Pangolin Craft Beer, 80 Middlewood Road, Hillsborough, Sheffield, South Yorkshire
The Beekeeper, 61 Middlewood Road, Hillsborough, Sheffield, South Yorkshire
Beer House S6, 548 Langsett Road, Hillsborough, Sheffield, South Yorkshire
I still have quite a few California breweries and pubs from this year’s trip to review. But seeing as how so many new places have recently opened back home in Sheffield, I thought I’d take a quick break this month to talk about three micropubs there.
The suburb of Hillsborough is located in the northwest corner of Sheffield. I suppose Hillsborough is most famous for the Hillsborough Disaster in April 1989, when a crush of football supporters at Hillsborough Stadium during an FA Cup semifinal between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest caused 97 deaths and 766 injuries, and the investigations and lawsuits have continued ever since. But Hillsborough is also known for less newsworthy features such as being the location of a large bus interchange, the terminus for two Supertram lines, a fairly sizeable shopping center, and the Hillsborough Barracks, which date from 1848 and were used to house cavalry soldiers and military personnel before the Crimean War. The suburb was named after Hillsborough House, which was built in 1779 to honour the Earl of Hillsborough who lived in Hillsborough, County Down. The introduction of the electric tram to Sheffield’s Hillsborough in 1903 brought a lot of housing construction to the community which, of course, attracted more residents.
Today the area is pretty much known as being at the bottom of the hill from Walkley and Crookes, and since 2018 Hillsborough Park has been the contested location of the city’s annual Tramlines Festival. But more importantly, in recent years the community has seen a burgeoning of micropubs.
It was earlier this year, on a Thursday after work, that I first started my Hillsborough exploration with my friend Victoria. Having taken an exciting Supertram ride from Sheffield Cathedral, I got off at the Hillsborough Park stop and immediately walked into the small storefront that is now Pangolin.
Victoria was standing at the bar chatting with a guy she knew while drinking a pint of Splash Zone (4.9% ABV, Phantom Brewing Company, Reading, Berkshire), which was a New England hazy pale. There were three cask beers and four keg beers to choose from, a couple which definitely appealed to me but were quite a bit stronger. So I ended up going for a pint of the Splash Zone, a rather fun beer which features Bru-1, Strata, and Hallertau Blanc Hops. We took our pints and seated ourselves at the only empty table that wasn’t situated in the intense late afternoon sun blasting through the windows. I mean, neither of us were trying to work on tans or anything.
On a later visit in August, I met Victoria here again. Somehow, on my way from work I managed to enter some sort of wormhole that got me to the pub an hour too early. As it was a bit of a surreal afternoon, I went for the most surreal name: Cows You Can’t Milk (4.6% ABV, Phantom Brewing Company, Reading, Berkshire). This was an interesting New England Hazy with Citra and Azacca, and it did help shake me out of my bewilderment, even though our long stretch of cold rainy August weather had suddenly turned sunny and dry, which was a little startling but pleasant. I first sat myself at a table by the open door, but the smell of dogshit kept drifting in from the street outside. So I moved over to a window seat in the corner and slowly sipped my hoppy zippy pint while contemplating where the odd name of this beer came from. I’m still none the wiser.
I did, however, find out about the pub’s name. Apparently the owner Nick Davy, who used to work at the Walkley Beer Company, named his new venture after his favourite animal, which sounds like a great idea to me. (I’m quite passionate about giant anteaters myself.) The pangolin is the only mammal completely covered in scales which it uses to defend itself, and sadly its scales are popular in Chinese medicine as they’re thought to treat a lot of health conditions. To me the pangolin looks as if it’s descended from the prehistoric VW Beetle-sized glyptodon, a scale-model example of which I have displayed on my front window sill, next to the raccoon and the solar-powered Dancing Queen Elizabeth. So I like pangolins as well.
