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Image posted by paulof horsham
Submitted on Tuesday, 31st August 2021
With picture contributions to 4602 other pubs
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Detail Pages
Small Beer, Crouch End, N8
N8
N8 8PT
Served areas
Reviews of Small Beer (Average Rating: 5 of 10) see review guidelines
Blue Scrumpy left this review about Small Beer
Having last visited Crouch End 11 years ago, I ventured back to visit the area's first pub in the Good Beer Guide since the Harringay Arms made it in back in 2011.
Small Beer is a rather dark, but modern bar with a distinct emphasis on craft beer. Nevertheless, it does have 4 cask ales, which on our visit were Drop Project Choppy, Two By Two Strata Talus, Burning Sky Plateau & Almasty Best Bitter. The cider was Ascension Pilot.
Craft beers were Kernel Mosaic Galaxy Pale & Table Beer, Left-Handed Giant Stepping Stones, Drop Project Shifty, Turning Point Disco Mango, Goodness Sunset, Villages Rafiki & Bassoon, Deya Steady Rolling Man & Indie Rabble The Mob Has Arrived. All beers and ciders are listed on a screen above the bar. There is also a list on Untappd. However, I soon discovered this to be out of date.
On our Saturday evening visit, the customer base was a mix of ages. Although the majority were of the younger generation. A hip soundtrack was playing, whilst many were in for pizzas, which were being prepared in the far left-hand corner. Toilets (clean by the way) can be found along a corridor beyond this. The bar itself is in the far right-hand corner. In addition to the beers, a list of cocktails could also be seen at one side of the bar.
Whilst there are much more traditional pub options in Crouch End, this modern bar undoubtedly sets the bar for decent beer in the area. It's certainly a good option if you find yourself in the area.
On 26th December 2023
- rating: 7
[User has posted 2454 recommendations about 2453 pubs]
Steve of N21 left this review about Small Beer
I visited this one on a fine sunny afternoon when the front window was completely open and light was streaming in from the skylight above the serving area and it was perfectly fine. But I can well believe on a dark February evening, with the only light coming from the multitude of orange filament bulbs that bars and restaurants consider trendy nowadays, it may be a different story. But however dim and dark it may be it must be an improvement on the previous Wishing Well and Henry Ryder incarnations.
The small serving area to the back right had three hand pumps on the front of the serving area and a 12 craft keg tap wall behind. For my visit there seemed to be a focus on the Two by Two Brewery, the seasonal craft brewery based in Wallsend with four of their beers present. Their Leap Frog pale ale and Alzacca Mosaic was on the ale pumps alongside Almasty Best Bitter. Then a mixed selection of porters, sours, APA’s and Pale Ales were on the keg taps from quite a few craft brewers I was not familiar with, such as Ideal day, Beak and the Goodness Brewing Company, who apparently have been brewing in Wood Green for the last couple of years. And as my late afternoon visit coincided with their 4 till 6 buy a beer and get a slice of pizza offer, I got some free scoff as well.
I targeted this one primarily for the beer but also to experience the train spotting toilets described by Will below and had been holding it in for the last couple of pubs so that I could do so. I think Will must have had a few by the stage of his visit and had narrow vision. Either that or they have strange letter boxes up in that there Sheffield.
Yes the urinal design is unconventional, but it wasn’t the krypton factor Todger test I was looking forward to and hopefully my photo will be uploaded so that you can make up your own mind. And although there wasn’t enough customers of the male variety to put the hygiene level under pressure they had clearly been cleaned since Wills visit.
I agree that this place hasn’t got a great deal of character, but the interesting range of ales from non-mainstream breweries will certainly make it a place of interest for beer tickers
On 11th August 2023
- rating: 6
[User has posted 2111 recommendations about 1992 pubs]
Please Note: This review is over a year old.
Will Larter left this review about Small Beer
This shop conversion has been a pub for quite some time, so doesn't belong to the recent trend for micropubs. It's fairly small, dim and grungy, with a bar in the dimmer recesses of the rear of the single room. There are four hand pumps, with nothing I liked the look of, so I perused the keg options, plumping for a wheat beer from The Kernel, a brewery whose bottled ales I occasionally pick up from shops in Sheffield but whose kegged versions I had yet to try. Well, it was cold, fizzy and lacking in anything interesting by way of flavour; what was I expecting?
What else can I say about Small Beer? As well as being dark, minimalist, uninviting, with bare brick walls and challenging background music, it has the worst pub toilets I have ever used. The urinals were made out of some sort of metal boxes - taking a pee was like putting your most vulnerable fleshy parts into a letter box; and you can imagine how difficult it must be to clean something like that. The solution (it's so obvious, really): let's not bother! Seriously, these toilets have *never* been cleaned.
On 17th February 2020
- rating: 1
[User has posted 3746 recommendations about 3483 pubs]
View more reviews of Small Beer (7)
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- Official site of Small Beer - www.smallbeern8.co.uk
- CAMRA WhatPub :: Small Beer - whatpub.com
Pub Details
Pub details supplied by members of this site to the best of their knowledge. Please check with pub directly before making a special trip.
- Accommodation : No last updated 14 September 2021 by Tris C
- Car Park : No last updated 14 September 2021 by Tris C
- Hot Food : Yes - Pizza. - last updated 14 September 2021 by Tris C
- Micropub : No last updated 05 March 2020 by Aqualung .
- Real Ale : Yes last updated 14 September 2021 by Tris C
