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Half Pint Marathon 2025

This September, 26 venues and two breweries (spoiler alert: one of them is us!) are teaming up for the 10th Sheffield Half Pint Marathon. A month-long celebration of beer, art and independent businesses, it’s doubled in size for the 10th anniversary, with more venues than ever before to explore, and a fresh new look.

Organised by our friends at True North Brew Co, they’re brewing the cask beer for the occasion and we’re supplying the keg! Our beer is called Foam Roll, a 3.8% session pale ale with a juicy character and a robust bitter finish that punches above its weight. And True North have created P.E.D, a tasty 3.4% pale on cask.

To get involved, simply pop into any of the participating venues any time in September, where you can pick up your Half Pint Passport. The full list of venues can be found here – we’re pleased to say our very own Employee Owned pub, the Rising Sun in Fulwood, is one of them! Each time you visit one of the venues over the course of the month, and order one of the official Half Pint Marathon beers, you’ll get a stamp on your map. 13 venue stamps is a half marathon, or visit all 26 to complete the full challenge! Once you’ve hit your chosen target, you can claim your limited edition 2025 print. The venues and breweries alike all donate to local charity Sheffield Mind, and there are collection tins in each one too if you can help top up a donation!

Your map also has lots of other bonus ways to get involved too – there’s challenges to complete, photos to snap and exciting things to look along the way. We can’t wait to find out how you take on the challenge – of course, you don’t need to involve running, but we’re sure there’s some of you out there that will choose to combine the two! Who can find the best route between all the venues?!

Be sure to follow the official Half Pint Marathon Instagram page for updates too!

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Brewers Choice Awards 2025

We’re incredibly excited to share the news that we’ve been shortlisted in TWO categories at this year’s Brewers Choice Awards!

Firstly, we’re absolutely delighted to be up for Brewery of the Year, a huge honour as we head closer towards marking our first full year of employee ownership. We know we’ve got something special and unique here, reflected not just across our wonderful team but also in company growth, and to see that recognised is as humbling as it is rewarding.

And our treasured Black IPA, Black Mass, has been shortlisted for Beer of the Year too! Timeless, tasty, arguably unfashionable yet oozing its own sense of cool, it’s been part of our history since we first began and is a beer we’re incredibly proud of. Fun fact: our CAMRA brewery liaison officer Dave tells us it’s the only entry in the entirety of the Good Beer Guide which has its ABV specified to two decimal places (hey, that 6.66% is important!). Both categories look to be incredibly hotly contested with some absolutely fantastic breweries and beers in the mix – you can view the full shortlist here.

This is the third time we’ve had the privilege of being shortlisted for the Brewers Choice Awards, and we’re also really excited to find out who will be taking over our Jim’s title as Brewer of the Year, having brought home the prestigious glass tankard in 2024.

Organised by the team behind industry magazine The Brewers Journal, this year’s submissions were judged by a wealth of talent that included Lotte Peplow, Europe’s craft beer ambassador for the Brewers Association, Brew Resourceful founder Chris Lewington, Stuart Anderson (founder of one of London’s premier beer retailers Ghost Whale) and Alex Greig, the owner of the fantastic Fuggles Beer Cafe in Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge. Tim Sheahan, editor of The Brewers Journal, chaired the judging session. The 2025 Brewers Choice Awards will be presented at a ceremony in London on the evening of 30th September. Wish us luck!

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale

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Brewery Operative Wanted!

Due to the growth of our business, we are on the lookout for a full time Brewery Operative to join our team!

The role is very hands-on and quite varied. The successful candidate will support our brewing and packaging processes to keep our busy brewery running smoothly from the ground up.

Key tasks will involve:

  • Cask washing
  • Packaging beer – cask, keg, can and bottle
  • Warehouse work – regularly handling weights of 25kg+
  • Preparing orders for dispatch
  • Loading and unloading deliveries of raw materials and finished products – as such, a clean driving license and forklift truck license would be of benefit
  • Utilising our in-house systems to accurately record all completed tasks
  • Maintaining impeccable levels of cleanliness and hygiene across the brewery, including following health and safety and food safety procedures at all times

Please note this is not a brewing role, however you will be regularly working alongside our production team. Previous experience in food production/manufacturing would be an advantage, but is not essential as full training will be provided.

