Story — The Tapped Brew Co.

Brewery

Jamie & Jon

Bars

Building

Vision

The Tapped brewery is a 4BBL (Brewers Barrel) kit. 1BBl is equivalent to 4 x 9 gallon casks so it has a maximum capacity of 16 x 9 gallon casks per brew. The Hot Liquor Tank, Mash Tun, Underback and Copper are all insulated and copper clad. There are two 2000 litre closed conical fermenters behind the brewery, these allow us to brew the same beer on two consecutive days and ferment them in the same vessel. The fermenting room to the side of the brewery houses a further four 1000 litre fermenters for single brews. The fermenters are closed and have cooling jackets so both the temperature and carbonation of the beer can be controlled at every stage. We brew a wide range of beer styles into both keg and casks and plan to acquire a bottling plant in the future.

You can view our current range of core beers which are regularly available in the Brews section. We also brew several other beers which appear less regularly on the bar, to date these include: Growler, a 4.5% Citra Pale Ale; Ember, a 4.7% Red Smoky Bitter; Pegler, a 4.4% Heavily Hopped Pale Ale; Lupulo Star, a 5.4% Galician Style Ale; Two T’s, a 5.9% Lady Grey Tea IPA.

We sell most of the beer produced in the Sheffield Tap but you can usually find it on the bar in other Pivovar bars including Pivni, the York Tap, Euston Tap, Harrogate Tap and Leeds Tap.

We usually brew two or three times a week and the brewery is open to the public so feel free to come along and have a look and ask any questions.

And of course sample a freshly brewed Tapped Brew Co beer.

Jamie Hawksworth and Jonathon Holdsworth grew up just a few miles apart in Derbyshire. They shared friends and both went to Leeds University and studied Civil Engineering with Architecture. Both got their first jobs in York for a large railway engineering consultancy following their graduation. However, up until Jon returned from a 6 month placement on a London project they had never met. Being one year apart (Jon the older ) fate had not brought them together until now.

Fast forward on through many years of railway projects, consulting in to Network Rail as Senior Project Managers and Lead Construction Engineers Jamie got itchy feet and left to undertake works in a different field, this time as a contractor designing and building mobile telecommunications for Vodafone. It was inevitable that their paths would cross again and Jon joined Jamie a couple of years later.

It was on a fateful trip to Prague with a contractor that Jamie sampled Czechs most renowned produce, the beer. A matter of only a few months later and Pivovar was established asd the Uk partner for a Czech family brewery called Bernard and importing fantastic unpasteurised lagers . Unsurprisingly no banks were keen to provide a business loan for some young guys wanting to buy pallet loads of beer with no customers or track record so a rather large bill for beer arrived on their credit cards! This began a sobering lesson in the state of the UK pub market.

Selling draught beer to pubs is hard. Only a small proportion are ‘Free Houses’ and of those most are often still tied to a supplier for their draught lines, often the landlord is too frightened to remove a beer that he has a handful of ‘regulars’ for, or they would rather have 4 or 5 very similar style and abv lagers on because they are commodity beers, big brands, and have been won over by the local sales team that these beers are what the customers want. We had to change this perception, they needed their own bar.

In late 2007 Pivni opened in York, a Grade 2* listed Tudor building which was formerly a travel agent and before that a shoe shop. It had no track record as a pub and neither did they as Landlords. Within the first year Pivni had won the national ‘Free House Pub of The Year’ sponsored by The Publican Magazine. Their point was proven and eyes opened as to the opportunities out there for a bar offering the customer the choice and ambiance they knew people wanted. The same year they entered Bernard Dark lager into Tesco’s drinks awards and won the coveted Lager category, earning a spot of 450 of the nations shelves and great exposure for a great beer and brewery. A year later they achieved the double with Bernard’s non alcoholic Free Amber. Pivovar was really growing now as more and more bars began to embrace quality and provenance above marketing and price.

It was in 2008 that Jamie spotted something from a platform at Sheffield station. An interesting but derelict and unused (apart from a dumping ground) room in the northern station archways. 18 months of legal wranglings later and Jon and Jamie signed the lease for what would be the Sheffield Tap. At this point they made the biggest and most satisfying decision in their professional lives to date and decided to ditch their day jobs and get stuck in 100% to what they wanted to do, as well as they could do it. They wanted to sell the best beer they could in the best bars they could make. Jon and Jamie worked almost every day for 3 months, stripping out, knocking down, building, fixing, painting and finally cleaning the tiles before the Sheffield Tap opened to a great reception in December 2009.

Since then the Euston Tap, York Tap and Cider Tap have followed, all totally different and no sign of ‘chain bar’ but with the same mantra as being places that Jamie and Jon would chose to drink and offering beers that they would want to drink, with no mainstream brands in sight.

Tapped Brew Co. is somewhat of the final piece in the puzzle for Jamie and Jon. Jamie has been a keen home brewer since he was in his early teens. He had always dreamed of becoming a brewer and although his parents encouraged him to go to university instead he still wanted to brew. Taking himself off to Prague for a few weeks in 2009 to train with a master brewer was the catalyst for Jamie. Subsequent UK training and brews with some of the best craft brewers in the UK such as Thornbridge, Magic Rock and Brewdog have all added to the enthusiasm to produce their own beers worthy of a place on the bar at any of the ‘Taps’.

How did it all begin?

