Beer Shop, St Albans Central, St. Albans

As noted below this is one of those micropubs that is little more than an off licence. There are some stools by some of the shelves but if they are in use it must just obstruct people searching for off sales. The makeshift set up of a few casks by the window is still there and provided welcome seating. On my early Saturday afternoon visit I was the only one not getting take outs. The beer is served on the far right from taps coming out of the wall of I assume a cooled cellar. I think there was around seven but it was a bit congested with people getting off sales. They can't afford to get too busy here as they don't even have a proper glass washer. I noted two from Redwillow, a Siren beer and the Arbor Why Kick a Moo Cow (£4.10) which was expensive for a micropub and somewhat cloudy but tasted good. I had a brief glance at the bottles and a litre bottle of 10.7% Imperial Stout caught my eye but it was priced at twelve quid! With the cloudy expensive pint I wouldn't rate this higher than five as a pub but as an off licence I would rate it at nine. I wouldn't take the average as it is 90% off licence in my book so I'll leave it as unrated.

A specialist beer offy with on-sales license which opened in 2013. There is no proper seating area or anything like that (though there are a small number of beer barrels with cushions by the door). No drinks allowed outside either, though they are planning on getting a licence to allow this. Five on, coming out of a tiled wall; Willow Shameless, Tring Kotuku, Hamerton N7, Leighton Buzzard Centennial and Northern Monk True North (good). Heat-based scratchings and biltong available. Take outs are obviously available. Tough to rate as it isn’t a pub in the regular sense (and barely even a micropub) but the selection of beers make it worth taking in when quiet.

We managed to grab a quick half each, when diverting from our main PG crawl route and what a decent little wildcard visit it turned out to be. I went for the Tring Brewery Kotuku, which was a fresh and flavoursome beer. The owner also informed us that, you can try any bottled beer for a 50p corkage cost. A great place, so defo worth a visit.