The Cock, St Albans Central, St. Albans

There are two pubs either side of a busy roundabout at the top end of the main shopping street,and The Cock looks to be the older.A corner door leads to the tap room with a brick double aspect fireplace also serving a pleasing side snug with it's own bar access but no handpumps.The tap room has a series of high tables,a drinking shelf and is L shaped with more traditional tables and benches along the side.The low exposed beam ceiling shows the age ,while to the rear of the building is a restaurant. Besides pub grub,sandwiches are served and a Sky Sports screen was showing the Test Match.The tap room certainly had a boozer atmosphere. There are 5 handpumps serving on my trip Doom Bar,GK Abbott,Hopback Summer Lightening and St Austell Liquid Sunshine and Big Job (meaty 7% but good nick). I thought the ale range was decent and would suggest it's worth a place on any crawl list around the city.

The Cock is a corner pub that is in a good location in the middle of St Albans. Once inside the bar faces in an L shaped room,the floor is part tiled and bare boarded,there are tall tables and stools to the front left and bench seating and chairs plus some bucket chairs on the right side. There is an oblong shaped dining room to the rear left. There were five real ales on the bar,i had a drink of Trumans Runner,which was a very nice drink,the other real ales were St Austell Liquid Sunshine,Hop Back Summer Lightening,GK Abbot and GK St Edmunds. The TVs were showing horse racing and the pub was very busy on my Saturday afternoon visit. I thought this was a decent enough pub to have a drink in. Pub visited 24/6/2017

Official site of The Cock Inn - www.thecockinstalbans.co.uk

Official site of The Cock Inn - www.thecockinstalbans.co.uk

Semi-modernised old inn - retaining two main rooms; a compact main bar at the front (with a further small lounge to one side), supplemented by another part of the counter in the larger seating / dining area further back. Background music. Implausible claim that "we have the largest range of ales in town" although there was a decent selection from the six handpumps: three Greene King beers - IPA, Abbot and Old Speckled Hen - along with the World Hop Medley collaboration with Hopback Brewery (£3.90) plus Wandle and Sadler's Worcester Sorcerer as guests.