Citra hops. It’s arguably the most popular of all the Dr Morton’s beers and so remains an annual January special to this day.
2012 was a time of nationwide festivities, witnessing both the London Summer Olympics, and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. And there was cause for celebration here at Abbeydale HQ too as not only did Moonshine win the Champion Beer of Yorkshire crown, taking up the mantle from Absolution, but our Board of Directors grew, with Pat and Sue welcoming Dan, John and Dawn to join them in driving the brewery forwards. The hard work and dedication of the board, alongside their willingness to facilitate new ideas alongside supporting and listening to their team, laid the foundations for where we find ourselves today – as the country’s first employee owned brewery, making truly people powered beer.
In 2013, our charity beer was Dam Forgery, supporting the Friends of the Porter Valley and their work in restoring Forge Dam. We felt that as part of our 30th anniversary celebrations, working again with a charity we have supported previously and building on that relationship would be a really nice way to feed into celebrating our history and the community that surrounds us – hence us selecting Friends of the Porter Valley to partner with in 2026. We also made a beer especially for Tramlines festival, and the very first keg of Abbeydale beer (Ascension) was on the bar at Sunfest! It was very much a one-off special at the time, with a disclaimer in the programme of “no, we are not doing keg!”
…Ah, how times they do change, as in 2014 we actually made a beer for keg, on purpose – one of the perks of having upgraded our brew kit again with some shiny new vessels, which increased our capacity to 240 BBL (just under 70,0000 pints) per week. We also became custodians of city centre pub, The Devonshire Cat – a venue with a fantastic reputation, which we took on as it was celebrating 10 years in CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide. Meanwhile, everyone with an iTunes account became the recipient of a free U2 album.
2015 saw the launch of the Seven Deadly Sins, a range of barrel aged Belgian Dubbels, as well as the Signature Series, with all members of the team invited to come up with their very own beer. Although the series itself came to an end a few years later, this ethos is something which has very much remained a part of what we do ever since, with us all able to contribute ideas and bring our beers to life. The Rising Sun also had a refurbishment this year, adding a kitchen and new dining area which have enabled it to flourish into becoming the beautiful, welcoming venue you know and love today!
Heathen was launched in 2016, and we released our first smallpack! Our capacity increased by 25% with the delivery of a new 60 BBL fermentation tank and corresponding conditioning tank. Toby, now Co-MD, joined the business, bringing oodles of new ideas to the fore. And Double Brimstone made an appearance as the swan song for our much loved American Brown Ale Brimstone… watch this space for news on a limited edition comeback as part of our Legacy Series!
Outside of the brewery, 52% of the country voted to leave the European Union – the repercussions of Brexit continue to impact our business to this day.
The craft beer world was truly flourishing in 2017 and us along with it. Just a few of the notable beers we released this year were Four Degrees of Separation (brewed with previous members of Team Abbeydale who at the time were working for Siren, Magic Rock, and Northern Monk), Encantada (our first ever gruit, brewed with the team from Abirradero in Barcelona), Don’t Go Bacon My Heart (following a visit from North Carolina brewers Ass Clown), and the first ever appearance of the mighty Pilgrim – now arguably our most hotly anticipated annual release! Not only this, but we hosted a real life “Piss Up in the Brewery” where hundreds of you came to see what we do, the core range was rebranded to the stylish look you see today, and the Funk Dungeon was born! Finally, we all got very excited about the delivery of our new cask washer.
Sunfest 2018 saw a whopping 24 different Abbeydale beers available, including a number of festival exclusives, as part of our 100+ strong offering! We also hosted Funk Fest, one of the first festivals dedicated to mixed fermentation beers to take place in the UK, in 2018 – with thirty different beers pouring, and lots of Rennies available! We also released Huckster in collaboration with Peddler Market, which remains one of most highly rated beers, and Heathen became our first permanently available gluten free beer.
2019 was the year of lager, and in June we officially released Heresy! This coincided with us taking the step of moving from 330ml cans to 440ml too. And having worked with us on a number of projects, James Murphy became our official in house designer! We had visits from Amor Artis and NoDa Brewing, from South and North Carolina respectively, cementing long-lasting friendships, and we took a trip overseas to Carnivale Brettanomyces in Amsterdam, where we hosted a Funk Dungeon Meet the Brewer complete with Yorkshire Ploughmans food pairings!
We all know the major life event of 2020 and as with the rest of the world, the pandemic meant in this year we pivoted, pivoted and pivoted some more! (Although, being classed as key workers did mean the team had less opportunity to watch Tiger King…) The very fortunately timed arrival of our own canning line was instrumental to our survival as a business, as was the release of SO. MANY. MINIKEGS. We very sadly had to close the Devonshire Cat, and spent much of the year overwhelmed by the support shown for our independent business, bringing brightness to a really tough time.
Although restrictions continued to have a major impact throughout 2021, we couldn’t miss celebrating our 25th anniversary with a staff party, even if we did have to hold it over Zoom! We released a number of special beers to commemorate a quarter of a century of Abbeydale Brewery, including the first release of Cryo Heathen.
Black Mass was officially labelled a Black IPA in 2022, and it’s since become our most decorated beer, with multiple awards to its name including overall Champion at the SIBA Independent National Bottle & Can Beer Awards 2023, also reaching the finals as category winner every year since, and being named a Champion Beer of Britain finalist in 2026 too! In other awards news, the Funk Dungeon won Branding of the Year at the Brewers Choice Awards, and the Rising Sun was named Pub of the Year! We upgraded our kettle, which as well as being larger than the previous one (in situ since 2009!) is more energy efficient too. And we started exporting, sending beer to Italy, Sweden and Finland!
In 2023 we took part in Collabageddon, a brilliant project organised by Elusive Brewing, which saw us team up with Utopian and Good Chemistry and be part of a nationwide tap takeover! We also took our first steps into the world of alcohol free with the release of Sparkling Hop Water – not beer, but a delicious beer-adjacent soft drink, showing off one of our key ingredients in a whole new way! And back in our hometown, we were named Best Local Brewery at the Exposed Awards.
Big news in 2024 as we became employee owned, with Pat and Sue taking the step of trusting their team with the business they built along with us. We believe we’re the first and still currently only English brewery (and pub, and taproom!) to operate under this model, and it’s a very proud element of our identity. Also in 2024, after many years expanding our range of gluten free beers, we took the step of declaring that all the beers we release were to be GF from this point on, and our brewer Jim won the title of Brewer of the Year at the Brewers Choice Awards.
In 2025 we were the only brewery to make the finals of the BBC Food & Farming Awards, we won the title of Employer of the Year (SIBA Business Awards) and Pat was awarded the Roger Ryman Lifetime Achievement Award from the Brewers Choice Awards – all in part as a result of our trailblazing move to employee ownership. And Laura and Christie got to meet Sheffield legend Sean Bean, who declared our Heathen “alright, that”!
And here we are in 2026. Our thirtieth anniversary year, in which we’ve successfully added our first low alcohol beer, Reverence, into our core range… and opened our very own taproom! Abbeydale Beerworks became part of the family in May and we are so excited to continue using this fantastic space to share our values, welcome our community, and, of course, enjoy some tasty pints. And it’s only August! We can’t wait to find out what the rest of this milestone year holds for us all.
Thank you all for your support over the past three full decades. Here’s to the next thirty years!
Cheers!
Team Abbeydale
