... all the news and updates as they happen!
30/08/2010 : Spooniverse will be 4.2% and ready for delivery next week; it tasted gloriously grapefruity (thanks to 1.5kg of Chinooks!) from the fermenter during it's "drop test" and should be on bars around the country soon.
28/08/2010 : Master of the Spooniverse is going into cask this weekend at some point and will be away on it's travels shortly; it will be around 4.2% and full of Chinooks giving a grapefruity, citrussy bite. The beer we brewed with Phil Lowry at Brewwharf, Hopsession, is also now in cask after having been dry-hopped with Amarillo and will be on sale in London (and possibly elsewhere) shortly. Our next brew, Marduk Stout, will be done in a couple of weeks, and we have re-done our Beer Map to make it easier to understand what the bloody hell it's on about...
17/08/2010 : Our brewing session at Brewwharf went fantastically well and, hopefully, we're now the proud parents of a 6% whopper of a beer which will be called "Hopsession". We squeezed 6.5kg of hops into the kettle namely Apollo, Bravo, Centennial, Chinook and Amarillo and it will be dry-hopped with more Amarillo in the conditioner! Huge thanks to Phil who was a willing collaborator in the murder of so many innocent hopflowers and here's to doing it all again one day! We're brewing again in Sheffield this weekend, this time our tribute to Chris Fudge called, appropriately, "Master of the Spooniverse", so look out for that in a few weeks and raise you glasses to Fudgey.
06/08/2010 : A load of photos of us racking LAC3 are now on the site; in fact, each brew has a load of totally superfluous phots linked to it, just click on the "Brewday Photos" at the top of the brew's section on the "Our Beers" page.
04/08/2010 : You'll have to be quick to get any of our new brew as most of it is going to Peterborough! There will be a limited amount available elsewhere at some of the usual suspects but, as Mr Daniels says, "Not a lot...". Tasted from the fermenter, this may well be the hoppiest beer we've brewed to date and may well be too much for some but, in our defence, Bram did ask for a very hoppy beer...! We're in Brewwharf in London on the 14th trying to use up all Phil's hops then brewing again the following weekend in Sheffield - it's all go at the moment.
28/07/2010 : LAC4 is being racked this weekend, Bacchus willing, and is coming out as a "Double A-side" in the form of "Western Bram" and "New World Disorder" plus there will be a single 9 of "Bez 4". It sounds like most of the production is off to the Peterborough Area although there will be some elsewhere. We're off to London in a couple of weeks then brewing again on the 21st August, this time our tribute beer to Chris Fudge, provisionally named "Master of the Spooniverse" - if you knew Fudge you'll know why!
18/07/2010 : We're brewing again in the "brick shed" next weekend, this time a 5.2% pale ale for Bram's Birthday and Peterborough Beer Festival, which will contain - in addition to the usual Fawcett's LCMO and Wheat malt - over 5kg of hops including Columbus, Magnum, Amarillo, Citra and Centennial; expect something very hoppy and bitter yet again with a whopping 100+ IBU's! Our next stout, Marduk, is in the planning stages as are several more traditional (for us, anyhow) pale and hoppy little numbers.
27/06/2010 : We're going down to London in August to be "guest brewers" at Brewwharf where Phil Lowry's Saints and Sinners setup is brewing some excellent beers; we're chuffed to be invited to brew "daaahn saaarf" and hope the beer will be as good as our usual Northern ones are! We're not 100% sure on details yet but it should be around 5%, very pale and rammed full of (hopefully) lots of Sorachi Ace and Simcoe! Business as usual, then,..
23/06/2010 : Even though we knew it was going to happen it's still hard to accept... we were both long-time mates of Chris Fudge of Tamworth who passed away way before his time yesterday; the beer world (and world in general) has lost a great bloke and we're gutted for everyone involved. Consequently, we shall be dedicating one of our forthcoming brews to Chris and donating the proceeds to an appropriate cause.
RIP Fudgey; we had some good times and you made a lot of people very happy which isn't something a lot of people can say.
