Bison Beer Crafthouse, Hove

Bison Beer was the busiest of the bars along this stretch during a recent Saturday afternoon crawl of the area. There’s seating under an awning out the front and inside normal tables and chairs run up the centre between a beer shelf up the right and beer fridges up the left. Steps at the rear climb to the serving counter across the rear wall where six craft keg products from Bison and local breweries were available. I went for their own APA which was a decent drop. The service was polite and the background music was upbeat, so all-in-all this was a good visit and I’d have no problem returning, even though there is no cask.

Surprisingly few taps (as in just 6) at this reasonably long-standing Bison outlet. The packed fridges, however, up the choices into the hundreds. With the doors opened out to the small terrace out the front, it's a good example of the modern craft beer bar, though a couple more draft options would be a welcome addition.

Facebook page of Bison Beer Crafthouse - www.facebook.com

Facebook page of Bison Beer Crafthouse - www.facebook.com

Located on the main road from Brighton through the centre of Hove, this is a small craft beer bar run by the local Bison Beer brewery and bottleshop. The bar doesn’t look out of place along this road lined with numerous pubs, restaurants and wine bars, occupying a compact, narrow premises that looks like it might be a shop conversion. You enter via a set of steps to a small front patio overlooking a busy and noisy road with the wind howling around, which made for a pretty wild, raucous place to enjoy a quick pint. A few rickety canteen tables and benches have been set up here and a fixed bench runs around the entire perimeter. Foldable doors at the front of the bar were opened out when I arrived, leading me into the small single room interior with dark floorboards, three high tables with bar stools down the left-hand side and a drinking ledge with more high stools to the right. The left-hand wall has a series of fridges built into large shelving units along its length, all obviously stocked with many bottles and cans, whilst the shelves were strewn with fairy lights and decorated with old beer bottles, cans and other such beer-themed items. The servery is to the rear of the room, up a couple more steps, and has a basic counter in front of a pump clip lined bar back. A couple of TV screens, including one above the bar, were being used to helpfully list the full draught range. Despite having the doors wide open at the front, the room felt like it was dimly lit and this helped create quite a nice, almost cosy feel, although whether I would have felt that perched on one of the high stools, I couldn’t say. The staff didn’t make much effort to ensure track and trace was adhered to and tables were a free for all, which caused me a problem when the final remaining table was snapped up by someone whilst I was ordering at the bar – a problem thankfully resolved by an outdoor table coming free by the time I’d made it back outside. There were six craft keg beers available along with the aforementioned vast bottle and can selection, and I picked the Lost & Grounded I Wanna Go To The Sun, which turned out to be a nice, hop-forward brew that went down very well as I sat on the patio hoping the gale force wind wouldn’t topple my pint before I’d finished it. In some respects, this place is a bit of a craft beer bar-by-numbers, but somehow there was something about it that made me feel very content and settled here. If you’re in the area and looking for some interesting craft beers to work your way through, this place is ideal, and I thought it was a nice way of adding something a bit different to my crawl of predominantly cask-led pubs.

A Craft Bar and Bottle Shop although cans outnumbered the bottles greatly in the fridges on one side wall of the square room. Simple seating both inside and out on the frontage, the bar servery is at the end of the room on a raised area, there are six keg taps,my Burnt Mill Lemondrop Fog was a decent drop. A very busy place.