The Crow Inn, Sheffield

The Crow Inn has banquette seating to the left of the entrance and raised banquettes to the right. The two other customers, a couple of bearded locals, were stood at the L-shaped counter that sits on the mid rear wall. I overheard that the lack of custom was due to everyone attending a beery thing up the road. There was some low background music from 40 years ago playing, but not a lot else was going on. I counted five hand pumps on the counter, four of which were in use drawing Northern Monk’s Eternal, North Riding Brewery’s Parkin Porter, Redwillow’s Weightless and Abbeydale’s Heathen. 11 European and craft keg lagers were also available, some of which I’d heard of. The service was polite, but I found it a bit cliquey, even with only two other customers. Maybe I’m being unfair, so I’ll give it another go next time I’m walking up to Kelham Island.

One of the side-street pubs filling the (mostly) semi-industrial area between the city centre and Kelham Island, this one has a bold black-and-white frontage that is definitely not Tudorbethan... Anyway it is slightly more modern in appearance than I expected inside, but the choice of craft keg beers from none of the ten taps was impressive, and there was a good choice from four of the five handpumps too. I went for Atom's Asterism porter (£3.50), with Heathen from Abbeydale, Brodies' London Fields pale ale and Chadkirk's Mosaic also available.

I paid a couple of visits here during my short stay in the city, there were three or four cask beers on offer with which I started with an apptley named pint of Hello Traveller by Shiny brewery which was decent enough but it would seem the pubs forte is a more interesting keg offering with ten craft beers displayed on a chalk board, I further indulged in Saint Mars Of The Desert Hop Stingo, a sour and in my later visit Turning Point Laguna Sunrise, an odd name for a 10% Imperial stout but nice all the same. This is a good solid boozer with beers to cover most peoples tastes.