Hare & Hounds, St. Albans

A good sized pub in a residential area just a short stroll from the town centre, I thought it had something of a gastro-pub look about it in terms of the exterior décor and signage, but fortunately this was not the case. Internally it consists of a number of different bar areas as well as gardens on two sides. The main bar to the left is an L-shape room with rough wooden boards on the floor, a couple of black beams on the ceiling and some chunky wood tables. The colour scheme was predominantly green with quite dark paintwork on the lower part of the walls and very pale up above. A number of watercolours brightened it up somewhat and there were also a couple of plasma screens, although fortunately the volume was off so these were not too intrusive. To the right was quite a cosy snug with a very low ceiling and a large brick fire-place with alcoves either side and a couple of sofas in front. To the rear of this was a longer room with a red colour scheme, again two tone dark and pale. This led out on to a large beer garden which I thought let the pub down slightly, being a little tatty and the presence of a climbing frame at the end meant rather too many noisy kids running around for my liking. Beers on this occasion were Red Squirrel Summer Daze, Otter Ale, Truman’s Lazarus, Longman American Pale and Ale and their own St. Albans Hare & Hounds, which is apparently brewed by Ringwood. Ciders meanwhile were Thatcher’s Heritage and Addlestones.

An interesting interior with the L shaped bar room to the left of the low entrance,while to the right there is a section with a series of sofas and seperate bar access, leading to a substantial exterior terrace (with a table football machine) and a low level beer garden.Genuine and cosy with six handpumps offering Red Squirrel Summer Daze (decent),Otter Bitter,Trumans Lazarus,a house beer Hare & Hounds brewed by Ringwood,Long Man APA and Thatchers Heritage Cider.Worth including on any crawl of the area.

traditional low ceilinged busy pub.Ringwood-bitter, Otter -bitter,Bombadier and youngs were the poor selection of beers.All interchangeable bland beers imo.What about a dark beer?

Official site of Hare & Hounds - www.hareandhoundsstalbans.co.uk

Official site of Hare & Hounds - www.hareandhoundsstalbans.co.uk

Not open at the time of my visit to this part of St Albans - opening time is 17:00 in the early part of the week, not as stated on What Pub. I could see through the window that there were half a dozen hand pumps, with a variety of beers on offer from different breweries. Will have to return another time.