Craft Beer Co, EC1

Randomness Guide to London - Craft Beer Co entry

Randomness Guide to London - Craft Beer Co entry

This new bar, located inside a former Greene King pub, has been set up to provide a wide variety of interesting and rare beers from the UK and beyond. There are 16 hand pumps and 21 taps for keg beers, all of which seem to be in use at any given time. The hand pumps focus mainly on British micro breweries with the likes of Dark Star, Redemption, Naylor’s, Crouch Vale, Ilkley, Fyne, Magic Rock and Bristol Beer Factory prominent on my visits. A house ale, Clerkenwell Pale from the Kent Brewery, is always available. These ales are priced by strength, with most coming in around the £3.40 - 3.70 mark, although some of the stronger ones can cost as much as £4.50. The keg fonts supply 'craft' beers from the US, Japan, Scandinavia and the Benelux, including another house beer - Clerkenwell Lager from Mikkeler, but prices here are much steeper due to the high abv's and presumably the cost of importing them in the first place. £3.00-£4.00 for a half pint seems to be the average. An extensive bottled selection is detailed in nicely presented beer menus. The bottles are even more expensive, with some priced as high as £50 - presumably there are people out there who are prepared to pay such prices, so I suppose it makes sense to cater for them. There are also lengthy and well thought out wine and spirit menus, whilst food is restricted to handmade pork pies which are £4.50 each. I've tried many of the cask ales over a number of visits and have found them all to be in excellent condition. The bar staff are, as you would expect, all very knowledgeable about the beer range and tasters are happily provided to help you ensure your hard earned cash is spent on the right beer. Unlike its sister pub, the Cask Pub and Kitchen in Pimlico, the Craft Beer Co has the feel of a proper pub to it. There are bare floorboards and high banquette seating in the main bar, with a drinking shelf and high stools under the windows on one side, and a small fireplace with a huge Charringtons mirror above it at the other end of the room. The highlight though is the wonderful mirrored ceiling with a clock face on it, which was inherited from the pub's previous incarnation as the Clock House. A lounge bar is located upstairs and is a rather small and basic area divided into two by a partitioning wall. There is extra seating up there, but no actual bar. The pub seems to have found its own identity and everything within is branded with the pub logo - the glasses, staff clothes, beer mats, fridges, even the wallpaper - but thankfully it doesn't come across as grimly corporate as it might sound. I think this is an excellent addition to the London drinking scene and it compliments other similar bars such as the Euston Tap, Rake and Cask. I have already enjoyed a lot of new beers in this place, including my first sighting of the new magic Rock Brewery from Huddersfield, and I think it's safe to say that I'll enjoy many more here in the future.

The former Clock House has been transformed into the Craft Beer Co. (which might sound more like a wholsesaler rather than a pub) and generated a great deal of interest in the process. Not surprising really, given that they have 16 real ales on handpump (ranging from the 'house' pale from Kent Brewery to offerings from Dark Star, Thornbridge, etc.) and 21 unusual keg beers on tap (including the 'house' lager from Mikkeler) plus 150 different products in bottled form. My excellent pint of Gadds Festiv'Ale was £3.40, but I noted that some of strong imported beers were priced upto £4.50 for a half - be warned! The main bar area is sparsely decorated and furnished, with most people standing either inside or out. There is also another room upstairs (not yet visited). Well staffed, but slow service due to the extraordinary number of people asking for a Fosters (or whatever) and needing to have the concept of craft beer explained to them... Still a novelty, but deserves to be a roaring success.