Shakespeares beer festival 25-29 November 2015

Hello,
 
      later I intend to make my third visit to the event, but before doing so I wanted to give you some details of the festival so far. As you may know, most of the Kelham area pubs hold a beer festival and through appreciation and no degree of bias whatsoever, I can tell you that Shakespeares is far and away the very best one.

It started on Wednesday - just the normal downstairs bar was open, however Mr Wozewith was willing to fetch some ales from the cellar for the more enthusiastic drinkers. There was a mountain of sandwiches and an increased range of keg ales to tempt you, plus no Deception as all the pumps were used for the beer fest.

We started on halves of Alphabet Kerb Kicker, Arbor SX Bomb and Greytrees Afghan Pale. The Greytrees was unusual but had a delicious hop flavour and the Kerb Kicker was excellent - a strong (ish) hoppy pale ale. The Arbor was also very good. Matty meanwhile was on keg and had a half of Brodies London sour cherry, and a Gooseberry beer which may have been from Wild. The gooseberry was intense and earthy and the sour wasn't quite as sour as I'd expected but both were good.

I tried the Hardknott Nuclear Sunrise but was underwhelmed, not half as much as I was by the Fat Brewers Pale Ale which was awful. I had a half of the Hammerton which was a pleasant enough beer and Tash tried the Cloudwater Motueka lager. After this we moved inside and started drinking rather a lot of the Wild Walker Old Ale at 7.0% and the Rebel Cherry Mexi which was meant to be a cherry stout but tasted more of vanilla - an observation made by Nathan who I sent much of Thursday's visit in the company of.

In respect of which, Thursday saw the opening of the upstairs festival bar in the games room. The first two beers I tried from here were the best casks of the festival - Ghost Brewing Phantom Pale Ale at 5.3% and Blue Bee Revenge of the Geek Red Ale at 4.3. I got sat in the clock room to enjoy them, with Geoff and a very drunk ticker who swore and chuntered to himself all the time I was talking to Nathan. Ace....

I also rtied the very quaffable Hopcraft Deutsch Project 6 and Small World secret pale ale - bth well hopped and tasty beers at below 5%. Joined by Tash at 20.30 she was only staying for one but got chatting to Tony and Nathan and Steve and Katie and others and we ended up staying much longer. Much of this was supported by us drinking large quantities - I think I had two pints - of the absolutely excellent Siren Pompelmocello Grapefruit IPA at 6.0% and the wonderful  Wiper and True Family Tree 2 IPA at the same strength. Both were on at £5.10 a pint which is a bit steep for Shakespeares for the strength but not for the breweries, if that makes sense.

Somewhere towards the end of Thursdays visit I had a half of the Brodies Simcoe for Breakfast, an imperial stout at 10.2%. This was a very easy drinking bee for the style and certainly for its strength - a great beer to finish on at any festival. I also, after we bumped into Steff and Mark from the Bath along with Gavin - who I have known for two years, but not as Gavin, and Paul H, tried some of the Abbeydale Black Mass on keg. This was on wonderful form and tastes very different, as you might expect, the same beer on cask.

The festival runs until tomorrow, but I imagine little fest beer will be left by then so get down their quick. Maybe see you later.

Cheers!

Wee Beefy

Why so shy Steel City?

Good evening (night sounds like a bad start...)

    I am going to begin with a caveat. Not unusual in my posts, but not usually at the beginning. I worry perhaps too much that I will tripped up, discombobulated, fooled, misinformed, or worse still wrong. And I genuinely don't like people to get the wrong idea about what I am saying. Hence, perhaps, the lenght f my posts.  Anyway, to my excuse in waiting....

I follow 2 Sheffield blogs via this site, Barl Fire and Mike Grice.com. Both are very good, well written blogs packed full of information, which is something I am keen on. The content of both is, as far as I can see, exclusively bottled beer. I also tried to follow on Word Press "Get to the pub dot com" which alas is now updated only very occasionally. Interestingly, this blog, shared its focus, unequally, between pub visits and music (more the pubs). This is also a very well written blog by someone with a great turn of phrase and endearing writing style of which I am quite envious.

OK, so against the above backdrop, that makes me

the only Sheffield blogger posting about Sheffield pubs
(and real ales and bottled beers).

That sounds good, but, barring any sudden comments posted by hurt, overlooked Sheffield pub bloggers it is truly a puzzling state of affairs.

Recently, in fact for many years now, Sheffield has been tussling with the likes of Derby and Norwich to be crowned beer capital of Britain, and achieved it numerous times. It may have few late night real ale venues, and not many pubs have adopted the trend for selling a range of key-keg beers from the UK and beyond, but its still a stonking good place to drink in.

I myself have taken people on a few pub crawls of Sheffield already this year (and rashly promised a couple more) and that doesn't cover half of the best that's on offer. So why does no-one in Sheffield seem to love their pubs enough to write about them?

Over the Pennines, I know of and follow some of 7 real ale blogs in Manchester and Merseyside, many of which, for what it matters, appear to be highly ranked on various blog rating sites. West Yorkshire likewise seems positively awash with beery or rather pub paeans and similar bibulous writings. Since this in no way aims or serves to suggest one region is better than the other in terms of quality of pubs, it makes you wonder why those North and West of here are so much more vocal?

If you are a Sheffield blogger and wish to contest my claim of being the only Sheffield blogger posting about Sheffield pubs I would genuinely like to hear from you. I think that Steel City solidarity is good news, since one of the features of blogging that I am currently enjoying is the shared following of blogs, which brings their content to a wider audience.

Surely there's more of us out there?

Wee Beefy

N.B - Steve, am afraid you don't count mate, sorry - Sheffield bloggers have to be at the very least Sheffield based! Nae mind.