The Real AI Taproom, E17

Official site of Trap - www.therealalcompany.co.uk

Official site of Trap - www.therealalcompany.co.uk

Part of a lively local scene but somewhat understated compared to it's neigbours,a small space inside and more seating outside, six taps with five beers and a cider. My Trap Primordial was pretty good, I don't know where the real ale part of their name comes from as there isn't any but well worth the visit as part of the local scene.

Another bar on the lively Ravenswood industrial estate, this place started out as a beer and cider distribution business before deciding to get in on the act and open a taproom back in February 2018. I visited just a few months after opening and found the place still had a very basic feel, which may well have been addressed in the intervening months, but on this occasion found a simple industrial unit with bare concrete floors and corrugated iron roof devoid of all but the most basic furnishing. It may well be that they had taken all the furniture outside to capitalise on the lovely weather, as there was only one punter inside the unit but around 50-60 sat outside, so perhaps during colder months, the benches and tables that ran in a long row outside are instead used to fill the otherwise bare room and supplement the sole high shelf with bar stools along it that offered pretty much the only indoor seating options on my visit. The room has at least been painted in bright colours, making it marginally more cheery a place to drop into than your average industrial estate bar. There is a small servery to the front right with a big, out of date beer board behind it and numerous keg taps and cider boxes stacked along the rest of the back wall. I counted six keg lines in operation along with countless ciders, but with the beer board out of action it was difficult to establish whether any of the beer available on the day was cask or not. A friendly barman talked me through the draught beer options and I ended up with a pretty good pint of something light and hoppy that I forgot to make a note of. Unusually, the place only accepts card payments. This place really felt like the most basic and functional of bars with very little charm and nothing but the prospect of some interesting beer or cider to tempt you back. It worked relatively well on a hot day drinking in the sun (albeit in an industrial estate car park), but whether it holds the same appeal on a cold November evening remains to be seen.