We are an employee owned company, so working with us means you will have a real say in how the business is run and play a meaningful part in its future. We are flexible and supportive employers who take great pride in training and developing our team. We recently won the Employer of the Year category at the 2025 SIBA Business Awards too!

Usual working hours are Monday to Friday (either 8am-4pm, or 9am-5pm), and evening and weekend work may also be offered at times.

Salary ÂŁ25k / annum plus staff discount across the business (including at our pub, The Rising Sun), future potential for profit share and the opportunity to join a growing and progressive company which holds community, quality and above all its people at heart.  

If it sounds like you could be the reliable, diligent and proactive team player we are looking for, please send a CV with references and covering letter to [email protected] with the subject “Brewery Operative application” by the closing date of Sunday 31st August.

You are welcome to email us or call 0114 2812712 if you have any queries.

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale

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Live, Laugh, Loch Lomond

The latest in our acclaimed Travel Poster inspired series of collaboration beers is out now… and you might just recognise our visitor to the brewhouse! We’ve recently welcomed Loch Lomond Brewery to create something delicious with us, and their Lead Brewer, Scott Murray, made the long journey to represent Scotland right here in Sheffield. If you’re thinking Scott looks familiar, that’s because he was once part of our brewteam too – so it was wonderful to invite him back and spend the day catching up as well as making a beer together.

Introducing Live, Laugh, Loch Lomond! A 4.2% single hopped pale made in the spirit of friendship, bursting with good vibes and just a touch of whimsy. A light biscuity base meets uniquely flavourful Krush hops to create a fruity little number with a luscious impact. A tropical aroma translates on the palate to bright and breezy notes of mango and pineapple, with a thirst-quenching finish. Available in cask only, celebrating not just the spirit of collaboration and community but our wonderful pubs too.

This brew follows on from our Dan making the journey up to bonnie Scotland a couple of months ago, where the “away” leg of our collaboration resulted in the release of Rubus Black – a Cranachan Porter weighing in at 6%. This one can’t be bought from us directly (although members of our subscription box club will have found one in this month’s box!) but you can pick cans up from Loch Lomond’s online shop here. Rich and decadent, delicious oaty and infused with the tart sweetness of real Scottish raspberries. Some of this tasty treat is still quietly resting in an ex-Oloroso sherry barrel too… be sure to follow Loch Lomond to find out when this will be making an appearance!

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale

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Deliverance – Sabro, Talus & HBC 472

Deliverance - Sabro, Talus & HBC 472

We’re super excited to announce the return our much-acclaimed Deliverance – Sabro™, Talus and HBC 472, originally created in collaboration with Yakima Chief Hops.

This variation of Deliverance was first released in March 2020, when it became one of our fastest selling beers of all time, meaning it swiftly made a comeback in July of the same year. And our Deliverance range continued to go from strength to strength, which each version released bringing something different to the party. But when we had our new kettle and whirlpool installed in 2022, we knew we wanted to test its full capabilities with one of our punchiest, most recognisable hop forward beers, so it seemed the perfect time to bring back this delicious and distinctive IPA. And now it’s back for a third time… so popular it’s now become THE Deliverance, cemented at the heart of our range.

Our Deliverance features a little family of three different hop varieties, which all stem from the wild Neomexicanus species. HBC 472 and Talus (previously known as HBC 692) both stem from the amazing Sabro™ hop – which was itself known as HBC 438 until it was officially named.  These hops come from the same lengthy breeding process that brought you Citra, Mosaic and Ekuanot, and we’re definitely in love with Sabro™ and its family. 

