Needle & Pin, Loughborough

I can only echo the positive comments below and completely agree with Mr. Fs view on the Thornbridge/Burning Sky West Coast IPA. Just exceptional. There are very places that would keep me from a nearby Organ Grinder but this is one of them and Loughborough is lucky to have them both.

A splendid GBG2025 listed micro, a single room downstairs with a larger room up the stairs immediately in front of the door. The brick built counter is further back on the left, four pulls there and oddly if you’re a micro absolutist a quad T-Bar although with some interesting beers. The cask selection is equally odd with beers from very much smaller breweries, the clips being hand written for some. An interesting selection of mainly Belgian beers are in one fridge and more interesting craft ones in a second opposite the counter, a few more are on the shelves above. There are separate gents and ladies at the back. The decor is music related but not in an obvious way.

Inconspicuous (to the extent that I walked right past it initially) micro-pub in a terrace of shops with the much-more-obvious Swan in The Rushes at the far end. Anyway, once inside, you find four small, tall tables with a single high bench seating along the side wall and the compact bar and a couple of fridges for bottles and cans up a couple of steps. Also has an upstairs room (not visited). With three of the four handpumps in service, the choice was Fat Cat Norwich Bitter, Meet the Meek mild from Pentrich (£4.20) and Duration's G'Day.

This is a compact shop converted micro pub with an excellent town centre location, handy for the shopping centre. The ground floor room has a brick tile floor through a fairly narrow space, made even more narrow by the positioning of a staircase along the right-hand wall. Seating is limited to a small row of high tables, but with no stools in support, which means everyone sits along the same side of the table, all facing the same direction. The bar is located in the slightly raised rear part of the room, with a tidy brick counter and basic bar back squeezed into the left-hand corner. A few fridges stand opposite and are full of bottles and cans should the cask range not be to your liking. The walls have been decorated with various railway themed items, despite the station being quite some distance from this part of town, whilst each table has an old spirit bottle on it, with fairy lights inside. The aforementioned staircase leads up to an overspill seating area on the first floor, but there was no need to explore with only one other couple in on my early evening visit. A sign outside explained that the upper room can also be hired for private functions of between 18-30 people and that the room has a record player with over 400 albums to pick from. On the bar, three of the four handpulls were in action, dispensing North Riding Phoenix Mild and Walker Down The Aisle, plus Thornbridge Lord Marples. I was served by a very friendly barmaid who took time to chat to all her customers, and the Mild was in excellent condition. This place had a bit of character to it, which isn’t always a given for such shop converted operations. It felt a bit odd having everyone face the same direction, but perhaps the upper room would have had a better layout. I liked this one and thought it was a sound addition to the town’s pub scene.