13/06/2010 : We've now been given the go-ahead to brew by HMRC and have our own brewing license! Our first brew under our own license using our own malt (Fawcett's LCMO, naturally) and own hops (Columbus, Magnum, Centennial, Cascade, Chinook and Citra) was brewed at Little Ale Cart in the "brick shed" on Saturday 12th and is, hopefully, now fermenting away furiously. It will be called "Independence Day Pale Ale" to coincide with Yorkshire Day and as a celebration of our first brew under our own license and should turn out at 4.7% and a whopping 101 IBU's! Initial tastings from the paraflow suggest it'll be a right beast of a beer with a kilo of Citra having been added at flame-off! We'll be doing two "mods", our by now customary un-dry hopped variant "Bez Suchého Chmele - Tři" and a festival special for our friends down at Merton Beer Festival which will be dry-hopped with Citra... that should be interesting! Full details on the "Our Beers" page...
31/05/2010 : For those lucky enough to live in - or near - Sheffield, two of our beers will be on in the Wellington over the next few days. One is a slightly different version of D-Generation XX (our Doncaster festival double award-winner, this cask has less dry-hops) and the other the first in our "A Slight case of Overhopping" series, this one being a variant of 51st State with plenty of Nelson Sauvin and Centennial for the dry-hopping. As soon as our brewing license appears, hopefully within the next couple of weeks, we aim to start regular production, monthly at first, and there are plenty of beers waiting to be brewed...
26/05/2010 : A piece by Gazza about our favourite beer style, what we call "Mid-Atlantic" Pale Ale, is here...
24/05/2010 : Sadly we didn't end up brewing last weekend but are planning to do so as soon as is possible, June at some point sounds a good bet.
20/05/2010 : Due to a delay in the various paperwork sides to setting up our company (why are things so difficult? why?) there's a chance we will be brewing again this weekend (22nd) under the Little Ale Cart license so as to keep our name in people's memory before you all forget we existed. It's not 100% confirmed yet but, if we do, expect something 4.5% - 5% and hoppy... usual story, then.
18/04/2010 : Whilst we sort out our malt supply, brewing license and suchlike we'll not be brewing again until everything is sorted; we hope to brew again in mid-to-late May by which time we'll be ready to unleash some of the hop-monsters we have up our sleeves upon the world and, hopefully, add to our medal tally at more festivals... So, thanks for the support so far, and keep an eye on the site for more updates! See you soon, cheers...
10/04/2010 : We've just been informed that our variant of 51st State for Doncaster Beer Festival, "D-Generaton XX", has won two awards at the festival namely Best Golden beer and, even more amazingly, Overall Beer of the Festival! We're absolutely chuffed to bits with this as it vindicates our hop usage policy and shows that other people agree with us that UK beer needs more hops! It was also the first cask to run out at around 13:00 on Friday...
As we're not a "proper" brewing company as such yet, this beer was obviously brewed with lots of help and so we thank Richard Appleton and Gee of Little Ale Cart for their guidance, help and above all patience (!) over the last few months plus Gary from White Rose has been a constant source of advice and help from day one so, from all of the brewing team in the "Little Brick Shed", thanks a lot; these awards mean a huge amount to us!
One bit of bad news is that the single cask of "A Slight Case of Overhopping" blew it's keystone last week so that won't now be making an appearance, although we liked the name so much we'll use it again on another beer later in the year!
51st State will be at Frodsham Beer Festival this weekend, it's already been on at the Wenlock Arms (they also have a cask of Bez) plus Danny at the Strathmore Arms has a cask of Bez which should be on in the near future.
24/03/2010 : 51st State is now in cask - our nice and shiny Cypherco Black 'n' Purple ones! Owing to a slight miscalculation by the dry-hopping department (!) we have another variant with yet another "proper" music-related name; see the Our Beers page for more info!
