If you're just planning on doing the Valley of Beer then Gill's plan is a good one, but you should stay on the tram one more stop (to Bamforth Street) and walk down the hill to
New Barrack Tavern before returning to the Hillsborough Hotel. And as Trainman points out, the
Bottom Wellie, despite occasional grumpiness behind the bar, is not to be missed. Possibly a more logical sequence would be:
Wellington
Hillsborough Hotel
New Barracks Tavern
Gardeners Rest
Riverside
Harlequin
Fat Cat
Kelham Island Tavern
Shakespeares
You mention
The Hallamshire House - this is a bit of a walk or a bus ride from the centre, but if you're going, then pop into
The Closed Shop just across the road, which has been expensively refurbished and is now much better than my review of November 2011 (sorry, haven't got around to updating it yet) with good quality and better choice of beer. The Hallamshire and Dada (and ROB's suggestion of the
Bath Hotel) are owned by Thornbridge, so there's not a lot of choice on the beer front - not a problem for those who like Thornbridge beers, I know. (Is it just me that doesn't?)
See also my pub crawl
Sheffield pub crawl by bus (not the usual suspects). The
all day bus-and-tram ticket which was £4.90 at the time that I wrote this crawl is now only £4.30 - there's progress for you! (And at only 60p more than the all-day tram ticket, it's worth getting "just in case".)
I'm thinking of doing a second version of this crawl as I want to add
The Mount Pleasant, which is a bit of a bus ride but worth it. Also I was thinking of cutting two or three of
Fox & Duck,
The York,
Ranmoor Inn and
Bull's Head Hotel which are all just a bit too close together and none of them particularly outstanding. The
Rising Sun Inn, on the other hand, is well worth the bus trip.
So many pubs, so little time...