Albion Brewery Bar, Northampton

This is an excellent brewery bar close to the town centre and easily reached from the train station, operated by the latest incarnation of the Phipps Brewery. They’ve made an excellent choice of location for their new brewery and bar, occupying part of the old Ratliffe & Jeffrey's Albion Brewery - a fantastic Victorian building which lends itself perfectly to Phipps’ latest operation. The bar has a bit of a drinking hall feel to it, thanks to the spacious main room with its high gabled ceiling, raised bare boarded seating area to the front and concrete floored bar area at the back. You enter via a nice corridor with display cabinets full of old Phipps memorabilia on the walls, emerging into a characterful lobby with an amazing leaded stained glass window on the rear feature wall. Turning through the door to the left, you enter the main room, with the servery along the back wall. The bar has a nice dark wood counter and grand bar back with a nice Phipps Brewery endpiece and etched glass across the top, all of which has apparently been salvaged from former Phipps pubs, as was much of the furniture and decor. Pew and chair seating fill most of the room, with a good amount of standing room left in the area directly opposite the bar, despite the place being considerably quieter than a lot of the town’s other well regarded ale houses on this Friday evening visit. The room has been fitted with plenty of attractive dark wood panels, leaded and stained glass windows and other such period features, whilst the decor includes some amazing old etched glass mirrors, plenty of old Phipps memorabilia including a few great pub signs, and some modern blackboards that in no way detract from the pub’s overall appearance. A great 60’s soundtrack was playing away in the background and on my way out, I spotted one of those table skittles games that seem to be popular in this part of the country. The brewery can be viewed through some large windows to the left of the bar, so it was appropriate that a good selection of Phipps ales occupied the handpulls, with options on this visit comprising Single Hop Ernest, Ipa, Bison, Gold Star, Black Star, one other that I failed to note down and one that had just gone off. I tried the Single hop Ernest, which was a decent enough brew served to me by a very friendly barmaid who had a little chat with most customers on arrival. I really liked this place, which I thought was a great restoration of a beautiful old brewery building and a great way to keep the Phipps name going. It was a shame to see the pub much quieter than the likes of the nearby Malt Shovel and Pomfret Arms, as I would say this isn’t too far behind them in the pecking order and should be regarded as a must-visit for anyone crawling around Northampton.

Almost cinema like inside, a nice old building and opened up room . Brewery tap, but the beer is too warm for my personal taste. Nice place though