Pub 94, Day 35 – The Benjamin Huntsman

By Rob

Andy, Cowboy Keith and myself all left The Grapes and headed over to The Benjamin Huntsman on Cambridge Street. There were a few pubs in this area that, strangely, we still hadn’t managed to tick off our list. This, coupled with the fact that Andy really fancied a “cheap Spoons curry”, made the Huntsman an obvious choice.

The pub – another of Sheffield’s enormously spacious Wetherspoons – will always have a special place in my heart as a regular haunt from the days when I first reached legal drinking age. Many of our more memorable nights began here, downing large pitchers of luridly purple fizz (cheap enough that you could buy it by the bucket), before passing out in West Street Live.

That being said, it was still a Spoons, and therefore came with the usual mix of pros and cons, all of which we've previously discussed. 

We ordered Huntsman Stout by Rotherham-based Chantry Brewery – although Huntsman Stout was presumably unconnected to The Benjamin Huntsman pub we were drinking in, we figured they were probably both named after the same person, so why not combine the two. The beer was fine, but didn’t really stand out from many of the other thick, dark stouts we’d come across in the past. Andy – who prefers darker beers – was in his element with the stout and, of course, the “cheap Spoons curry”.

The Huntsman is one of Sheffield’s better city-centre Spoons, certainly beating the (now closed) Swim Inn on West Street, and easily surpassing the nearby Banker’s Draft. This, I would argue, is because of its more favourable alcoholic-to-normal-customer ratio, which is/was unacceptably high in the two Spoons mentioned above.

Like many other Spoons, the pub’s name is derived from local history. The eponymous Mr Benjamin Huntsman was an eighteenth-century industrialist, who invented crucible steel in Sheffield. The success of Huntsman’s new process was its ability to reach incredibly high temperatures, hot enough to melt steel and dissolve iron.

Judging by the look on Andy’s sweat-drenched face, the pub that now bore the manufacturer’s name also included searing heat as a central feature of their creations.

Pub: The Benjamin Huntsman (12-18 Cambridge Street, S1 4HP)

Rating: 8.5/10

Pint: Huntsman Stout

Brewery: Chantry Brewery (Rotherham, S62 6NR)

NEXT UP: The perfect winter's evening, at the Tap & Tankard...