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Detail Pages
Craft & Cleaver, St Albans Central, St. Albans
St. Albans
AL3 5BU
Pub Type
Punch TavernsReviews (Current Rating Average: 6½ of 10) see review guidelines
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Bucking Fastard left this review about Craft & Cleaver
A former failed pub revived as a craft keg outlet,but with a wait to be seated policy at the front door.I enquired if only drinking was allowed and was shown to a free table. It's a triumph of style over substance,with neon signs,heavy wood topped tables,some high with bench seating to the right,while to the left has the feel of a dining area.On my visit this was full of buggies with babies everywhere and their young professional parents enjoying a meal and a variety of drinks and coffees but very little beer.An NCT get together ? Drinking in a creche is not my idea of fun.And the muzak was mindless.
There are 10 craft keg taps but the style range seemed limited to lots of hazy ,high strength IPA's. My two thirds of Lost & Found Box of Dogs DDH was not very mermorable.
IMHO craft keg is becoming boring,so much tastes the same and this pub offers nothing to excite. Leave it to the young and impessionable .
On 8th January 2023
- rating: 5
[User has posted 2727 recommendations about 2727 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Clive Thompson left this review about Craft & Cleaver
A decent craft beer place with 4 regulars and 6 changing taps. They have some interesting stuff here, including a beer from Three Hills in Northamptonshire, which is a brand new brewery to me. Expensive in that four halves set me back £14, but they were all 6%+. Friendly and efficient service from both staff members. I'd come here again if looking for something different.
On 26th January 2022
- rating: 6
[User has posted 777 recommendations about 697 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Pub SignMan left this review about Craft & Cleaver
This pub has gone through numerous names and makeovers in recent times, currently finding itself set up as an in vogue craft beer bar. The main bar has exposed floorboards and a rough hewn, pewter topped bar counter along the back wall. Any signs of the pub’s history or character have been pretty much erased, with a grim scaffold bar back symptomatic of the situation. The nicest area for drinkers seems to be to the left where a mix of sofas, high stools and standard chairs serve a range of tables with a small fireplace on the end wall which weirdly had bottles of Adnams Copper House gin stacked on the mantle. Board games stacked in the rear window and a pump clip collection snaking its way from the wall across the ceiling added to the feel of somewhere suited to settling down with a pint, which was less easily said by the right hand side of the room. Here, a lone banquette opposite the serves tables set for dining and beyond this, past a partitioning wall with an open, arched window, there is a space with a much longer banquette under bare brick walls with very little in the way of character. Clean, pastel shades predominate, but the decor is so minimal that it all feels sterile and difficult to love. There must’ve been some sort of garden out the back, as most customers vanished around the far end of the bar, never to be seen again.
The pub doesn’t serve cask ale, but does instead offer a great range of small batch keg products from the likes of Weird Beard, Camden, Brooklyn and loads that I’d never heard of. I tried Mad Squirrel De La Creme Milk Stout, which set me back £2.60 for a half and was quite a sweet brew that didn’t really appeal to me. The staff were a bit stand-offish with pretty much all their customers and I just sat in the left hand part of the pub on my own, sipping my beer thinking about the next pub on my list.
I didn’t really get much from this place, but it’s a reasonable enough compromise between a modern craft bar situated inside a traditional pub. I’d come here on occasion if I lived locally, as it’s always good to dip into the craft world now and then, but the town has loads of great, characterful pubs with bags of atmosphere that beat this place hands down.
On 13th November 2017
- rating: 5
[User has posted 3114 recommendations about 3114 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Just a quick pint, then I'm off left this review about Craft & Cleaver
Made-over in a very modern style, with background music to match. Offers food from its in-house smokehouse. Ten craft keg taps on the counter (including seven regulars and three guests) plus three handpumps rather hidden away at the back of the bar offering Waen Pamplemouse (£4.30), Great Heck Stormin' Norman and a cider from Kent.
On 23rd August 2015
- rating: 7
[User has posted 8117 recommendations about 8117 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Moby Duck left this review about Craft & Cleaver
Nice modern pub/bar,fairly spartanly furnished with bare wooden flooring throughout.A good choice of craft keg beers along with three cask beers,I went for the Mad Squirrel Milk Stout which turned out to be excellent. A good buzz here ,I liked it very much.
On 28th July 2015
- rating: 8
[User has posted 1872 recommendations about 1845 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
john gray left this review about Craft & Cleaver
Smart ,modern ,clean and fresh looking.One large room.Too many hard surfaces cause voices to carry and I could hear others conversation across the room.About 10 keg beers,good bottle selection and 3 cask beers on a blackboard behind the bar.Red Sqirrel-mister squirrel,Liverpool Craft -American red and my very good Marble -earl grey ipa.Good pub for the young'uns
On 20th June 2015
- rating: 7
[User has posted 1023 recommendations about 1009 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Will Larter left this review about Craft & Cleaver
Due to reopen as Craft & Cleaver on Friday, 29th May 2015, according to their Facebook page.
On 26th May 2015
- no rating submitted
[User has posted 3745 recommendations about 3482 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Clive Thompson left this review about Bar 62
Five or six years ago this was a proper pub called the Merry Minstrel. Then they ripped the guts out of it, moved in a load of sofas, changed the name and doubled the prices. To be fair it has survived as a bar and has had both high and low points over the years.
On 30th January 2010
- rating: 4
[User has posted 777 recommendations about 697 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
claire walker left this review about Bar 62
I was the manager of this pub in the 1993 years and later ran the harrow would love to hear from any regulars
On 30th March 2005
- no rating submitted
[User has posted 2 recommendations about 2 pubs]