Brewhouse & Kitchen, Milton Keynes

Close to the town’s main shopping centres, Campbell Park and the Milton Keynes Theatre, this is a smart new-build brewpub from the ever-expanding chain. The bar is in the left-hand, raised part of the pub and has limited seating and a bit of a disjointed feel to it, thanks to various pillars and the steps down to the main part of the pub. There’s an open kitchen just past the end of the servery, with a white tile surround and some standard tables and chairs opposite, whilst comfier options can be found in a small lounge area just around the corner. The stairs lead down to a circular lower-level space with red velvet banquettes and button backed bench booths around much of the perimeter, an open space full of high tables and stools to one side and the brewery equipment taking pride of place across two levels in the very centre of the room. Interestingly, the brew plant had a sign on it which read ‘The Upside-Down Brewery’, which I could only assume was a reference to the way in which they have configured the brewing apparatus. The room has a bare boarded floor, large windows to one side looking out to a nice patio garden, a large malt store cupboard, over-sized cog-wheels and other such industrial-themed items on the walls and a really great feature wall made from curved sections of old wooden barrels. Images of hops have been painted around the upper part of the walls, a ‘Periodic Table of Beer’ was painted elsewhere and the improbably high ceiling had light fixtures made from old cable spools. It all comes together nicely to create a comfortable, beer and brewing themed room that I really enjoyed spending time in. There was also a TV screen showing a subtitled daytime TV programme whilst pop music quietly played in the background and a collection of board games for punters to choose from. As with other such branches of this chain, the cask ale is all home-brewed, with Colossus, 12th Street, Leaping Man and Webber’s Stone the four beers available on this visit. I found the beer here to be in fine condition, whilst the food we sampled was tasty and reasonably priced. The staff were also very friendly and helpful, although one waitress had a weird habit of starting to address us from some distance away as she approached the table, resulting in a few moments of confusion as we’d not realised she’d been talking to us! I really liked this place and thought they’d done a great job of creating a characterful new-build pub with lots of interesting content, plenty of comfortable seating and some good home brewed beer. Milton Keynes doesn’t really do independent pubs in its town centre, but if you’re going to drink in a chain, you could certainly do a lot worse than this fine venue.

Called into this bar on our visit to Buckinghamshires 2019 Good Beer Guide pubs around the Milton Keynes area, and was impressed with this bar. Opened this year in the former Lloyds No 1 JDW it now brews it's own beers instead of bringing them in from other B & K brewhouses as they now have thier own brewer who was formerly from Otter brewery. The 4 permanent cask ales are 12th Street, Leaping Man, Webber's Vision and Colossus. They also have keg lines and bottles and cans. We enjoyed our visit and the Leaping Man was fine.

This is a smallish Lloyds bar set in the theatre area of Milton Keynes. Inside the bar area is fairly small not that different to the size of a normal back street pub but away from the bar is a sunken circular area with a glitter ball, lights and on my morning visit filled with tables and chairs. There's a lot of wood used to adorn this bar so for the first time that day it felt like I wasn't drinking in a greenhouse. As a Lloyds No 1 this doesn't have the emphasis on the real ales that a normal JDW has. There were just four pumps with GK Ruddles & Abbot, Doom Bore and the American Wadworth's Mermaid's Red. i went for the American Red (£2.30) which surprised me by being in immaculate condition.