BrewDog Nottingham, Nottingham

I've been to this pub several times and it never fails to impress. The best beer you will find in Nottingham, at extremely reasonable prices. Compare paying £3.90 for a great pint of Punk or Zeitgeist - the best black lager available in the UK IMO - to paying £4.60 for a pint of Peroni at other similar venues around the town. The rocky music choice is great, and the atmosphere and ambience spot on. Whether you visit in the afternoon for a quiet board game and a few pints, or later in the evening when it gets very busy with the 25-35 crowd (although they have enough staff that the bar service is always quick and efficient), there are very few comparably pleasant and good value places to drink.

As the name suggests, this is the Brewdog brewery’s contribution to the Nottingham beer scene. Occupying a former factory building in the Lace Market district, the bar is a disappointingly bland affair, with painted floorboards, bare brick walls and high canteen style tables with high stool seating and some beer kegs beneath. Around the edge of the room there are some comfier padded benches and I also noticed a single sofa near the front door. Blackboards are everywhere in this place, detailing beers, bar snacks, tasting sessions, open mic nights and Brewdog merchandise, as well as introducing the staff and explaining the brewing process in simplified terms. There was a good soundtrack playing and some beer related books could be found behind some of the benches as well as a selection of board games. Each table had a ‘beer school’ pamphlet, which explains brewing techniques and may be of interest to some, and a copy of the ‘Brewdog manifesto’ which is a load of marketing nonsense designed to reassure customers that they are not drinking mass produced beer and that “Brewdog beers are the epitome of pure punk”. Suffice to say, as with other Brewdog bars, there are no hand pumps, just several large unlabelled keg fonts. Obviously there is a handy blackboard to help you work out what’s available and on my visit the choice was from Proto 176, Zeitgeist, 5am Saint, Dogma, Libertine Black Ale, Hello my Name is Beastie, Hardcore IPA and the 18.2% Tokyo (£3.95 for a third).Four foreign keg beers were also available and included two from the Nogne O brewery. As you would expect, there is an extensive bottled beer selection and yet another blackboard listed some rather unappealing beer cocktails. With beers available in pints, halves and thirds, the pricing quickly becomes very confusing but you can rest assured that whatever you order won’t come cheaply. Not that this should be a surprise as point four in the aforementioned ten point Brewdog manifesto states “Brew fucking expensive beers”. The Brewdog website for this bar says that it is “juxtaposed against miles of soulless, mega-brand pub chains”, which is frankly an insult to the city’s excellent beer scene and ignores the fact that Brewdog is now a chain itself with ten or so soulless bars dotted around the UK. I’m sure you can find some good beer in this place but you need to shut out all of the other guff that surrounds this place in order to enjoy it.

Nottingham page at the BrewDog site - www.brewdog.com

Nottingham page at the BrewDog site - www.brewdog.com

BrewDog is a new pub that is in an old building on the edge of the hockley area of central Nottingham. Once inside there is a single room with a dark wood floor,the bar is to the right and there are three tall tables in the middle of the room with 6 uncomfortable looking stools either side of it,there is one leather settee where i sat and a few small stools around the sides of the pub. There were 8 BrewDog pump type things on the bar but all these looked the same so i had to look at the blackboard behind the bar which confused me even more,the friendly barmaid explained that all the beers here are very expensive but they do give tasters and serve drinks in either a third, half or pint i had a drink of BrewDog 5 AM Saint at £1.50 for a third of a pint and i am glad i only had a third as this drink was far to carbonated for my liking. There were snacks available Pork Pies at £5.00 a go and Scotch Eggs at £4.00 this is far too expensive for Nottingham. I went in here at about 2.00 in the afternoon and there was only one other customer in which says it all. If you like fizzy expensive beer then this place will be right up your street,i was'nt that impressed with this pub at all. Pub visited 22/3/2012