Twisted Barrel Tap House, Gosford Green, Coventry

The area to the east of Coventry city centre seems to be host to quite a mixed community and this has resulted in the creation of Fargo Village - a vibrant community-focused retail park of sorts, full of converted industrial buildings and old shipping containers playing host to a variety of local businesses. The village's highlight, for the beer drinker at least, is this bar showcasing beer from the on site Twisted Barrel Brewery. The bar essentially comprises the front section of a concrete floored unit with the brewery tucked away at the back and a long bar counter along the right hand wall. Seating is limited to a few tables and chairs under the front windows and in the space beyond the servery, whilst a rickety looking series of benches run down the left hand wall opposite the bar. As with most places of this nature, the decor is pretty industrial - it being an old industrial unit makes that a given I suppose - but things have been livened up a bit by having the brewery's logo painted on the floor and some colourful street art-style murals that echo those found around the whole village, on the walls. A large screen to the rear of the room was showing the climax to this year's Six Nations tournament which my Dad was desperately trying to avoid so he could watch it when he got home without knowing the result, thereby forcing us to take up one of the picnic benches outside. Large blackboards behind the servery listed the entire beer range, providing plenty of detail about the style, strength and price of the beers available as well as covering those likely to be coming on soon. In all I counted twelve Twisted Barrel beers plus four guests and a cider option, with several more due on or temporarily unavailable. It was pretty tricky trying to make a choice from such a range of previously unencountered brews, but the boards certainly helped us make an informed decision and I ended up with a pretty good pint of the God's Twisted Sister Stout whilst my Dad enjoyed an excellent Beast of the Midlands Mild. Beers are dispensed through keg taps but CAMRA advise that the key keg method used by the brewery qualifies their beer as real ale and in fact the bar has made it into the 2017 Good Beer Guide. Finings have been eschewed in order to make the beer vegan friendly, which might explain why some of the pints we saw looked a little cloudy. I really liked the feel of this enterprising little retail district and thought this brewery bar was a seamless addition. The brewery seems to have plenty of interesting ideas and evidently knows how to brew tasty beer which goes quite some way to cover for the obvious disadvantages of drinking in this kind of environment. I'm glad we made the short walk out here and I will certainly be keeping my eye out for Twisted Barrel beers on my travels.