Crown & Anchor, Stockwell, SW9

Backing onto Slade Gardens, this is a mid-19th century pub, once home to the UK’s first Rock ‘n’ Roll pub, which opened on 4th September 1956. The current captaincy dates from 2011, the place’s USP being that it has 25 taps and pumps at any one time, style, ABV and price to a beer board. The interior is rough boarded with much bare brick or grey paint with white infill and white Anaglypta ceiling. Furniture is a bit mixed and a tad rustic, all to filament light fixtures so you can see the palms and ferns. Despite the enormous number of taps, there were just three pumps, drawing Sambrook’s Sidekick, Brixton’s Life on Mars mild and Big Hug Brewing’s Pave the Way at £2.90 a half and very drinkable, served by an engagingly friendly barmaid. Despite the lack of tradition, this is a decent place which, unlike the nearby Grosvenor Arms, would probably find favour with both casketeer and the kegocracy.

Official site of Crown & Anchor - www.instagram.com

Official site of Crown & Anchor - www.instagram.com

Attractive gastro-pub with bare brick walls and a sensible arrangement of functional wooden furniture. Daily menu with suggested beer choices to match the food. Very good selection from ten handpumps, with beers including Shamblemoose #4 American Brown (£3.70) and three ciders. Leading quite a dull area upmarket, so worth seeking out.

A Gastro/Craft bar with an interesting range of Cask beers available on seven of the handpumps ,the remainder given over to Cider and or perry. Its not the kind of place I would have liked five or six years ago but I am warming the like nowadays, since Craft Beer has become popular I feel it has improved the real ale scene as well and while still preferring a traditional type establishment I would have no problem returning here.I didn't note all the beers but all were not what you would find in most other pubs in general and my pint of Hewitts D'arf Wit, a dark wheat beer at 4.6% was very good.

Sometimes you walk into a pub and think Yeah i like this pub before you even get to the bar.Busy on the mid week night i visited.7 hand pumps and a good selection of craft beer on keg and in bottle.Friendly staff who are interested in beer.Brixton area has really improved for pub choice recently.

The Crown and Anchor is, to all intents and purposes, a ‘craft beer’ bar, although it has more of a ‘pubby’ feel to it than this description might initially imply. It goes without saying that it is a single room set up, in the form of a long, narrow space with the servery running down the mid part of the left hand wall. There are bare floorboards and large windows at the front and along the right hand side which make the place feel bright and airy in the daytime. The walls are painted in the obligatory neutral shades, although the left hand wall has been left as exposed brickwork, including the bar back section, which helps break up what might otherwise be a monotonous colour scheme. There are standard tables and chairs throughout, with some notably long tables in the opened out front space, although these were mostly reserved on my visit, forcing me to prop up the bar as the pub was pleasingly busy. Lighting comes from a variety of sources, including some strange whisk-like lampshades hung above the bar, which can also be found in the pub’s main competitor – the Craft Beer Co in Brixton. Maybe Ikea has a ‘craft beer bar’ department nowadays. A stack of board games was available behind the bar but most of the customers on my visit were busy eating from the daily changing menu where mains clocked in at around a tenner. On the beer front, there was a strong range of options as you would expect. On cask the choices were Dark Star Partridge, By the Horns Hopslinger, Ascot Anastasia and Red IPA, Mighty Oak IPA and Simply the Best and Titanic Night to Remember. I gave the Titanic and Red IPA a try and found them both well kept, with the former turning out to be the most enjoyable. Keg taps offered brews from the likes of Camden, Brewdog, Kernel and Delirium Tremens plus one cider. On top of this, there is an extensive bottled range which is detailed in a helpful menu whilst a long wine list is written out on a mirror behind the bar. The staff were very pleasant and helpful and offered the choice of straight or handled glasses. The clientele was, on the whole, quite young and trendy, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching one preening idiot order a super expensive bottle of something, only to dump the entire contents into a pint glass, yeast and all, resulting in a sludgy mess-in-a-glass which he then spent ages grimly sipping from. Overall, my impression of this place was quite favourable and I would say that I prefer it to the Craft Beer Co, although its location (roughly halfway between Brixton and Stockwell tube stations) means that a bit more effort is required to reach it. If I had a bit of time prior to a gig at the Academy, I think I’d make the ten minute walk out here to see what was on.

This is a newly opened pub, in a building that has clearly been a pub in the past. It’s very much in the modern style – bare boarded floor; solid wooden tables that have seen considerable use somewhere else; hard wooden chairs most of which are re-cycled old school chairs (and I do mean literally not figuratively). The wall on the left, where the bar counter is sited, is entirely exposed brickwork, whereas the paintwork elsewhere, both inside and outside, is tradional gastro battleship grey. Inside there’s no decor of note. But the ale selection is extensive and makes up for any deficiencies in decor. There are ten handpumps – with three of them dedicated to cider; one was temporarily not in use (the Windsor & Eton Windsor Knot had either just gone off or was not ready yet) leaving six pumps dispensing a range of ales with none of the usual suspects present. The pint of Ascot Aureole I had was in excellent nick (£3.40 a pint). There’s also an interesting range of beers on tap, including Sierra Nevada Pale Ale; a couple of Brewdog offerings; Anchor Steam Beer; Bravo Pilsner; Cannonball IPA (7.4%); and last but certainly not least, the classic Delirium Tremens (8.5% and £3.55 a half). The default beer glass seems to be the dimpled mug (that’s what I was given for my pint of Aureole), but it’s the sort of place where they would probably have branded glasses for the speciality beers. There aree daily printed menus on all the tables, featuring gastro style dishes in the region of £10 for a main course dish. There’s nothing remotely like pub grub of course. The ales, plus tap beers, puts this puts this pub several notches above the run of the mill gastro-pub. A number of the tables had reserved signs on them – presumably for the evening as it was nearly empty on Saturday afternoon. Despite the minimalist gastro aspirations, this one is definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area.