Craft Beer Co, Aldgate, EC3

Nicely laid out inside, looks like there is room downstairs, but quiet enough at street level & nice raised tables on the roadside window. Good choice and quality of beers and not too pricey. All round a good pub

Located in the lee of a gherkin-shaped building which looms over the street this bar is located in, little has changed from previous, pre-Covid reviews. Still with 18 x keg taps and 9 x cask pumps, my visit saw five of the latter in action offering Abbeydale Pilgrim (a pumpkin-spiced ale), Monday Phantasm of the Hopera (an NEIPA), Siren Memento (a best bitter) and Vocation Naughty & Nice (a caramel cookie & chocolate stout). A place that slowly filled up with City types, the cask range wowed me, but eventually disappointed; each beer deteriorating towards the bottom half of each pint (I didn't try the Siren). Maybe most were on the keg, but my initial 'kid-in-a-sweet-shop' energy deflated to a 'cask-in-case-anyone-asks-for-it' feeling.

Craft Beer Co outlet, tucked away in the lee of the Gherkin as mentioned below, so few guesses as to who makes up a slab of the clientele and it was rammed on a weekday post-work. Relatively small inside, a single room with nice parquet flooring and a squared brass effect ceiling, alongside exposed brick and light painted wood panelling walls. Apparently there’s some extra seating downstairs but in the battery hen space I had for myself I didn’t have the ability to note it. Nine pumps with six on skewed towards Heavy Industry. My HI Red wasn't a particularly brilliant brew and wasn’t overly inspiring in the glass either (NBSS 2.5). A good barman serving who was massively overworked but correctly acknowledged when I was next. I’d be willing to give it another go, maybe on a weekend or mid-afternoon instead as I suspect I’d be a bit more effusive. 6.5

A single roomed Pub with a further seating room downstairs. The main street level room boasts Nine hand pumps and 18 craft taps, on cask aside from the house beer of Kent Pale it was a Thornbridge Takeover and my choice of Kipling was nice enough.Another good addition to the steadily growing Craft Pub Co.

This is the latest tin his chain's regularly growing stable of real ale pubs and bars. There's little to add the the previous reviewer's comprehensive review - except to say that lined oversize glasses seem to be the order of the day here, so be wary of asking for a top-up, and food seemed to be fairly limited. A chalkboard to the side of the servery advertised pies, scotch eggs and pork scratchings. When we were in early on Thursday lunchtime it was quite comfortable with the four of us bagging a table on the ground floor, but by 1.0 PM it was very busy with it becoming necessary to barge through groups of vertical drinkers to get to the gents. They were showcasing Salopian Brewery beers, with the Darwin's Origin being in particularly good nick. As stated by others, this pub is a very welcome addition to the City's meagre stock of fine ale houses.

This is the latest venture from the popular Craft Beer Co chain and their first foray into the City of London – a potentially bold step in an area where bland modern bars vastly outnumber more traditional watering holes. Part of this chain’s success though, comes from their ability to straddle the contemporary/traditional divide – something that is perhaps most notable in the equality of importance placed on both ‘craft’ keg beers and hand pulled real ales. Visiting a day or two after their opening night, I found a good row of hand pumps dispensing four beers from Fyne Ales, two from Burning Sky, one from Acorn and a house Pale Ale. Further along the bar, a long row of keg taps advertised a wide range of interesting small batch brews and each table had a Beer Menu, within which you could find all sorts of bottled goodies, albeit at somewhat inhibiting prices. I bought a pint of the Burning Sky Plateau for £3.95 and thought it was in very good shape. Both the staff and customers seemed very excited about the whole new enterprise and there was a good post-work crowd in without the place feeling desperately crowded. The pub has a fairly straightforward two-floor layout, with the main bar at ground floor level and stairs down to a basement lounge. The servery is on the rear wall of the main room, which has an interesting look that also takes on both the traditional (dark wood ceiling panels, enamel brewery signs) and contemporary (bare brick walls, undressed concrete pillars). A reasonable amount of mixed seating has been positioned around the room, but a cosier space can be found down the stairs on the left hand side. These lead you into a parquet floored lounge with more bare brick walls and some white wood panelling. The ceiling is very similar to the one upstairs, creating good continuity between the two floors, whilst the seating is mainly a mix of standard chairs and low stools with some button backed banquettes along the walls, split in places by glass partitioning screens. A few brewery mirrors have been arranged around the room in sparing fashion and there is a small nook in the rear corner with enough space for a single table, creating a nice private booth feel. Music played quietly throughout my stay but it was, for the most part, drowned out by the general chatter within. This is another very good pub from a chain that I have always found to be very reliable. With craft beer and real ale still seemingly not as popular in the Square Mile as foreign lagers and wines, one would hope that this place might kick-start a change in drinking habits and see more interesting venues open in the area over time. For now though, this might very well be the best the City has to offer for the discerning beer drinker.

The former Trident has reopened as the latest Craft Beer Co outlet, with the usual great beer selection but customers initially appear to be rather crammed into a small amount of bar space in which to enjoy them. However, it operates on at least on two levels, with the basement seating area not being overcrowded on a Tuesday evening. Little room for furniture in the street-level bar, so many people standing and quite difficult to reach the counter. Nine real ales on handpump, including the Tyne Bank Mocha Milk Stout (£4.45), plus 15 craft keg offerings.

Official site of Craft Beer Co - thecraftbeerco.com