Umbrella Cider House, Bethnal Green, E2

Please Note: This review is over a year old.

Pub SignMan left this review about Boxcar Brewery and Taproom

This is another of Bethnal Green’s railway arch based microbreweries, this time occupying couple of adjacent arches that are surprisingly wide, giving the place a relatively spacious feel compared to other similar nearby ventures. The décor remains much the same as you find elsewhere though, with a bare concrete floor, corrugated iron walls and ceiling plus some whitewashed brickwork and large front windows, all of which help to give the place quite a bright feel in contrast to some of the gloomier arches you find around the capital. The servery is to the right rear and has a basic counter and a row of taps along a plain bar back. Fridges to the right are full of bottles and cans to either drink in or takeaway. Some low metal stools and small tables offer limited seating options under the front windows as well as in a space to the rear left, beyond the end of the bar counter. Meanwhile, the front left corner has been filled with a few sofas and armchairs and a long table with desk chairs runs along the end wall here. The walls have been decorated with a few brewery commissioned art prints which add some much-needed splashes of colour to an otherwise monochrome interior. Various bits of brewing equipment including a couple of nice-looking vessels, lie around the room and a connecting passageway to the left gives you a view through to the brewery itself where the brewer could be seen in action. A very quiet soundtrack was playing in the background and there was a good stream of customers coming and going throughout my visit, including a couple of well-behaved young kids.
They had eight of their home brews on tap when I arrived and a very friendly barmaid talked me through them, made a couple of recommendations and gave me a potted history of the brewery and taproom, which apparently only opened in October 2019. I tried a beer called Amethyst Pale Ale which was a decent pint and I noted they had a good range of styles available including a stout and a mild.
This was a nice enough taproom that benefited from a relatively spacious interior and some first-class bar service. Whether they’ve done enough to make this feel like the sort of place you’d want to spend an extended period of time remains to be seen, but this struck me as a promising start to a fairly new venture and I’m sure I’ll pop back again some time.

On 15^th June 2020 - rating: 6
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