The beer itself is bursting with aromatics and incredibly juice-forward – pineapple upside down cake and mango coulis on the nose with a heady, resinous character. Masses of tropicality on the palate, with notes of dessicated coconut teaming up with bags more pineapple, peach and zesty grapefruit singing together in perfect fruity harmony. Full bodied and creamy, super smooth but with a lingering bitterness in the finish which really showcases the complexity and diversity of flavour that this chosen hop combination brings.

Here’s a little more information on those little green nuggets of aromatic joy for all the beer geeks out there! Sabro™ Brand HBC 438 came into being from the Hop Breeding Company (a group of farmers and scientists dedicated to nurturing, cultivating and eventually releasing new varieties of hops for us all to enjoy, who are based in the Yakima Valley) which is supplied through YCH’s experimental hop program. Known for having a really unique complexity, it imparts distinct tangerine, coconut, tropical fruit, and stone fruit aromas, with hints of cedar, mint, and cream. Sabro’s sister and daughter, HBC 472 and Talus, share many of the same fruity, citrussy characteristics – we think there’s a very distinctive Pina Colada note in the 472!

For all hops named HBC, this means that they are a newer hop from the Hop Breeding Company’s programme. Eventually, if the hop proves itself a worthy component of that beverage that brings us all together, it is rewarded with its very own name (Mosaic was once HBC 369, and Citra was HBC 394). The whole process can take a very long time, with Sabro™ only becoming commercially available after two decades of research and trials. As you can see, since this beer was first brewed five years ago, Talus has been granted a name but HBC 472 is still waiting patiently! With hops being a natural product and so susceptible to the environment they are grown in, it’s important to make sure that not only do they have desirable aroma and flavour characteristics, but also that they can survive and grow well.

The Neomexicanus subspecies, which all three of the hops used in our new Deliverance stem from, is itself interesting. Almost all commercially available hops are of European origin and descent, even those which are now bred in the USA, but in the Sabro™ family, we are able to make use of a genetically distinct sub-species of hops that have been growing wild in the New Mexico mountains for the past million years. Groovy!

The possibilities of flavour you can get from hops are ever growing, thanks to the efforts of not just our brewers, but also the hop breeders, growers, farmers and suppliers, who work tirelessly to ensure that the humulus lupulus that gives so much character to your beer is the very best it can be.

This one isn’t likely to hang around for long, so don’t miss out! It’s available via our online shop in can here, and to trade in limited cask, can and keg by contacting our friendly sales team ([email protected] or give us a call on 0114 2812712).

Cheers!

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Wanted: Retail & E-Commerce Manager

We are looking to recruit an enthusiastic, conscientious and proactive Retail & E-Commerce Manager to join our Sales and Marketing team, and become a Co-Owner of our Employee Ownership Trust. 

The role will involve:

  • Managing our e-commerce offering, and our onsite shop, fulfilling and packaging all incoming orders
  • Managing our monthly subscription box club
  • Maintaining the shop area of the website – managing content, imagery and layout
  • Managing our merchandise offering
  • Handling customer queries – phone, email and in person
  • Marketing our retail offering including taking high quality product shots
  • Making an active contribution to social media and content creation
  • Working with our busy office team across sales and marketing
  • For the right candidate, the role could involve elements of graphic design, additional content creation such as video content, and/or events management. Part of being an independent company means it’s important to us to give all our staff the opportunity to contribute their own skills, so let us know what gets you excited!

Experience in a similar role is essential (within the beer industry would be beneficial), although full training on our systems will be provided.

Knowledge of beer styles and enthusiasm to work with craft beer would be of significant benefit.

Our ideal candidate is someone with energy, drive and a flair for communications, who can work with our team to grow this side of the business. A commitment to providing top notch levels of customer service and embodying the values of our business is imperative.

We are an employee owned company, so working with us means you will have a real say in how the business is run and play a meaningful part in its future. We are flexible and supportive employers who take great pride in training and developing our team. We recently won the Employer of the Year category at the 2025 SIBA Business Awards too!