Pivovar was established to source, import where necessary and supply the best beers we could find to the UK market. Beers from breweries that brewed to a quality level and not to a price, breweries and not production factories. Breweries with providence, vision and passion, where everyone in the organisation believed in the quality of their product. Back in 2005 the term ‘Craft Beer’ was not widely recognised but we believed that this was what the customer would want if only they could find it. Two years attempting to persuade landlords and owners of ‘Free Houses’ that they should look to reduce their range of multinational homogeneous euro beers and offer a wider choice of different styles of real beer generally fell on deaf ears. So we decided to beat them at their own game and build a bar.

Pivni York

Pivni was our first bar, opened in 2007. A Grade 2* listed 13th century building in the heart of York. The building is over 3 levels but was not a bar and never had been. Many months of legal procedure and approvals, including Secretary of State sign off, and Pivni opened as a World Beer Free House. Within the first year Pivni had won the universally regarded national Free House Pub of The Year award from The Publican. This was a huge affirmation that what we believed in – the best beer, served properly in unique surroundings and by a passionate team was a recipe for success. Pivni became a showcase bar for the Bernard Czech brewery for whom we are the UK partner.

Sheffield Tap

We wanted to take what we had learned and apply it in another bar, and where better than Sheffield, the beer capital of Yorkshire. The Sheffield Tap was long in gestation. The Train Operating Company changed hands half way through negotiations, meaning we had to start from scratch again. The original Victorian Refreshment Rooms were in a poor state of repair, the ornate plaster ceiling was seriously water damaged and needed to be replaced, the terrazzo floor cracked and broken up in places, 30 years of railway rubbish piled throughout. Fortunately though the wall tiling was in good order and the original back bar was still hiding behind a plywood screen. The front bar had been butchered for heating vents for the period when it was a waiting room, and pushed beneath the back bar. In September 2009 we began 3 months of restoration and transformation that resulted in the first beers being sold from the original bar in 50 years and the birth of the Sheffield Tap. A further extension took place in 2011 which added another 40 seats and then the original First Class Dining Room was restored in 2012 which is now the home to the on site brewery Tapped Brew Co. In just 3 years the Sheffield Tap has won awards from Railway Heritage, CAMRA, English Heriatage and Cask Ale Pub of the Year in 2010 from The Publican. With seating for 150 people and serving nine cask ales, a cask cider,12 draft products and over 200 different bottled beers from around the world, along with our own brews of course, there is something for everyone and in possibly the most impressive brewpub in the country.

Euston Tap

Euston Tap was always going to be a challenge. The lodges outside Euston Station were in a fantastic location, and as with Pivni and Sheffield were listed buildings with heritage and charm. However, they were on the small side! Nevertheless, we pushed ahead and opened the West Lodge as the Euston Tap in December 2010. Some clever design work and the discovery of an adjacent underground WW2 shooting range running between the East and West Lodges enabled a bar, 40 seats upstairs and an enormous cellar. The really clever part about Euston Tap is the dispense solution, no taps or hand pumps on the bar and everything of a copper back stillage. This solution means that Euston can dispense 20 draft and 8 cask ales through swing handled taps with a perfect pour and in a tiny space. Euston Tap has proved to be a great success and when the sun comes out there are large crowds of happy drinkers outside and on the beer terrace. To offer something else unique in London we decided to open the East Lodge Cider Tap in 2011. Offering 8 keg ciders and 5 still and perry, along with a great range of bottled ciders from the UK and France as well as Bernard and a wheat beer. Both Lodges are charming stone monuments and the only surviving buildings of the original Euston station. There are few nicer places to drink a great range of craft beer and cider in London, especially when the sun comes out.

York Tap

As we had both lived in York for many years and frequented the station often we had always been aware of the curious model railway museum in an old building on the north side of the station, adjacent to the Royal York Hotel. We were advised in the spring of 2011 that the lease was up for renewal on this building and asked if we would like to take a look. Once we saw the beautiful stained glass windows and domes, the central pillars and original fireplaces then we just knew that it was a perfect fit to sit alongside our other bars. £250,000 later and the doors opened to a fabulous reception as the beauty of the original Victorian Tea Rooms was brought back to life with a thorough and sympathetic renovation and impressive circular bar in the middle of the room.

What’s next? Watch this space for updates…….

The Tapped Brew Co. is situated the original First Class Dining Room at Sheffield Midland Station. As with the original adjacent Refreshment Room, now the main bar of the Sheffield Tap, the building dates back 1904. Whilst originally only first class passengers were allowed to use the facilities (commoners were served through hatches in the doors between the two rooms) eventually they were opened up to a more mundane purpose. In the 60’s they became waiting and areas and when the ceilings deteriorated in the 70’s they were closed for public access and used for operational offices, cleaning cupboards and tenant storage. Such a travesty for beautiful listed buildings.

Now restored at significant cost and with the assistance of the Railway Heritage Trust the rooms have a character, charm and life about them that makes the Sheffield Tap one of the finest brew pubs in the country.

We simply want to create the kind of bars that we want to drink in. Bars with character, design and quality that we hope will stand the test of time. We want to offer a range of drinks from the very best brewers that put smiles on peoples faces, beers that you can’t find in the bar down the road, or probably in the same county. We want to brew beers of our own that meet our very high quality and taste standards, beers that can stand side by side on our bars with some of the best beers in the world.

To enter The Tapped Brew Co. site you must be over the age of 18.