Staggeringly Good Brewery Bar, Milton, Southsea

Typical industrial estate brewery and due to planning failure on my part the place was heaving with pre-match football goers with both Pompey and Plymouth in good natured form. A few decent beers were on and given the nature of the day served in plastic glasses, a pet hate but understandable. Not sure if I'll commit to the walk back again at a quieter time.

The Staggeringly Good Brewery is a tap on an industrial estate and was the last point of call on a recent Friday crawl of the area. The beers are dispensed from the rear wall by a couple of young ladies, there is no bar to prop up against. A televisions screen to the left of the beer wall displays the available brews. I had a couple of ales which were very tasty and the Pubs Galore group I was with all seemed to rate their beers. To be honest I would have preferred to be in a proper pub so I think I will leave this place to the hip beersters in the future.

Industrial units with the main tap and brewery kit in one, another bar with distinctly odd church-like stained glass panels at the far end of another and a small seating area outside at the front. Offers craft keg beers in a range of styles (but I failed to take a note of whatever I had, although I recall it being tasty enough despite being served very cold).

A rather industrial brewery bar consisting of an outside drinking area, a large mock-Gothic hall and a tap bar. It was quite pleasant to sit outside, but not very comfortable inside. The staff were easy on the eye but rather amateurish, while the clientele are a truly mixed bag. It has more of a nightclub feel than brewery tap atmosphere, despite the presence of brewery equipment and large storage vessels, and you could be foregiven for thinking you had accidentally wandered into a Croatian bordello. The beer glasses were a bit annoying, and surprisingly for a brewery, their beers were slightly overchilled. I tried three of their dinosaur-themed beers – Staggersaurus, ThaiRanno Citrus and Dawn Stealer, which were in good condition, as you might expect. One local took umbrage at our opinions, but then he shouldn’t have been eavesdropping. Ordinarily I enjoy visiting breweries, but I don’t think I’m going to stagger back to this one, not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because their beers aren’t really to my taste.