We’re looking for someone who’s available Monday-Friday for a minimum of 25 hours – the role can expand from this up to 37.5 for the right candidate who can bring further skills, as outlined in the role requirements above. Evening and weekend work may also be requested at times. We offer flexibility in return and are advocates of promoting a healthy work life balance. We are happy to work around school hours or any carer commitments you may have. Due to the nature of the role, you will be required to work from the brewery itself (S8 0YX).

Salary ÂŁ28-ÂŁ30k/annum for a full time role (pro-rata for part time), dependent on experience. We also offer staff discount across the business (including at our pub, The Rising Sun), future potential for profit share, and the opportunity to join a growing and progressive company which holds community, quality and above all its people at heart.

If it sounds like you could be who we are looking for, please send a CV, covering letter and two references to [email protected] by the closing date of Tuesday 26th August.

You are welcome to email us or call 0114 2812712 if you have any queries.

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale

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Gluten free beers

For a long time now we’ve been producing a wide selection of gluten free beers, led by Heathen and Heresy from our Brewers Emporium range. And now we’ve gone one step further and committed to brewing each and every one of our beers to a gluten free (containing less than 20pppm gluten) recipe. (And yes, that means Moonshine too!)

We have timed this post at a point where all of the beer now leaving the brewery is gluten free. We have been using a gluten reducing enzyme in every brew, including our core beers Moonshine, Daily Bread and Absolution (the only beers which didn’t previously use the enzyme in their recipes), since October 2024, so all cask stocks from older batches should now have been polished off in pubs. The overlap period in cans will by its nature be a little longer, so please do check the can label for the GF symbol and/or statement to confirm the beer was brewed using a gluten reducing enzyme, which will be clearly shown on the newest batches.

Our beers are not produced without gluten containing ingredients, and are brewed using barley, plus 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 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. For those of our beers which are available in can, we clearly display a declaration of the beer as gluten free on the label (look for the logo shown to the left). We also indicate that we have brewed the beer with a gluten reducing enzyme in the ingredients list on our cans, and for our trade customers this information is visible on the labels applied to each cask and keg.

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).

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. This is because 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 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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It’s Festival Season!

Beer festival season is well and truly in full swing, and next weekend we’ve got beer at no less than 5 fantastic events around the North of England!

First up is CAMRA’s Chorlton Beer & Cider Festival, which kicks off on Thursday 3rd July and is held in the gorgeous surroundings of St Clement’s Church. Absolutely loads of beers to choose from including a wide selection of our own.

The absolutely stunning historic Merchant Adventurer’s Hall in the centre of York is playing host to a charity beer festival, with a fantastic list of cask and keg beer curated by our friends at Brew York, on Friday 4th and Saturday 5th July. A truly unique setting to enjoy a few pints! Over 70 beers will be available, including both a cask and keg from ourselves. Tickets are available here (at the time of writing, the Saturday afternoon session was already sold out, so don’t hang around if you’re keen to attend!).

And also on Saturday 5th July, our pop up bar is going on tour to Roosters Brewery near Harrogate, where you’ll find our Robin and Sam slinging pints at Suds With Buds. It’s our first time pouring here and we absolutely can’t wait! The brewery line up looks absolutely sensational, and we’ll have four beers available including our beloved Moonshine, and our collaboration with Roosters themselves, Heading into Harrogate, on the bar. Plus there’s a great selection of street food on offer and some fab live music throughout the day too. Find out more and get your tickets here.

This one isn’t a festival, but a fantastic event nonetheless – community pub, The Fox & Goose in Hebden Bridge, is celebrating the UN International Year of Co-Operatives, and has chosen to showcase our Employee Owned brewery as a part of it! From 12-5pm on Sunday 6th July they’re hosting an afternoon of informal talks, music and pizza which includes a tap takeover featuring a whopping ten of our beers!

Finally, for something a little bit different (and ok this one isn’t quite in what we might call “the North”!), Moonshine and Discover Ossett are the beers of choice at The Gate to Southwell folk and acoustic music festival, a volunteer run event in beautiful rural Nottinghamshire.

