Ghost Whale, SW9

90% bottle shop (as in 90% cans), but also with six craft keg taps on where the bar-back would be be if the counter spanned the full width of the room... I found five, quite interesting, beers available, and went for Orbit's Jolly Saint Nico Christmas Kölsh (£3.70, schooner) in the end. Seating is limited; just one high central table and a few stools by the front window ledges.

Strange place. No bar as such, just craft fonts in the back wall. Fridges full of bottled ales and cans. Possible revisit.

Just down the road from Brixton station, this is a small bottle shop in a former hairdresser’s salon, with a few seats for in-store drinking. The premises has a single, square-shaped room with a nice parquet floor, large windows to the front and shelves and fridges jammed full of craft bottles and cans down either side. Seating is extremely limited, as you might expect, with some drinking ledges under the front windows supported by a few high stools and then a large, high table in the middle of the room which has a few more stools dotted around it. To the rear there is a small servery with a few keg taps on the back wall and a board to one side which lists the draught options. A doorway with a neon sign depicting a whale’s tail can be found on the back wall, leading to the toilet facilities. The large table in the middle of the room had a few clipboards on it which detailed the new stock that was available at the time of my visit, presumably so regular visitors can keep track of any new arrivals they may wish to sample. There was also a beer advent calendar box which was for sale at a mere £95. Decent 80’s new wave tunes played throughout my stay and the crowd was a mix of beer geeks and enthusiastic couples on my Sunday night visit. The four keg taps were offering beers I’d never heard of, so it was a bit of a stab in the dark when I opted for Pizza Port Ponto SIPA at a whacking £4.50 for half a pint (and that was on of the cheaper options). Obviously any of the bottles on the shelves or in the fridges are fair game too and the friendly barmaid helped a few folk with the difficult decision making process. As this kind of bottle shop goes, I thought this wasn’t a bad place and it certainly has plenty to keep even the most avid beer connoisseur interested. However, the prohibitive prices were a big off-putting factor for me – I don’t see why a cheaper local beer couldn’t be added to the draught range for example – so I’m more likely to head to Craft Beer Co or London Beer Lab for my Brixton craft beer fix in the future.

Another day another bottle shop.Good selection of beers to drink in and 3 or 4 keg beers.(lost my notes).Looks like they have added a beer garden to the rear since I was last there.Found it slightly more expensive than other bottle shops. Great minimalist neon sign.Friendly,helpfull,knowledgeable staff.Had a tin of Juicebox.Nice. ( I met a barman once who said he was going to start his own microbrewery called Ghost Whale.Maybe its the same guy and he realised that selling beer is more profitable than brewing it.)