16/03/2010 : Well, we must be proper brewers now - we've become the proud owners of 50kg of hops; should be good for the next brew or two...! We now have an 'in' with Charles Faram and have taken full advantage to secure the Simcoes, Chinooks and Citras we know and love - among others! Now we know we can get all the lupulus leaves we want, we can get on with planning more hop monsters. We're waiting to see how 51st State turns out, but if the wort is anything to go by it's gonna be a whopper - it tastes like bitter lemon at the moment, so once the sweetness has gone we should have a bitter, lemony citrus bomb. We'll be racking it into our brand new casks on Tuesday with any luck, bunging a couple of ounces of Amarillo in each one for good measure.
14/03/2010 : 51st state has been brewed and came out at 1047° (11.6 Plato), 75.7IBU and 5.2EBC; we used almost 4 kilos of hops (plus more to be added as dry-hops when casking) and, from the initial post-copper tasting, it should be an absolute belter; the Columbus, Centennial and Citra hops should combine to produce something rather special.
06/03/2010 : Our next beer now has a name! It will be called "51st State" in a homage to New Model Army, continuing our theme of "proper" music-related beer names, but also in recognition that it will contain plenty of West Coast USA hops! See the pumpclip on the "Our Beers" page...
01/03/2010 : We have a provisional date for our next brew! With a fair wind it will take place on Saturday 13th March at Little Ale Cart and will herald a return to normality in that it'll be pale and hoppy! Expect something 5% or so with Columbus, Centennial and Citra and plenty of Fawcett's LCMO. Further details - such as a name - when we know!
08/02/2010 : Steel City Brewery Ltd now exists as a company and our very own casks are on order. After the success of our first beers we decided that it's all systems go owing to the large amount of positive feedback thus far, so although we'll still only be brewing on an occasional basis we'll hopefully be making better beer with every brew produced. Black No.1 has had some excellent comments from drinkers - not all of whom we know! - on it's first few outings and if you've missed it so far it's due to appear at both Fleetwood and Liverpool beer festivals with Douro Negative accompanying at Liverpool.
01/02/2010 : The photos from Black No.1's brewing day are now online!
28/01/2010 : Black No.1 (which Dave reports tasted gorgeous from the fermenter!) is now casked up and, after a short conditioning period, will be off on it's travels. We've decided to produce another variant, "Czarna Kawa" (Strong coffee in Polish), which has been infused with the liquor used to steep 1lb of crushed beans for 36 hours, although there will only be a single 9 of this in the Wellington, Sheffield!
18/01/2010 : After a good day's brewing we are pleased to announce that Black No.1 now exists subject to the Little Ale Cart yeast strain doing it's business. We tasted it straight from the copper during gravity testing and it had a massively complex coffee and chocolate flavour to it, so we're very hopeful that this will be a stout to remember!
One surprising bit of news is that - gasp - it has crystal malt in the recipe! Despite ranting about how much we hate the stuff we're not total idiots and, although we still maintain it ruins pale ale, we both feel it adds body and a touch of sweetness which we wanted in No.1, so that's our excuse! The full grain bill included no less than seven types of Fawcett's finest including LCMO, caramalt, wheat malt, roast barley, chocolate malt, crystal 380 and malted oats, plus 2 kilos of Admiral hops for bittering and flavour.
06/01/2010 : Latest news is that we're brewing again on Saturday 16th January, but this time at Little Ale Cart as our usual host, Pete at BrewCo, is too busy this month!
Here's the low-down; "Despite being out-and-out Hopheads we appreciate other styles too, and certainly don't want to get typecast just yet! We're both stout drinkers (in both senses!) so are pleased to reveal that our third brew will be the first of a new 'Black Metal' series, appropriately enough called 'Black No.1' (after a song written, coincidentally, by Pete Steele of Brooklyn's Type O Negative), it will be a full-bodied, traditional (very) dry stout, weighing in at 5% abv. As usual, there will be the limited release of a variant, this time with a mystery ingredient and called "Douro Negative". Since our first two brews elicited comments from unsuspecting normals along the lines of 'this is too bitter' we fully expect to hear comments like 'yuk, this is nothing like Guinness'. Yes, that's the point, this is proper stout! We will be brewing this beer at Little Ale Cart due to lack of capacity at our usual hosts The Brew Company; both breweries are likely to feature in our future productions, rest assured that we will always declare the origin both on our website and on the pumpclips".
