The Brewery Tap, Buntingford

Steve of N21 left this review about The Brewery Tap

This is a very decent village pub and was the tap pub for the long defunct Rayments Brewery ( that was finally closed by Greene King in 1987), hence the name. It was very heart warming to find it still operating as such a good pub some forty years since I used to visit when Rayments was in operation.
Sitting on one of the main road junctions in the village, internally it is now largely one open plan space that wraps around the central L shaped bar, with a comfortable lounge section with assorted sofa seating to the right of the bar and then a more dining like area to the left that looks like it could have been a separate room back in the day.
But one of the key selling points for the Brewery Tap is the outside space, which starts with a small patio area with tables and umbrellas that you enter into either from the back of the pub or the car park. And then beyond this is a much larger area which initially houses a couple of those large glass igloo installations that pubs scrambled to put in during those dark outside only Covid pandemic days, a very large section to the right with a generous amount of comfortable garden furniture underneath a fixed open sided roof covering, and then an equally large area laid to grass to the left that contains further bench seating and a sizeable kiddies play area.
I was pleasantly surprised to find three ales available from the four pumps on the bar top and although the days when these would have been dispensing Rayments BBA bitter are long gone, the pub is now independently owned and the available choice of Adnams Ghost Ship and Southwold Bitter alongside St Austell Tribute was a lot more interesting than the insipid Greene King brews that used to dominate the bar. We went for the two Adnams brews and they were both on fine form.
As you would expect from an isolated village pub there is a focus on food which, alongside a good looking standard pub grub menu which also include a decent selection of small plates ,there is also a very decent stone fired pizza menu, that are cooked on a pizza over housed in a small outhouse on the outside patio area.
This is a very good village pub and I hope it will remain so.

On 26^th May 2025 - rating: 7
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