You could easily get lost trying to find Lost Industry Brewing, tucked away on Sheffield’s periphery, nestled against the silhouette of the Pennines. I almost did, taking two wrong turns before finally locating the brewery; north out of the city, past Hillsborough Stadium, away from the main roads and into half-hidden back lanes. Here—burrowed among chimney towers, tangled brambles, and yards of stacked metal—Lost Industry is creating delicious, creative and genuinely unusual beers. None of which seem to hang around long enough to become permanent offerings.

Between the garages, fabricators and toolmakers, the compact warehouse the brewery calls home is packed tight with barrels and pallets. While the premises might be narrow, the results of its brewing are anything but. The team here have combed the countryside, foraging ingredients for seasonal one-offs, collaborated with the Women’s Institute and Forestry Commission, and have even concocted a wild garlic saison.

“Traditional” is not a word that springs to mind when meeting the folks behind Lost Industry, especially after trying their forward-minded beers. Despite this, brewer and co-owner Jim Seaton isn’t hiding his Yorkshire credentials, sporting a flat cap when he and his wife—brewery assistant, Helen—greet me at the brewery’s entrance.

We take a seat next to old bottle labels drawn by Jim’s brother Nate (who also contributes beer ideas and helps with social media) and are joined by brewery director, Lesley Seaton, who also happens to be Jim and Nate’s mum. Lesley’s husband Mick is also a co-owner, and was busy putting the finishing touches to their new taproom, the Industry Tap, in the city centre.

Even before I hear about Jim and Helen’s kids grabbing cherry blossoms for foraged beers, or fruit from Helen’s parents’ garden being hand-pressed into saisons it was becoming clear Lost Industry is a genuinely family-run operation.

In a landscape that’s increasingly awash with high quality beer—both in Sheffield itself and nationally—I was curious to find out how new breweries like Lost Industry can stand out from their peers. As we shared a few bottles we talked about the brewery’s journey so far, from starting up with borrowed casks and reviews of “toilet brick” beers, to launching their brand new 21 tap bar.

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Martin Flynn: You founded Lost Industry in 2015. Why did you decide to start your own brewery?

Jim Seaton: As a family, we’ve been into craft beer from about 2005. The real head-turners for me were probably Magic Rock Cannonball and Thornbridge Kipling. I took a sip of Kipling and I’d never had anything like it [at the time]. I was homebrewing for about eight years before we started the brewery.

Helen Seaton: I was trying to drag sacks of grain round the kitchen, so we started talking about getting a premises. At the time, I worked in a bank and Jim delivered post.

MF: Your website mentions “progressive beers” and “no inhibitions.” What did that mean when you started the brewery?

JS: Brew beer we wanted to drink, and hopefully other people would too. With all the breweries in Sheffield, we thought that if we did a pale ale or a bitter, it’d just be noise. We’d be competing with Abbeydale, Bradfield or Kelham Island, big names in the city. So we wanted to create a bit of a niche, and started looking at sours.

MF: Was that a style you particularly liked?

JS: I’d had the odd sour, but never done one as a homebrewer. Our first at Lost Industry was a pineapple yoghurt sour, and our first version of Sour Sundae had tonnes of fresh banana whizzed and chucked in. At the bar it poured like a McDonald’s milkshake.

MF: Sheffield has some well-established breweries. Did starting out feel like a big gamble?

JS: Honestly, I was really surprised at how hard it was to sell beer. Foolishly, we began just doing keg and bottles. You could probably just about get away with it now, but at the time, not doing cask in Sheffield was… [ Jim grimaces.]

We were phoning everywhere and only selling two kegs [at a time], so we started doing cask as quickly as we could. Shakespeares (an award-winning Sheffield pub known for its great beer selection) had a couple of spare casks, so we’d fill them and take them back. And we got some old casks from Abbeydale [Brewery] for a fiver each!

HS: That’s the nicest thing about the industry – everyone supports each other. We were talking to Abbeydale the other day, they’re always very helpful.

““With all the breweries in Sheffield, we thought that if we did a pale ale or a bitter, it’d just be noise.””

— Jim Seaton

MF: You’ve never had a core range of beers, has it been easy to stay experimental?

Lesley Seaton: We wanted to be different, and not get stuck in a rut. Jim gets bored easily, and we wanted to challenge ourselves and challenge drinkers.

HS: You’ve just got to hope it finds the right people. We’ve got a house beer at Craft 19 bar in Madrid [for example.] It’s an IPA we did specifically for the owner: IPA Para Gatos.

