Bacteria-frenzied fun returns with Pickle Fest 2022
Social Pickle brings the ultimate pickle festival – "a day-long celebration of all things preserved, fermented and jarred" – to the Hideaway this Saturday. The team told us more about why pickling is a positive social activity.

Back
with a bubble for its second year, Pickle
Fest is an all-day community event for people to trying their hand at
food preservation to share their creations.
If
you haven’t heard of Social Pickle, the people behind this annual celebration of bacteria, they are a community group who
are passionate about bringing people together to share the joys of
fermenting, pickling and producing.
They
use various food preservation techniques to make the most of Sheffield's surplus food. They forage for wild ingredients, tap into
allotment networks for leftovers, visit the city's farms for excess produce, and use surplus from local shops through
the Foodhall project.
At
their regular workshop evenings, called Glut
Clubs, there’s the opportunity to experiment with
fermentation and preservation and share knowledge with the pickling
community.
We spoke to the Social Pickle team to get the lowdown on 2022's Pickle
Fest, coming up this Saturday 29 October at Hideaway on Eyre
Lane.
What’s
been fermenting at Social Pickle over the last 12 months?
It’s
been a whole year of bacteria-frenzied fun for Social Pickle. The
team have been meeting regularly over at Foodhall to host Glut Clubs,
our social fermentation club, processing surplus, foraged and locally-grown ingredients.
Alongside
this regular Sheffield-based activity, we’ve had opportunities to
be invited across the country to bring our sense of food preservation
to new communities.
Rule
of Threes, who have been bringing life and activity
into libraries in Bootle, Liverpool, had us up for one of their
community cook togethers. We took the opportunity to show the group
how you can utilise unused pickles at the back of the fridge to blend
into exciting new flavours of ketchups, to go with vegetarian
sausages made there amongst the book shelves.
Site
Gallery invited us to be part of Out & About, the
council-funded Cultural Industries Quarter Festival. Their four curated
weekends of activity, celebrating creativity in the area, wound up
with the sustainability-themed weekend where we hosted two fermentation
workshops, engaging with dozens of families, artists and tourists.
We
popped up our favourite mini market where we sell the produce created
at the Glut Clubs on a pay-what-you-can basis. This always
doubles up as a conversation booth about the value of food,
accessibility and invisible labours, the jars of pickles and ferments
making great props and prompts!
We’ve
also begun to work closer with some of Sheffield’s amazing food
growing network. This year we have processed lots of lovely organic
veg from the likes of Beanies
and Moss
Valley.
You’ll be able to try, and buy, these ingredients across a range of products we have at the Pickle Fest market.

What
can we expect from Pickle Fest?
Pickle Fest is a day-long celebration of all things preserved,
fermented and jarred. During the day, we will host workshops, a market
and various kid-friendly activities.
Three workshops will be held during the day offering a hands-on
experience of making your own fermented vegetables, run by professional
facilitators and picklers. We will also have drop-in art workshops
during the day as well as a mini-market consisting of local artists,
fresh and pickled produce.
Bring yourself, your pickles or just your curiosity along for all or any part of the day. We operate a pay-what-you-can model, so no one is turned away for lack of funds. If you’re able, you can support the festival and the wider project by contributing an entry donation to the event and purchasing our collective creations from the mini market.
Why
is pickling a positive activity?
The UK throws away around 9.5 million
tonnes of food waste in a single year – even though 8.4 million
people in the UK are in food poverty. Not only does learning to
preserve our ingredients mean less waste, it’s also an opportunity
to heighten our senses and trust in our intuition as to when a
product is ready or good to eat, rather than relying on best-before
dates and supermarket stickers. It also empowers us to make our own
food products out of cheap whole ingredients.
How
can people enter the Pickle Fest competition?
In the evening at Pickle Fest, we’ll have music along with our annual community-judged pickle competition, where anyone can enter a jar and everyone can taste and vote on their favourite fermented or preserved products. Whether it’s hot sauce or jam, we want you to bring your wildest creations for the competition to get the chance of being crowned a peoples' pickle champion.
This event is open to everyone, from people who ferment everyday to
those who are just inquisitive and want to try their hand at making
and tasting.
There
are eight categories including: jams, chutneys, pickles, ferments,
drinks (non-alcoholic), hot sauce, NOT hot sauce, and firm ferments
(e.g. cheese and miso). These
will be judged by all event attendees, with bread and crackers
provided as vessels for everyone’s homemade creations.
Submission
for the competition is open from 12pm at Hideaway and closes at 5pm.
Tasting and voting runs until 7:30pm with the results announced
at 8 by a special guest host. Prizes will be awarded to the
winners and runners-up in each category.
The Sheffield-based band Soup Review will compere the evening's entertainment, consisting of performances by local bands, artists and DJs.