Red Hand, N16

They dont advertise this bar to the passer by as i walked past it twice and didnt realise it was there until the Brewdog barmaid recommended it.Dark and too dingy for my liking.Part of a chain of pubs instantly recognisable to me with the super sized beer boards on the wall.Good list of keg beers.My imp stout by three chimneys was great.

Easily reached within five minutes or so from either of Dalston’s stations, this is an unusual craft beer bar catering for the area’s burgeoning hipster population. On approach, the uninviting front door and obscured windows had me wondering if the place was even open, but a quick push of the door, revealed a good-sized room with a lively post-work crowd in attendance. The room has dark floorboards, bare brick walls to the right and dark painted walls to the left, whilst the servery occupies much of the rear wall. Bench and chair seating runs down the right side of the room, with a large open space for vertical drinking next to it , broken only by a large, undressed section of wall in the middle of the room, with a ledge running around it, served by a few bar stools. To the left, there is a series of hard back bench booths that look remarkably uncomfortable and have a row of arty black and white urban scene photographs above them. The bar has a dark wood counter front with a chunky metal top. The white tiled bar back has an enormous beer board to one side, above the doorway to a smaller rear room. This is set on a slightly lower level, mainly with exposed brick walls and a good amount of overspill seating. The whole pub is quite dimly lit, which helped create quite a nice, intimate vibe on a midweek evening. Music was chuntering away in the background somewhere, but this was lost under the general chatter from the crowd. The blackboards listed around twenty craft keg lines, with beers coming from a lot of well-respected breweries such as Cloudwater, Brew York, Exhale, Rothes and Pohjala. A very nice, helpful barmaid served me a pint of Hackney Boogie Van IPA, which came in at a steep, if typical for the area, £5.80 but was very enjoyable indeed. Food is available in the form of cheese toasties. Craft beer bars are two-a-penny across the capital nowadays, but this place stood out a bit thanks to a focus on local and top tier breweries, a warm, inviting environment and good service. If you compare this to the stark, industrial stylings of the Brewdog bar over the road or the soulless Kraft Brewery a little further down the road, this stands out as a well put together bar and a good midweek crowd seemed to attest to the fact that it’s clearly doing something right. Well worth a look if you fancy some interesting craft beer.

Official site of Red Hand - www.red-hand.co.uk