User name:

Password:

Login


Sign in with Facebook


Not already a member?
Join our community and - Rate & review pubs - Upload pictures - Add events JOIN for free NOW


Chat about:
Cambridge PuG Crawl, Friday 5th April 2024 with Mobyduck on the Pub Forum

The Anchor Tap, Horsham

Pub added by Aqualung .
16 East Street
Horsham
RH12 1HL

Return to pub summary

Reviews (Current Rating Average: 8 of 10) Add Review see review guidelines


Please Note: This review is over a year old.


Bucking Fastard left this review about The Anchor Tap

This is the pub to drink in when in Horsham if you like beer in all it's forms.It's run by the same people who own the Malt Shovel and is free of tie.The exterior is very traditional and good looking,while the small interior has fewer features save for a very large and ornate Anchor Tap mirror.It has an ale house vibe,with a wooden floor,room for vertical drinking,shelves and high stools to pitch down on and a small rear seating area.Pride of place is the large beer menu on a sidewall showing the extend of the beer choices.On my Friday lunchtime visit that meant real ale options of Marble Uppe Hela Natten (NBSS 4.5),Fallen Acorn Lady Marmalade and Firebird Azzaca with 13 keg beers and two sparkling ciders.The keg choice rotates and included two Budvar lagers,a Beak kolsch,3 pales,two strong IPA's and exotic sounding Siren Castilian Lemon & Honey Cheesecake Sour ,Beaks Coconut Porter and a Fallen Acorn 7% Frose.Needless to say there are a lot of high ABV options and some helpful tasting notes,also excellent beer knowledge behind the bar and tasters offered.
This is an absolute must visit but time your entry as it can get crowded at peak times.An emporium of beer in all its styles,you can spend a long time in here educating your tastebuds .Terrific,with one of the best craft keg offerings in the country.

On 12th March 2023 - rating: 9
[User has posted 2709 recommendations about 2709 pubs]


Please Note: This review is over a year old.


Moby Duck left this review about The Anchor Tap

Quite a small pub with a main room with the bar area at the front and a small room with extra seating to the rear. Four cask beers and a further ten craft keg beers all displayed on a board on the wall to the side of the bar. It's certainly one of the better pubs for beer choice in the town.

On 19th July 2019 - rating: 7
[User has posted 1868 recommendations about 1841 pubs]


Please Note: This review is over a year old.


Pub SignMan left this review about The Anchor Tap

Opening in February 2016 in a former tea rooms that was once the tap for the nearby Anchor Hotel, this is the third pub opened by the Dark Star Brewery. The pub occupies a small premises with what you might generously call a front and back room. Both spaces are narrow and can accommodate a minimal amount of seating, especially in the front room where the servery takes up the entire right hand wall. However, with the right amount of customers in, this can create quite a cosy environment in which to enjoy some quality beer and we certainly enjoyed settling down in the back room where there was just about enough room for us to perch around one of the four or five small tables. Decor was quite restrained throughout, although there were a few seemingly bespoke mirrors with various quirky images on them which looked pretty good.
The close conditions lend the pub the feel of a micropub and the fine beer selection certainly enhanced that impression. There were three Dark Star beers on plus a couple of guest ales and a decent selection of craft beers on tap or in bottles. I gave the Marble Pint a try and thought it was in very good shape, clearly mirroring the top quality cellarmanship of their sister pub, The Evening Star in Brighton. There was a pretty good mix of customers in on a late Sunday afternoon and a couple of dogs were lounging around under the tables in the rear room too.
This felt like a quality pub that I was unfortunately only able to enjoy for the length of time it took to have a quick pint before needing to rush back to the station. It certainly felt like this place is a great addition to the town’s pub scene and I would make this my first port of call the next time I’m back in Horsham.

On 21st August 2017 - rating: 8
[User has posted 3102 recommendations about 3102 pubs]


Please Note: This review is over a year old.


Aqualung . left this review about Anchor Tap

Dark Star's latest pub opened on the 12th February 2016 and restored the name previously held when it was a King & Barnes house. I remember that pub from my earliest visits to Horsham when it was a small and very basic town pub. There seems to be some doubt as to when it closed but I reckon it was somewhere between the late seventies and mid eighties. It certainly wasn't the mid nineties as quoted on What Pub as I have a K&B passport with signatures from the early nineties and it doesn't appear in that.
Externally it looks much the same, a red brick building on the corner of the now pedestrianised East Street and an alleyway.
Inside it bears no resemblance to the old pub being a long narrow bright and airy single room with the bar on the right and a tiled floor. There are a few bar stools and rather oddly some formica topped tables. Is this a joke or some sort of artistic statement? The toilets here consist of two single cubicles one Male and one Female. This led me to wonder if the old K&B pub had outside toilets which have since been demolished. I certainly don't remember the side alley actually leading anywhere as it now seems to.
The bar has six hand pumps and ten keg taps at the back. On cask were Dark Star Hophead, Partridge Best, American Pale & Sunburst, Great Heck Voodoo Mild and Crouch Vale Mosaic. The keg options included a non-mainstream low ABV cider, a non-mainstream lager and four Dark Star offerings. Happily there are no dispensers at all apart from the sixteen mentioned which are all listed with prices on a blackboard behind the bar. There are no optics either but there are some bottles of spirits on shelves above the bar. I assume they must do some sort of wine but I didn't spot it. I tried the Sunburst (£3.70) and APA (£3.65) before ending with the keg Revelation (£4.50 I think) which I had also tried in the town Spoons before this opened at midday. All were excellent but I have to say that keg Revelation is nowhere near as good as cask and was no better here than at the Spoons.
It's more of a bar than a pub but is also almost a micropub only they did have a music soundtrack playing and there is nothing to indicate that Dark Star even claim it to be one. My only worry with it is the preponderance of keg offerings.

On 15th May 2016 - rating: 8
[User has posted 2143 recommendations about 2143 pubs]