After our first Hillsborough excursion to Pangolin, Victoria and I moved across the road and down to the Beekeeper for our second round. This micropub has a much lower profile than the Pangolin, and it took some opening up of our eyes to spot it. Inside we perused the three cask and three craft offerings. I first had a taste of the Tailypo Pale Ale (4.5% ABV, Neepsend Brewing Company, Sheffield, South Yorkshire), brewed with Centennial, El Dorado, and Enigma hops. I mean, these are three excellent hops, and all in a cask ale, so what’s not to like? But I wanted to check what was around the corner on the craft side of the bar. When I asked the barmaid about the Round T’ Corner NEIPA (4.7% ABV, Triple Point Brewing Company, Sheffield, South Yorkshire), she said it had just come on and she hadn’t tasted it yet. So she poured herself a taster, slugged it down, nodded her head, and said, “It’s all right!” Another hazy pale, it was a Triple Point collaboration with the Leadmill, Sheffield’s famous music club. By that time, however, I had already chosen a pint of Hinterland NEIPA (4.5% ABV, Abbeydale Brewing Company, Sheffield, South Yorkshire), which was quite satisfactory indeed. It was brewed with Vic Secret, Mosaic, and Sabro hops, so of course it would be quite satisfactory.
Victoria and I took our pints and sat at a front table, once again avoiding the blazing sun which was busy char-broiling the other side of the room. I have to say there is something I really like about this place: it’s very small, but it really feels friendly. And it’s a bit mysterious, as I still haven’t been able to find out what it has to do with bee-keeping. (And considering I’m currently reading Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov, which is about a Ukrainian beekeeper, I am especially curious.)
On another Hillsborough excursion I met Victoria at another new beer venue, Beer House S6. Also known as Beer House 2, this is the second Beer House in town, the original being on Ecclesall Road. To be honest, this is not really a micropub, as it’s quite large in size, and if they haven’t already, soon they’ll be opening the downstairs room as well. When we visited it was on a Monday afternoon, during a very short cool spell between two steamy days. As the room is quite big there were lots of options for seating, and once again we were the only two customers in the place. For our first round we both had pints of Duohop (4.6% ABV, Ampersand Brew Company, Diss, Norfolk). Brewed with Simcoe and Ekuanot, this was a good hoppy pint. For our second round the two of us again went for the same beer, Snake Eyes Pale (4.7% AV, Two By Two, Wallsend, Tyne & Wear). Single hopped with Mosaic, this was a spectacular pint, and very, very drinkable. The pump clip was decorated with a rather eclectic mixture of animals: a crocodile, a snake, a frog, a shark, a rhino, a monkey, a spider, a wildcat, and a turtle.
The second time I visited this pub was once again on a Monday with my friend Carmel, after we had gone on a 5K walk around Dam Flask. This time we sat in the front window. Because I liked the name, I first tasted the Magazine Cover (4.2% ABV, DEYA Brewing Company, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire), which is a very nice and sessionable hoppy session beer dry hopped with Mosaic, Simcoe, and Idaho 7 hops. But I ended up going for a pint of Future You (4.5% ABV, Verdant Brewing Company, Penryn, Cornwall), a West Coast pale dry hopped with Simcoe. Surprisingly it was much more interesting than it sounds: very bitterly hoppy, bitter, bitter, and even more bitter. Carmel went for a pint of hell. Actually, that was in the form of Hell (5.0% ABV, ABK Beer, Wolverhampton), which is a Bavarian lager and not Purgatory in a Glass. She liked it, and it was really yummy for a lager.
| Beer House S6 Updates (Last updated 19 November 2023) |
Beer House S6 Updates (Last updated 19 November 2023) |
Related Links
- All about the Hillsborough Disaster (Britannica)
- All about Hillsborough House and Hillsborough Park (Sheffield Guide)
- All about pangolins (WWF)
- Interested in keeping bees? Check out the British Beekeepers Association, or the Bee Conservancy