BrewDog Swansea, Swansea

This is a typical Brewdog bar with the usual industrial stylings, set in a good sized venue on Swansea’s main drinking strip. A corridor leads you into the mid-section of the pub, with the main bar area opening out to the right. The servery occupies the right-hand wall whilst opposite there is a nice row of very comfy padded banquette booths. The room has smart modern floorboards, but these felt like one of the few concessions to creating a typical pub feel as elsewhere it’s all undressed ceiling, girders and pillars, metal mesh wall coverings and heavy duty lampshades – an aesthetic that has served this chain well but feels very old hat now. The bar itself also has the metal mesh on the counter front and of course there is a cinema style beer board above the long row of keg taps on the bar back, complete with the usual mathematical puzzles created by pricing everything by different measures. Fridges full of bottles and cans stand to one side, along with a display of Brewdog merchandise and from here there are folding doors to a front patio on Wind Street itself, which might be a good spot for a bit of people watching on a warm evening. Towards the rear of the pub, there’s another seating area with more banquette booths, tables and chairs and a few high tables and stools, as well as some uncomfortable looking raised banquettes. Neon signs and an impressive Welsh Dragon artwork add some colour to an otherwise quite grey room and there are stairs leading up to a mezzanine area which had a fair bit of additional seating, but I didn’t properly explore. Loud pop music was playing on a Saturday evening, which didn’t strike me as a very ‘punk’ thing to be doing. As with most of these Brewdog bars, the highlight is the service and we were greeted by a very friendly and knowledgeable barmaid who helped us figure out what we wanted from a range that included twelve Brewdog beers, five guests, a larger option and three ciders. I initially tried the Tenby Biscoffi Stout (£5.45 for two thirds) which was flavoursome but a little hard going. They were doing some sort of stout showcase and had six on in total, so we ended up staying for a mini-session during which I tried most of them with varying degrees of success. Visiting a Wind Street pub on a Saturday night is a risky proposition, but there was a modest sized crowd in, all of whom were well behaved, whilst two burly doormen ensured they didn’t let anyone looking too worse for wear in. If you’ve been to a Brewdog bar before, there won’t be too many surprises here – factory-floor stylings, no cask ale, complex pricing and top-class service are all present and correct. I felt this place was a notch up on the average Brewdog bar though and it gets bonus points for offering a more civilised drinking environment on this rough strip of cheap drinking barns. A good addition to Swansea’s pub scene.