Big Penny Social, E17

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Steve of N21 left this review about Truman’s Social Club

The marketing person’s who are currently trying to convince everyone that the current six brewery taprooms in industrial estates off the Blackhorse Lane constitutes a “Beer Mile” are clearly men as it is about 0.4 of a mile between the Hackney Brewery High Hill and the Truman’s Social Club, and this one will either be the first or last one depending if you are going North or South. Perhaps it refers more to the fact that unlike Bermondsey, where you fall out of one railway arch into the next, some of these breweries are well hidden in the various industrial estates and you could easily walk the additional 0.6 miles trying to find them. So the recommendation is to go armed with the exact address and post code.
We did the Truman’s Social Club first as we visited on a Friday and it is one of the few open all week and open from 12 noon from Wednesday onwards.
You can’t really call this place a tap room it’s more a tap barn, with Truman’s own marketing blurb referring to it as a Beer Hall. Internally it’s two enormous high ceiling spaces with the first one housing the bar and the kitchen and mainly bench seating and then a second one to the right with a large amount of table seating. Then beyond the main room is a large external outside seating space which I would imagine would be the best area to go for if you are blessed with a better weather day than we had.
There is a couple of large brew tanks in the main bar space, but these looked more for show as the main brewery is in the industrial unit next door.
The bar has the usual tiled tap wall at the back with 14 taps on it and large chalk boards on the stone wall above telling you what’s on them, then a front counter with two banks of four of further keg taps and then three ale hand pump. Sadly the ale pumps were all unused and there were none of the Truman’s Ale range on. In fact it proved difficult to find any Truman’s non lager products as most of the taps had guests from other breweries such as Moor Beer, Siren, Mondo and Orbit. Fortunately there was the Truman Social Porter which was a decent dark craft ale.
We got the impression that this venue is used more for dining during the day as when we rucked up at 3.30 pm on a Friday afternoon we were seriously outnumbered by proms and buggies and I am guessing it changes over to beer consumption later in the evening or at the weekends when the rest of the Blackhorse Lane tap rooms are open.
Apparently the available space can seat over six hundred people and frankly as it’s so big, it really needs a couple of hundred of these to be in to give the place any atmosphere, and on our visit I found it all a bit flat and soulless. But I can imagine it’s a different story on a glorious summer weekend.

On 11^th September 2021 - rating: 6
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