Crookes Pop-Up Ale House

Do fancy dress and ale go together? If you’ve ever been to a beer festival the two can go hand in hand – but often it’s more stag party than an obligatory dress option.

In an empty shop on Crookes Road, a small modestly decorated alehouse recently opened its doors offering 3 cask ales, 12 American and Belgium bottled beers and mulled cider to drinkers and thinkers in the area. So where does the relevance come to play you may be asking with fancy dress?  Luckily for me (as I’d answer NO to the opening question) the contents of Mr Bens fancy dress emporium which once inhabited the shop had been stripped out and replaced with a seating area and more importantly beer.

Behind the transformation of this unassuming empty shop unit into Crookes Alehouse is local lad and freelance sound engineer Kit Challis.

A hand-picked selection of Yorkshire ales was on offer at the Crookes weekend beer pop up from Huddersfield based brewery Magic Rock (Ringmaster NZ, South Pacific pale ale 3.9%) and two from The Sheffield Brewery Company – First Gold (4.5% single hopped amber ale) and Porter (4.4%). At £2.50 a pint (served straight from the cask) no wonder a queue began forming before officially opening its doors on a cold Friday 27th December lunchtime. The bottled range offered well-regarded beers from American brewery Flying Dog (with its lauded Ralph Steadman artwork) and wheat beer Franziskaner amongst an array of Belgian beers such as Duvel and Bacchus.      

Inspired by the micro-pub movement, which has seen 30 new tiny alehouses open up in the last 12 months over the UK, Kit had been on the search for a venue locally to host his own pop up micro-pub. Micro-pubs are simple in ethos – focusing on small spaces converted to serve a range of ales for pub-goers looking for good beer and conversation. Longer term Kit’s goal is to open up a micro-brew pub in Sheffield focusing on, “simple surroundings with an interesting and rotating beer range”. In the journey towards this expect more weekend pop up alehouses to materialise in a Sheffield street near you soon.

For news on the next alehouse pop up follow @CrookesAleHouse