The Evening Star, Brighton

Close to the station in a busy residential street is the well known Evening Star pub, the former home of the Dark Star Brewery. A wooden swing door tells us that we’re entering the “Evening Star Ale House”. True to form, inside we find a basic bare boarded interior which features some exposed brickwork, wooden pew style seats and heavy duty chunky bar stools. High up on shelves around the perimeter is a collection of beer bottles and there’s a few CAMRA award certificates on the walls, but the overriding impression is of a rather dull and functional place where little thought, if any, has been given to attempting to create a characterful interior and warm ambience. It is however pleasingly free of fruit machines, TV’s etc Seating outside on the pavement at the front help alleviate the inevitable crush inside, where seating is at a premium and vertical drinking a distinct probability. A small curved bar counter – made from oak vats in which the famous Merrydown Cider was once made – was dispensing 4 Dark Star beers plus 2 guests on my recent late Friday afternoon visit. The Dark Star beers included Hophead, American IPA and Original. The guests were White Horse Village Idiot and Kernel Big Brick, the latter weighing in at a chunky 8.9% ABV and being sold for £ 2.70p a half ( or £ 1.80p a third ). The pub has been a CAMRA Good Beer Guide regular for some time now. You’ll quite rightly want to include this in any Brighton crawl, but the lack of comfort will discourage all but the most dedicated real ale enthusiasts from lingering and people who think that this is one of the top pubs in the country really do need to get out more.

I have to admit that if I had randomly come across this pub whilst on a crawl I would have given it a miss as it was absolutely heaving with a queue three deep at the small bar that seemed to get longer as I waited. There was no seating and the people in seats looked uncomfortable as people bumped into their chairs and leant over the tables trying to not fall over. This is certainly not my idea of a good night out, however good the beer is. After a five minute plus wait I finally escaped with a pint of Dark Star and sat outside on one of the two picnic tables located out the front. It was whilst drinking my pint and noting the late opening times as midnight on Fridays and Saturdays when I got involved in an in-depth conversation with some pub goers about the Sussex pub scene and I ended up staying for another two pints of the DS, which were on good form – even for a Guinness drinker!!! For a pint of Guinness in comfortable surroundings watching Sky Sports with some nachos and chips this isn’t the place to go, but for quality beer and conversation it’s unmissable. Unfortunately I like Sky and Guinness so my next visit will be when no sport is being played and maybe not early evening on a Saturday when every ale drinker in the South East seems to converge on this tiny little pub.