Neptune Inn, Hove

Fairly inconspicuous from the outside, this is a small one-room pub with a good selection of cask ales, enough to get it into the Good Beer Guide. Greene King Abbot & Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter are the regular beers. Guests for our visit were Burning Sky Plateau & Titsey Leveson Buck & Estate. The latter was an enjoyable stout. I agree with the previous reviewer about customers being mostly from an older generation. This is also a place where cash is king. There are plenty of signs requesting that customers pay with cash. Although, it seems that cards are still accepted. There are plenty of interesting posters and prints on the walls to peruse, including a Sergeant Pepper Beetles picture. Certainly a decent pub that is worth including on any crawl of Hove.

This is a small, single room boozer, set a short way back from the seafront and very close to Hove Lawns. The pub has a narrow, bare boarded room with three quarter height wall panels beneath plain upper sections. The servery runs down the right-hand wall and has an angular counter with a dark wood bar back and matching canopy. There’s limited low stool seating to the front and down the left-hand wall, but the room opens out a little to the rear, where pews and chairs offer comfier seating options, albeit a little cut-off from the lively bar area. A small stage to the left, out of action on this visit, suggests there may be live musical entertainment at times, and the décor also had a music theme that included photos of various famous artists, old festival posters, framed ticket stubs and a long row of guitar picks along the bar canopy. Elsewhere, I noticed a nice stained-glass pane to the rear of the room, possibly relocated from elsewhere, and there was a solid 80’s indie soundtrack playing in the background, which I quite enjoyed. The locals seemed like a friendly bunch and checked I was okay when I tentatively entered, having been confused by an ‘Open/Closed’ sign in the front door which had blown the wrong way round in the wind, making me question whether the place was actually open. There were no less than five cask ales on the bar – a pretty good selection which most of the punters seemed to be drinking – with the options on this visit comprising Harvey’s Sussex Best, Bonfire Boy and Old Ale, Long Man Long Blonde and Greene King Abbot Ale. A friendly barman drew me a pint of the long Blonde, which was in excellent condition and went down far too quickly. I really warmed to this cosy, friendly little pub that feels like a proper community local’s boozer. It’s a traditional space offering a good range of well-kept cask ales in a pleasant environment and was one of the highlights of my extensive crawl around Brighton and Hove. Well worth making the short trip out of the city centre to explore.

Official site of The Neptune Inn - www.theneptunelivemusicbar.co.uk

Official site of The Neptune Inn - www.theneptunelivemusicbar.co.uk