Craft beer Sheffield: City produces 1,800 different beers every year making it 'real ale capital of the world'

Sheffield has retained its title as the "real ale capital of the world" after a comprehensive report commissioned by the University of Sheffield.

Eight years after Pete Brown conducted the university's original report, the Barnsley-born beer writer found the Steel City has a "thriving brewing industry" which is "bucking the national trend for closures".

Mr Brown said: "Sheffield’s prowess as a beer city won’t come as a surprise to anyone who drinks here. But it’s fascinating that when you do the research and generate the numbers, the claim of being one of the best beer cities in the world really stands up.

"Sheffield is having a bit of a moment just now, punching massively above its weight, culturally. And its brewing scene is the glue that holds that culture together."  The report found the brewing industry is providing Sheffield with a "beer tourism boom", helping to drive regeneration in the city.

Sheffield has four breweries per 100,000 people, dropping only to three when incorporating the entire South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority. Both figures are leaps and bounds ahead of competition regularly cited in surveys of the best beer cities in the world.

Edinburgh has just 1.1 breweries per 100,000, Dublin has 0.6, London has 0.4 and Manchester returns only 0.2 breweries.

1,800 different beers are created in South Yorkshire every year, with 780 of those in Sheffield, which also drinks 70 per cent of the beers produced in the locality.

The city and region’s breweries and pubs are still predominantly cask (real) ale focused, again bucking a national decline which has seen sales volumes half in the last decade, but a wider variety of beers can now be found than in 2016. With cask beer being almost exclusively a British product, Sheffield can again claim to be the real ale capital of the world.

However, Mr Brown found the city's breweries were now in "survival mode", with no capacity to expand. In the 2016 report, two-thirds of the city's breweries said they had plans for significant expansion - today, that figure has dropped to around one in five.

Professor Vanessa Toulmin, Director of City Culture and Public Engagement at the University of Sheffield, said: "Sheffield has always been a city of makers and what makes the report’s findings really interesting is the added value this industry of modern-day little mesters are bringing to the region. They are not just brewing beer; they are providing a huge tourism pull for people from far afield, while also regenerating neighbourhoods in organic, unplanned ways.

"To anyone living in Sheffield and visiting its pubs, it will come as no surprise that this new report has reaffirmed what we discovered in 2016; that Sheffield really can lay claim to being the ‘real ale capital of the world’."