ReviewOpened in 2013, this is a small first floor tap room for the Briarbank Brewery, who operate from the ground floor of the same building. I arrived to find a beer festival in full swing, with a large marquee in the car park set up to sell six Briarbank beers and a lot of local guest ales. The main bar is accessed by a staircase which is reached by passing the brewing plant. The stairs are lined with lots of photos of local scenes and emerge into a compact but nicely put together room with a quarry stone floor and the servery down the right hand wall. The bar counter has some nice woodwork and is supported by some pillars which have been sunk into old beer barrels at either end of the counter. All of the pumps and keg taps are located on the bar back, with the taps protruding from some nice wooden panels. There is a padded banquette under a large Briarbank Brewery mirror at the top of the staircase and a row of high tables and stools run down the left hand wall in a cramped area opposite the bar. Most of these high tables are rather subtly created from large beer barrels as well. To the rear there is more banquette and standard seating under a couple of huge, side-by-side brewery mirrors and more black and white photos of old Ipswich pubs. A TV screen was visible behind the bar, but it remained switched off in favour of background music which easily got lost under the hubbub created by a good afternoon crowd. CAMRA's Whatpub website mentions that a membership scheme applies, but there appeared to be no such restrictions to entry and I wasn't asked to provide any kind of ID.
Aside from the festival ales, the bar had five Briarbank beers on cask - Ipswich Pale Ale, Samuel Harvey VC, Grand Slammer, Brian Bitter and Dark Knight - plus seven other Briarbank brews on keg dispense. I tried the Dark Knight and it was in great shape. The staff were all very pleasant and chatted about the success the bar had experienced and their efforts to further promote it.
I thought this was a really nice brewery bar - certainly a massive improvement on drinking in the industrial units associated with London microbreweries - and clearly a good deal of thought has been put into the presentation of a bar to showcase their own ales. This is a great place to sample some good brewery-fresh beer and makes a fine double header with the Lord Nelson over the road.