01/01/2010 : Happy new year all! We're hoping to brew in January but owing to some changes in our setup we're not yet sure if this will happen, although we're doing everything to make it so! Hopefully we'll be set up as a company in our own right this year and, owing to the aforementioned changes, hope to have far more control over our brewing. More news as it happens...
11/12/2009 : We're on a rest period at the moment and plan to brew again in January once we've analysed how our first brews have gone. Suffice it to say that we're pleased with the feedback from our first two brews thus far and have learnt plenty (about brewing and the industry) along the way so far and have big ideas for next year including bottling limited runs of beers along with making more hoppy, interesting yet drinkable brews; cheers! We're also trying out a map which will show where our beers got to!
01/12/2009 : If you get down to Pig's Ear beer festival this week you should be amongst the first to try Wheel Ale, a version of Worcestershire Sourced dry-hopped with the same Worcestershire Cascades it was brewed with. Worcestershire Sourced will be out and about from this week, so all comments welcome to the brewing team!
25/11/2009 : Worcestershire Sourced is now casked up and maturing ready for it's distribution. A very last-minute change of plan (reasons withheld!) has resulted in the beer NOT being dry-hopped as planned, although there will be a beer dry-hopped with the UK Cascades for Pig's Ear beer festival and also another single cask for the Harlequin dry-hopped with American Cascades to jointly celebrate Dave's 15,000th scoop and, at the same time, Gazza's 20,000th winner.
16/11/2009 : By the time you read this Worcestershire Sourced should be, hopefully, happily bubbling away in it's fermenter at Brewco and we're delighted to report all went fantastically well on the day. We had a sudden last-minute change of plan and upped the strength from 4% to 4.6% on the basis that we're going to bottle some and stronger beers keep better, plus the planned "low-colour" Maris Otter wasn't available so we used standard Fawcett's Maris Otter instead. In an attempt to see what difference in colour "standard" malt makes, we decided that a brew of similar strength to Hop Manifesto was a good idea for comparative reasons. 5.5BBL were produced which used 7.1kg of hops... this should be a good 'un!
11/11/2009 : We've uploaded the pumpclip for "Worcestershire Sourced" for all those who like to see such things!
09/11/2009 : So, brew date two is almost upon us so I suppose it's about time we told you what's going on. Our "special hops" are now safely in the house, oozing their gorgeous smell into every nook and cranny, and will be used to produce a 4% pale ale with the name of "Worcestershire Sourced" as a nod to their provenance. A few early photos are online now... We've also added a section titled, somewhat pretentiously, "In the News" where you can see what people think about us in the press (and online).
03/11/2009 : We've got a date for our second brew at the Brew Company! Saturday 14th will be the day we hopfully (okay, hopefully) produce something to build on the good start we made with Hop Manifesto, a beer we're both rather proud of despite it's many flaws! We don't have a definite name or recipe yet but we can say that it will be a 4% pale ale with plenty of hops in it, hopefully some rather special ones. More information as we get it... Thanks for all the comments, support, suggestions and insults we've received, it's all appreciated!
19/10/2009 : Thanks to all who have responded with regards to Hop Manifesto; okay, we had an issue with over-sparging and the wrong yeast - both of which diminished hop character and bitterness - but overall it seems as if most people thought it a good starting point for our adventure. Rest assured lessons will be learned within the brewing team and the next beer will be a whole different ball game! Keep in touch for news about this next one, it might be interesting...
14/10/2009 : Well, what did you think? We tried all three beers last night and concluded that, for a first attempt with some over-sparging issues, we've done a pretty passable job! Rest assured that we'll be learning lessons and trying to make the next beer much better but, still, we're proud of Hop Manifesto and think it's a good start! Let us know your opinions... we do want to know!
12/10/2009 : Some extra photos of the racking are now here and the launch is confirmed at the Harlequin, Sheffield, for 19:00 on Wednesday 14th where Dave will answer all your questions about the beer! Gazza will be preparing to fly to Poland for some scoops so, sadly, can't be there.
