Imperial, Hastings

Pub SignMan left this review about Imperial

This is quite a compact and cosy pub on the main road heading North out of the town centre, operating as a brewpub and pizza joint. Steps take you up into a narrow, bare boarded room with the servery down the right-hand wall, preceded by a large pizza oven and food serving space. Hard bench seating with red padding and wooden back boards fills the limited front area next to the pizza oven, and similar seats have been formed into booths down the left side of room. The bar has a traditional counter and typical craft beer, tap lined bar back with beer boards above. One unusual feature is the row of handpulls seemingly made from random bits of tube mounted behind the swan necks, so it was very odd watching them pour pints on these contraptions. A couple more tables are set up at the rear, beyond and old dividing wall that would once have made this a two bar space. The seats are mostly padded kegs back here and some pub and brewery merch has been hung on the bare brick wall to the rear. Otherwise, the décor is all moody, arty photography and bits of brewery branding, and a selection of decent indie tunes played in the background throughout my stay.
The pub is run by Brewing Brothers and two of their beers were available on cask - Coffee Stout and one that I failed to note the name of - with Only With Love Yacht Rock rounding out the cask range. Eight keg options were available on tap, around half of which were home brews. The barman was very nice and explained that the brewing equipment visible beyond the bar has been usurped by a new venture in a nearby industrial estate and that a second bar has now opened down on the seafront, which I unfortunately didn’t have time to check out before my train home. The Coffee Stout delivered on the coffee flavour, but I found it was past its prime and was a bit disappointed that they weren’t keeping their own beer to particularly high standards. I bumped into some other crawlers later in the day, who told me they had tried the other cask Brewing Brothers beer and found that in poor nick too.
I quite like the set up here, despite it feeling a little cramped in places, and felt it would make a nice spot to enjoy some well-kept ale, so it was a great disappointment that the beer I sampled was well below par. I hope they can find a way to address their quality control issues, as the staff all seemed very nice and there’s real potential here, but it was the duff pub of the day for me unfortunately.

Date of visit - 21st December 2024

On 28^th March 2025 - rating: 5
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