The Black Dog Beer House, Brentford

This is a cosy, street corner pub, tucked away down the quiet backstreets of Brentford. The pub has a simple layout, with the entrance taking you into a spacious, bare boarded, main seating area, whilst the bar is all the way over to the left, where the room extends a short distance along the front wall. The main space has a typical alehouse feel to it, with a dark colour scheme and plenty of exposed brick pairing well under muted lighting on my evening visit, to create quite a warm, cosy feel despite the spaciousness of the room. Banquette seating extends around much of the perimeter, whilst decent quality tables and chairs fill the rest of the room. There’s a nice brick fireplace on the back wall with an oval-shaped mirror above and some nice potted plants across the rustic looking mantlepiece. The servery has a pleasant dark wood counter and bare brick bar back, with large beer boards on the back wall, although I didn’t find these all that helpful, as I couldn’t find half of the beers I could see on the pumps in front of me, anywhere on the board. There’s more seating to the front left, including some nice, fixed benches along the end wall, although this space felt a little detached from the buzz of the main seating area. There are lots of potted plants around the room, that brighten things up a little, as do the vases of flowers on each table, whilst the walls have been decorated with plenty of obscure bits of breweriana. An easy-listening soundtrack played in the background, but was lost, more often than not, under the general hubbub from a good Saturday night crowd. On handpull, I noted Hop Back Fuggle and Citra, Downtown Solstice and Hand Brew Otto Dry Stout, but I could barely figure out what the extensive keg range comprised of, due to the difficult to decipher beer boards. A very friendly barmaid poured me a good pint of the Otto Dry Stout and only charged me a mere £3.00 for it – apparently, they had quite a bit in stock and had reduced the price to clear it out. This is a cracking little pub with what must be the most interesting ale range in Brentford, making it a must-do if you’re in the area. I thought it worked really well as a contemporary alehouse and would appeal as much to the traditionalist as it would younger beer enthusiasts. I’ve no idea why it took me so long to check this place out – it’ll be my first port of call the next time I’m out this way.

This old Victorian pub has had its innards throughly eviscerated at some stage, leaving a thoroughly modernised pub. As you would expect, it's now bare-boarded, with exposed brickwork around the place, but mainly on the chimney breasts. WhatPub suggests that this might be a Nowell Parr pub; it certainly could be, as the batens on the ceiling are one of his trademarks, and although I didn't spot any of his trademark Tudor arches, these could have been lost during the stripping out of the pub. But what has survived are the lovely arched transom windows on the Albany Place side with their floral themed coloured glazing. Like all pubs of this vintage, this pub would have been multi-roomed - indeed a couple of closed in and unused doors are also on the Albany Place side, indicating the erstwhile presence af another room and a likely jug & bottle bar. A fire was on the go when we arrived at early evening on a Wednesday, and some tables were reserved for later in the evening. An area on the left had all the tables laid for diners. But where this pub really scores highly is in the extensive real ale selection. I think there were seven or eight on, with none from the ranks of the usual suspects, and included a rather good stout. At least, a couple of pints of it convinced me of its quality - I wished I had made a note of its name, but these sort of oversights sometimes occur when one reaches pub number eight of the day! Ths pub was doing a good trade on Wednesday evening. and is definitely one to seek out if in Brentford.