Queens Head, Shoreditch, E1

Official site of Queens Head - www.queensheadshoreditch.com

Official site of Queens Head - www.queensheadshoreditch.com

The Goose Island Brewpub is situated a few doors up from the Crown & Shuttle. I have always thought of Goose Island as being all about craft beers. But lo and behold, they actually had a couple of cask ales on - Goose Best & Siren Broken Dreams. Of the two guys behind the bar, one seemed fairly disinterested, whilst another was somewhat more helpful. But it wasn't too long before I was served. Seating is on bench seating, stretching back to brewing equipment at the rear. The bar is on the left-hand side near the entrance. I sat at one of the vacant tables near the entrance, but soon realised why those nearest the entrance were free. The wide open front doors were creating one hell of a draught and it wasn't the mildest of evenings. As expected, the craft beer selection was much wider than the real ales - Goose Island Goose Today's Haze, Orange Line, Hex Nut Brown, Island Haze, Shoreditch Porter, Sour Cherry & Tonka Bean Porter, Restrictor & Barley Wine 2021, Beak Hi! & Pilot Philly Cherry Sour. There was no sign of the doormen mentioned in the previous post on my Monday evening visit. Overall, I was suitably impressed by this place and may well be back if in the vicinity.

This is a nicely presented, modern brewpub from Chicago’s Goose Island Brewery, handily located close to Shoreditch High Street station. You enter to a long, main bar area with scruffy floorboards to the front and a bare concrete floor further into the room. The bar runs down the left-hand side and has a nice glazed tile counter front with a solid wood top and a tidy bar back notable for the two large conditioning tanks suspended above it. Seating is almost exclusively in the form of high tables and stools alongside aged brick wall to the right with several large arch-shaped windows along its length. The rear left wall, just beyond the end of the bar, has been covered in colourful flyers for various gigs and events around Chicago, although they all looked fake to me, so might just be marketing gimmicks. Next to this, a small hatch allows you to peek into the kitchen and on the rear wall there is a DJ booth in front of a chain curtain which bears the brewery’s logo and the area around it looked like it might possibly double up as a stage for live music. Steps to the rear left lead up into a rear room which has the feel of a dining area or perhaps a small function room, furnished with long tables and many chairs. The in-house brew plant is visible to the rear of this room. A loud, quite funky soundtrack was playing throughout my visit and the noise from the post-work crowd did its best to drown the music out. Upon leaving, I was a little surprised to find doormen operating a ‘one-in, one-out’ policy, as the bar didn’t seem to be especially crowded. I counted twelve keg taps here which dispensed two beers from the core Goose Island range plus ten from the in-house brewery, with a further Goose Island brew available from a barrel on the bar back. I was rather surprised to find two handpulls on the bar which offered a choice of Thornbridge Peveril and Marble Manchester Bitter. I took a bit of a punt on the latter, unsure as to how much turnover the cask ales get in here, but was pleased to find it was in good nick and a lot cheaper than many of the keg options. I thought this seemed like a pretty good place for Goose Island to showcase their beer and an interesting project for them to brew a few experimental recipes in the onsite plant. The presence of a couple of handpulls was also a big plus point for me and I would say this is one of the better craft beer bars in the Shoreditch area.

Smartly done up inside and out in 2018, a small fortune must have been lavished here. The interior decor is classic upmarket hipster post-industrial with stripped boards, brick walls crudely painted off-white with black stars and a load of old posters collaged. Of genuine interest is the rather fetching long curved bar featuring black and white lined tiling, as well as the brew kit at the rear. 'Merch' available but at 25 sheets for a tee and 40 for a hoodie you'd have to be a proper Shoreditch Trustafarian. Plenty of keg at the usual silly keg prices, especially so here given they brew a load of them a few feet away. However there are four cask taps, doubled up on my visit with Wild Beer Millionaire and Yeastie Boys Captain Planet which weighed in at a perhaps surprisingly OK £2.50 a half. It was excellently kept, NBSS 4. Fairly pleasant background music played on my stay. It's alright here, better than I was expecting, and certainly the ale quality helped.

Decent brew-pub, with a rectangular bar at the front and a small slightly raised seating / dining area at the back with the brew-plant behind a glass screen at the rear. Semi-modern furniture and decor (of the BrewDog variety) throughout. It looked like there were eight craft beers brewed on site, plus the regular and Midway IPAs, available from the keg taps, and two Siren guest ales - Liquid Mistress and Suspended in Olicana (£5.20) - being dispensed from the pair of handpumps at each end of the counter.