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Early April saw Steel City host a collaboration - the first in fact for the brand new Hopcraft brewery! Pixie Spring Tom will be joining Dave from Steel City, while Gazza ’Two Hats’ Prescott was representing both Steel City and Hopcraft!

The beer itself is a Dunkelhopfenweizenbier, named Walpurgis Nacht after both the Pagan (and latterly Satanist!) celebration at the end of April, and the album by German metallers Stormwitch. A traditional 50/50 blend of Pale Maris Otter and Wheat Malt with half a sack of Carafa Spezial for colour was be followed by 108.2 IBU of Columbus (first wort) and Warrior (boil) for bitterness and a shedload of Galaxy and Nelson Sauvin for flavour (ok so that last bit isn’t very traditional…), and fermented with German WB06 Weissbier yeast. Finally the beer was dry hopped with Galaxy in the fermenter and again in the cask. Meanwhile, the minikit used first runnings to produce what we believe to be the first ever Kaiserlichdunkelhopfenweizenbier (easy for us to say! As if you hadn’t guessed, this translates as Imperial Dark Hoppy Wheat Beer!). No name as yet, but it will be named for the celebration party for the Shakespeare’s (our biggest customer!) well-deserved Sheffield Pub of the Year award. Walpurgis Nacht will be appearing in all the usual suspects, plus Birrasana in Spain. The Shakespeare will have the usual variants on the brew, including A Slight Case of Overhopping 20 and Mein Luftkissenfahrzeug Ist Voller Aalen (dry hopped with Nelson Sauvin). Finally, a very special variant, Metal Fatigue, celebrates the demise of Thatcher (though sadly not Thatcherism), and can be found in the Shakespeare, Reading Beer Festival, Glastonwick Beer Festival and the Rutland. Ding dong the witch is dead! Early tastings of Metal Fatigue from the fermenter and in the Shakespeare suggest a very complex beer, with the tropical gooseberry/mango/citrus tastes of the Galaxy and Nelson Sauvin working very well with the banana character of the WB06 yeast, while the bitterness subdues the sweetness of the yeast, all backed up with a slight hint of the dark malt.