Hope to see you at one of the above – please do tag us in your festival snaps to let us know where you’ve found our beers! You can find us on Instagram @abbeydalebeers.

Team Abbeydale

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Holy Water is BACK!

Rejoice! As we start to work towards our 30th anniversary next year, legacy beers from the Abbeydale Brewery archives are being re-released, with a fresh new look.

First up… it’s the return of Holy Water! A much-requested favourite, and now brewed again to the original recipe, which dates back over 20 years. Packing a punch at 6.0% ABV but still wonderfully smooth and well-balanced, made using Willamette, Citra and Centennial hops. Notes of zesty citrus and juicy nectarine are backed up by delicately sweet orchard fruits, followed up with a gentle yet lingering bitterness. It’s an Abbeydale classic!

We know of many of our early regulars who have fond memories of this beer, so we hope to bring back a little nostalgia as well as welcome Holy Water to a new audience too. Holy Water could be thought of as a precursor of the IPAs we make today – stronger than our pale ale specials, and more heavily hopped too, it was originally created to be a more potent version of Moonshine (but not quite to the same extent as Last Rites, of course!). Typically, Holy Water would find an annual spot in the brew plan (including one brew on Valentines Day 2007 which we’ve hunted out in our archives – very fitting for this much loved beer!), but this release marks its first appearance since 2014.

Holy Water was also one of the first beers in which we trialled dry hopping – a small number of casks would be set aside from each brew, and different hops added directly to each. Back in 2008, Pat said of this exercise “I intend to continue these experiments but I think they will always be outside the mainstream of our work.” How things change!

The artwork has been reimagined by our designer James Murphy, and is intended to pay homage to – and sit beautifully alongside – our classic core range. It marks the first of a small series of legacy beers that have meant a lot to us throughout our history, which will be released as limited edition batches in the run up to our milestone 30th birthday next year. Brimstone and Matins are also in the pipeline to join this historical line up, and we’d love to hear if there are any other beers from our back catalogue which stir up a strong sense of reminiscence for you!

Holy Water is available in cask (of course) right now, and for the first time ever you will soon be able to enjoy it in keg and can (including from our online shop) too – we’re currently taking pre-orders, and expect these to ship during the week commencing 14th April.

If you’re a trade customer who’s interested in becoming a stockist, please give us a call on 0114 2812712 if you’d like a cask or keg for your venue. 

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale

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Employer of the Year

We are absolutely delighted, humbled and proud to share the fantastic news that we have been named the Employer of the Year! This accolade celebrates our pioneering transition to becoming 100% employee owned in 2024, recognising the commitment made by founders and selling owners Pat and Sue Morton to ensure a true legacy of independence and cement our people right at the very heart of the business.  

Earlier this week some of the team, including our Employee Reps Christie and Fin, headed over to Liverpool for Beer X, the UK’s largest beer and brewing trade event, where the SIBA Business Awards were held. These Awards aim to highlight the UK’s very best brewing businesses, pubs and retailers of independent beer, in an annual celebration known as the “Oscars of the beer industry” and judged by a panel of industry experts. We were thrilled to have made the shortlist and National Finals amongst some incredible company (more on that here), and to come home with a win was really the cherry on top.

The awards were hosted by Sunday Times Beer Columnist and acclaimed author and broadcaster Pete Brown, who said of our award “the judging panel were unanimous in their praise for Abbeydale who this year were trailblazers in the UK as the first employee-owned brewery, building a future for this much-loved brewery whilst giving back to the team who built it.”

Brewery Rep Christie took the opportunity whilst collecting our beautiful shiny new trophy to say thank you to Pat and Sue for their leadership and their trust in the team which has got us to where we are today – he speaks for us all in saying this award is for them.

Cheers!

Team Abbeydale

  • About Us

    A true Sheffield institution founded in 1996 and employee owned since 2024, 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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