JS: In our first year we did a festival in Breda, in the Netherlands. [We got invited because] someone had bought a bottle in Sheffield, taken it home, and the guy who owned the brewery that was running the festival had tried it. We took a mojito sour, a piña colada sour and a strawberry daiquiri sour. People either loved them, or they didn’t. We had one Untappd review that said: “tastes like toilet bricks,” [he laughs.]

MF: What have been your personal favourites beers you’ve made so far?

LS: Mutual Friend, a braggot (a beer/mead hybrid) with honey, mango and bergamot sencha green tea. It was a collaboration with Boutilliers [Brewery in Kent] and tasted a bit like Earl Grey tea but with honey. We needed two massive tubs of raw honey, so Jim contacted the local beekeepers’ association. We found a guy near Wakefield with two hives in his garden.

JS: I really liked Heart of Darkness, an imperial Belgian dark ale with a Nigerian hot pepper in each bottle.

LS: Zeste De Sarriette (a lemon and bay saison) is one of my favourites.

JS: I like saisons as a base, they suit flavours that are savoury, so you can put herbs in. Zeste De Sarriette came about because I’ve got an out-of-control bay tree outside my house; I wanted to trim it and I don’t like waste. We like foraging for things, too. I’ve got a secret location winter tree, which still has apples in January.

Jim taps his nose and laughs.

MF: How much time have you spent foraging for your beers?

HS: It was three years before we could brew Foraged Spring (a sour that uses apple blossom, cherry blossom, dandelion heads and nettle leaves) because the window for cherry blossoms is so short. The first year we did it, we’d almost given up because there was no blossom anywhere. Then we took a different route into work and saw some trees covered in blossoms. We got carrier bags out of the boot and got [our] kids involved picking!

JS: We’ve recently changed the name of the beers. “Foraged” is now called “Found,” and is a mixed fermentation saison (they formerly used a quicker kettle souring technique.) One reason we changed the name is because it’s not just stuff we’ve picked in the wild. For example, Helen’s parents have grape vines in their garden, so Found Grape is not technically foraged. We just go off what’s available.

Jim opens a chilled bottle of Found Grape, made with fruit manually put through Lost Industry’s small press. The result smells not unlike white wine, with a light colour and texture that tastes much more relaxed than 6.5%.

MF: Adapting to whatever’s available sounds risky—have there been times it’s not gone as you’d hoped?

HS: A friend with an allotment had three massive pumpkins, so we did a black pepper and sea salt pumpkin saison

JS: I used the same amount of salt I’d normally use in a gose. Because it was a saison and the finish was so dry, the salt was really pronounced. We had to chuck about 400 litres.

MF: That clearly hasn’t put you off—I’ve heard you’re doing a wild garlic saison?

Jim laughs.

JS: [I decided to brew one] because basically, I can! I was walking the dog and smelled wild garlic. At the start of fermentation, I opened the lid to have a smell and nearly fell off my chair. I’ve tried it now and I think it tastes quite pleasant. I don’t think Found Wild Garlic will split people down the middle, so much as split them 95% to 5%, but I think people will be eager to try it.

MF: And you’ve recently done something for the Forestry Commission’s centenary?

JS: Yeah, Found Sitka, brewed with about 10 bin bags of Sitka spruce tips from Dalby Forest, not far from Scarborough. It is quite spruce-y when you start drinking it, I’m glad we didn’t put any more in.

MF: Do you feel it’s easier to get hold of more unusual beers now, and how has that benefited Lost Industry?

JS: I think so, we were the first Sheffield brewery to do sours by a good year or so. They fly out the door now compared to when we started.

HS: I think people have become more knowledgeable about beer. If you don’t try it, you don’t know. Lots of Sheffield pubs and bars have really helped us out by being willing to take a punt. I love Shakespeares, and Bar Stewards.

MF: Where do you see your place within Sheffield’s beer scene?

JS: I’d say we’re still the go-to for sours in Sheffield, to a degree.

LS: We get on well with most of the CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) people, though a lot of the older CAMRA members are very staunch. But [generally] it’s trending in the right direction, people are more open-minded [these days].

MF: There’s been rapid evolution across the UK craft beer industry. Where do you see it going next?

JS: There’s probably a ceiling, but there’s a good chance that really good new breweries will continue to succeed. And some longer-standing breweries which aren’t moving with the times might not.

HS: I think if you were starting, the difficulty is being a different voice. When we started, we were really pushing the envelope. I think it might be harder to be heard now.