JULES, HOP HIDEOUT
“So Hop Hideout is a beer shop and tasting room. For us it’s all about the wonderful world of beer: like a lot of people I’ve travelled for beer, and I’m really enthused by particularly Belgian beer styles. Our shop is all about exploring the huge world of beer out there. So there’s bottles, cans, keg… we serve so many different beer styles. We’ve been going ten years. We started as a pop up in the back of an antiques centre to give it a go. It was my idea, I’ve worked in beer for a long time, about 15-20 years – anything from working men’s clubs, bars, and selling beer at festivals to eventually working in a big brewery in Leeds and then Burton upon Trent. I’ve worked in procurement, sales, logistics, technical support - anything you can think of with beer, I’ve worked in it.
Then it got to the point where I was getting excited about the independent beer scene - what people called micro-brewed beers - back in 2007/8, and the rejuvenation of the modern craft scene in the UK. So I decided to do my own thing and give it a try. We moved into a café space in 2015, that was our beer shop and tasting room which I’d dreamed of. At the time I didn’t realise that the concept wasn’t really a thing in the UK, so when we went to licensing to try and get their approval, they didn’t get the concept, and they said ‘but you’re not a pub are you?’ and I said ‘no I’m not, this is what I am’. So we were probably the first beer shop and tasting rooms in the UK, and we were certainly one of the first to get licensing that covered people drinking in the shop - because for a beer shop in the UK it’s typically off sale only. Then we moved to this food hall in the city centre in 2019, just before the pandemic. Obviously, the last few years have neen pretty tough.
I also set up Sheffield Beer Week in 2015 and I’m director of that each year, and that happened because I was just really inspired by other week-long beer celebrations like Norwich City of Ale. We hold it over 10 days, it's an umbrella event so lots of venues and breweries get involved to host an event each year. I also host a beer festival called Indie Beer Feast the first weekend in March and welcome around 1500 people. Sheffield can sometimes be underrated - it’s so close to Manchester and Leeds and people here are modest. So I thought it would be a good way to champion what’s going on in the city and create a really good atmosphere and positivity. And because it’s always the second week of March, it means we can celebrate International Women’s Day, so there’s always lots of events around that, and we also have International Women’s Collab Brew Day which has been going a few years.
All the way along we’ve done collaborations with breweries, from local ones like Abbeydale where the old shop used to be based and we’ve always had a lot of women-brewed and owned beers in the shop. And that’s certainly grown from in the early days, where it was maybe only a handful and now there's a lot more. It’s wonderful to see the growth of women getting into the sector at all levels. We did a collaboration with Crafty Beer Girls and Wild Card for our 9th birthday in November 2022 which was great, as Jaega Wise set up Wild Card and she’s an absolute legend and an inspiring woman in the scene for me. There’s so many women that came before me but it’s wonderful to see even more now. And I mean that in terms of all different roles, on the packaging line, brewing, marketing, events and so on.
My experience of being a woman in the industry is definitely that it does help to ground yourself with knowledge and experience and skills, whereas I do feel equivalent men can just like beer and start a business. I’ve felt that I’ve had to get qualifications to be able to prove in a way that I know what I’m doing. I’m not saying that’s right, but that’s been my experience. Even at the festival this year I was helping get a customer something and he just went ‘oh thanks sweetheart’. I found it patronising, but he obviously didn’t even think about it, he probably didn’t even think that I could be the person that organised the whole event! And that happens quite a lot to be honest. It happens even at my own counter. My female member of staff has reported to me that sometimes when men come to the counter, they don’t speak to her and automatically speak to the male member of staff. So there’s still a lot of this that goes on. At the old shop I used to have delivery drivers come to the shop and ask for the boss and I’d be like ‘well that’s me, what needs doing?’
I enjoy the dynamic nature of working in beer, it’s always changing and it’s always evolving. I enjoy meeting people, the social side, I love the history and heritage of beer and sharing that. I love hearing people’s stories if they discovered a brewery on holiday or working somewhere or whatever and we sort of share that joy. I think a lot of those aspects outweigh some of the negative things. I feel like me just being here and doing what I do starts to diminish those things, so we eventually get to the point where my daughter who’s one year old won’t have to challenge, or stomp down the doors to get into science or typically male dominated areas - and that those opportunities will just be there for her. And it’s not just me of course, it’s all of the women out there in the sector doing their bit and it’ll be all of us together really that’ll be the movement of change.”
Jules, Hop Hideout, specialist beer shop and tasting room founder and director of Sheffield Beer Week.