Euston Tap, NW1

Incredibly, I've never been here before. Too loyal to the Doric Arch - the closest pub I have ever had to having my own seat :-) Converted lodge from the original station. Lovely beer garden - if you can forget you are in the middle of a bus station. There's actually a rather cute upstairs room (where the loos are) if you look hard enough. Chalk board with around 20 keg taps on. Some nice discoveries, with kernal (£7.20) and a cheaper Kelham Island Pale Ride on. GBG reguly, inlcuding 2024.

Great ale range and at very fair London prices. £4 a pint was the cheapest I found all weekend. They have made the most of not much at all here, it’s basically a well-stocked beer stand for a swift one before your train. Not one for a session unless you love breathing in fumes and watching stressed out commuters rushing around. Hard to rate but I’m certainly glad it exists.

I've never really warmed to this place - the building is interesting rather than comfortable, and the walk up the cramped spiral staircase to the awkward toilet is enough to suggest that postponing your recycling moment would be a better idea, unless (like me on my recent trip to London) you actually arrive with a pretty desperate bladder. And then when it comes to restocking, I find the bar unattractive and the way the beers are displayed and served also doesn't help. On this occasion I deliberately went for a beer that I had drunk at the tap for the Five Points Brewery, the Pemberton Arms in Hackney. I had felt that it was a poor beer but wanted to find out if that had been because it was treated casually there. The same beer here, Five Points Best, was superb, and when I had finished drinking it at an outside table I went back in and complemented the bar staff. I managed to do it in such a way that it seemed like I was complaining about the beer, so that when I ended up telling them how the beer was so much better than it was at the brewery's own tap they were doubly chuffed, as I had anticipated.