07/10/2009 : 7 days 'til lift off! Last night, 22 shiny (and not so shiny) casks were filled with Hop Manifesto. In the name of quality control (and curiosity, admittedly), I tried the very first pint, straight from the fermenter; it was clouded with yeast, and chilled, but still the bitterness came through. As yet, the 2kgs of late citrus hops haven't fully come through, partly due to the coldness and lack of condition. Just to be safe though, each firkin of Hop Manifesto and Life of Brian has two double handfuls of fresh Amarillos in the cask, the latter also having the zest of 5 lemons in each cask as well. As an experiment, 4 casks were left without dry hop, or Bez Suchého Chmele as they would (probably) say in Czech. So, that's it now until next Wednesday (well, actually myself and Gazza are having a sneak preview on Tuesday), when Steel City Brewing will finally be unleashed upon the world... well, a couple of dozen pubs anyway.
04/10/2009 : Hop Manifesto will be racked tomorrow so we'll soon know if our efforts have been worthwhile. The official launch will be at the Harlequin, 108 Nursery Street, Sheffield, on Wednesday 14th October at 19:00 with three versions available for you to try; we've done a non dry-hopped version, "Bez Suchého Chmele" as a test to see how much difference the Amarillo dry-hops make, and also another for Brian Moore's 70th Birthday called "Life of Brian"; we really do want to hear your comments on the beers so drop us an email! All three beers should then be on sale at Oxford beer festival which starts the following day in the City's town hall.
28/09/2009 : Have a look at the pictorial story of our brewday here plus I'm currently working on a short video which may or may not appear depending on my editorial skills... We're already thinking about our next brew which will probably be a 4% (ish) pale and hoppy brew; surprise surprise!
27/09/2009 : Well, Hop Manifesto now exists (subject to the SO4 yeast kicking into action) and is looking like being between 4.8% and 5% with a whopping 85.8 IBU's! We'll post a load of photos from the day tomorrow as well as, hopefully, a short video of the day's highlights! Big thanks to Pete at the BrewCo for letting us run wild with his precious hop supply and let's hope it comes out as we hope: a pale, hoppy beer!
23/09/2009 : Only three days until we make our first test-brew "Hop Manifesto" at the BrewCo and we can't wait! From this first base beer we're doing a little experimentation and you may see, in addition to Hop Manifesto, "Bez Suchého Chmele Jeden" which means - in Czech, obviously - "without dry hops one". As we intend to dry-hop all our beers we will be in the unusual position of doing specials that AREN'T dry-hopped and so, with this in mind, we're trying it out from the off with this experiment! There will also be a variant called "Life of Brian" with a different adjunct for Brian Moore's birthday, although a few more will get out and about via Boggart.
If you want to order the beer then contact Dave as it's looking like we may be close to selling out already!
11/09/2009 : As our brew date rapidly approaches we've started taking orders for Hop Manifesto, see the new "Buy our Beer" section. We have also agreed with Boggart Brewery Distributions that our beer will be available through them which increases our potential sales immensely and means we can now get our beers to parts of the country which were previously inaccessible to us, so if you're not in Yorkshire, want some beer and deal with Boggart then you know what to do!
05/09/2009 : How very interesting (honestly, it is)... just been speaking to a local brewer down in Worcestershire and he's said that we can have some of the only kilning of Worcestershire-grown Cascades that will be done this year! Hopefully we'll get enough to do a single-hop brew for our second gyle and, although I've no idea what the alpha acid will be or what they will taste like, how can hop lovers like ourselves turn down an offer like that? So, with the munificence of Bacchus and a bit of luck, you may yet try a single-hop Cascade pale ale with hops grown in the UK! They probably won't taste like American ones do but, with the knowledge that Argentinean Cascades don't either and they are lip-smackingly gorgeous, do we care?
31/08/2009 : Well, that's the first draft of our website online! Feel free to let us know what you think about it, us, or anything else... We will try and update this blog as often as possible and will definitely be uploading lots of photos of our first brewday which is scheduled for the 26th September. In the meantime, check back to see what we've added to the site and hopefully you'll get to taste our beer in the very near future; we think it will be worth waiting for as long as you like hops!