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tgolanos

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I'm off to the UK on Sunday for 10 days. Does anyone have any specific recommendations for awesome pubs/craft brew in Bath (or even Bristol), London, and/or Edinburgh? Anything you guys know would be appreciated.
 
I second the Bermondsey Beer Mile. Just returned from London on Tuesday, and hit a few of those places over the weekend. Odd note about most of those places was that they closed fairly early (i think it was like 5 or 6PM) each day.

Cloudwater was especially good. 73 Enid St and sandwiched between 2 other "tap rooms"
 
I visited London some weeks ago and there is quite a few craft beer pubs. I liked the Harp, close to charing cross...had good selection of cask ales.
 
...had good selection of cask ales.

@tgolanos In case you don't know about cask ales, it is perhaps the single most special thing about beer in the UK that you must happily indulge in during a visit.

Nearly wherever you go, some sort of ale on cask is available, and it is something fresh and wonderful that's almost impossible to find in vast swaths of the U.S. I don't know about Australia... Our two countries have a common origin in the UK, but I don't know if any brewers stepped ashore at Botany Bay way back when.

I'm jealous.
 
I'm off to the UK on Sunday for 10 days. Does anyone have any specific recommendations for awesome pubs/craft brew in Bath (or even Bristol)
The Old Green Tree pub in Bath is the best I've ever experienced. It's what an old pub is supposed to be. I stumbled across it one day, but I think it's been named Best Pub in Britain (or something like that.) Amazing characters in the tiny little boozer and they have Pitchfork's (local-ish) beers on tap. Grab me some yeast from a Pitchfork cask. ;)
 
Check out the Euston Tap or the Parcel Yard at back of Kings Cross train station

Nothing special drinkswise about the Parcel Yard but nice to watch all the activity of people going different places
 
Thanks for all the advice so far. The Beer Mile looks intriguing. I'm staying in Kennington, so it's only a few Tube stops away.

@Derp - The Green Tree is within walking distance of where I'm staying in Bath. I'll be sure to check it out.
 
If your looking for US craft style beers, I agree with the above posters that you've got to seek out special spots. Mind you, you'll probably be dissapointed in comparison to range of utra-sour/huge IBU/cloudy stuff/(the latest gimmick) you can get in North America.

I agree with McKnuckel- forget about craft beer, and get yourself something you can't get on this side of the pond- cask ale, in a proper pub. Its not hard to find a decent pub in the UK, especially in one of the big cities mentioned. Usually it will say it serves "real ale" or cask ale. Find a local boozer, a real british pub, serving proper cask ale. You cant go wrong, there are thousands, within spitting distance, in any of those cities.

Avoid any pub that advertises "craft beer" or looks remotely hipsterish. Ideally, if its day time there will be a couple of old geezers in there reading the paper, discussing brexit, and annoying the barmaid, and maybe a dog (asleep). They wont be serving sour beers, or be advertising the most extreme versions of any style. Avoid Wetherspoons pubs, or anything that looks vaguely like a chain. Dont bother looking at your phone to see how many stars it has on untappd. or maybe do and avoid anywhere that seems popular and hip.

For example, a couple of years ago, I had a couple of hours to kill while renewing my passport near Victoria station in london. So I wandered around, avoiding "gastropubs", looking for a solid boozer. Within minutes I found a nice proper pub (prince of wales), they had a small selection of decent real ale (pride, esb and something else cant remember). You can hardly even find it on google. Im not suggesting going to that pub. Find your own one! If you get a chance, go to a country pub too.
 
I grew up in Bristol and spent my share of time in Bath as well. Was a bit young at the time, but a vaguely recall the pubs we would regularly visit being Young's tied pubs.
 
If your looking for US craft style beers, I agree with the above posters that you've got to seek out special spots. Mind you, you'll probably be dissapointed in comparison to range of utra-sour/huge IBU/cloudy stuff/(the latest gimmick) you can get in North America.

I agree with McKnuckel- forget about craft beer, and get yourself something you can't get on this side of the pond- cask ale, in a proper pub. Its not hard to find a decent pub in the UK, especially in one of the big cities mentioned. Usually it will say it serves "real ale" or cask ale. Find a local boozer, a real british pub, serving proper cask ale. You cant go wrong, there are thousands, within spitting distance, in any of those cities.

Avoid any pub that advertises "craft beer" or looks remotely hipsterish. Ideally, if its day time there will be a couple of old geezers in there reading the paper, discussing brexit, and annoying the barmaid, and maybe a dog (asleep). They wont be serving sour beers, or be advertising the most extreme versions of any style. Avoid Wetherspoons pubs, or anything that looks vaguely like a chain. Dont bother looking at your phone to see how many stars it has on untappd. or maybe do and avoid anywhere that seems popular and hip.

For example, a couple of years ago, I had a couple of hours to kill while renewing my passport near Victoria station in london. So I wandered around, avoiding "gastropubs", looking for a solid boozer. Within minutes I found a nice proper pub (prince of wales), they had a small selection of decent real ale (pride, esb and something else cant remember). You can hardly even find it on google. Im not suggesting going to that pub. Find your own one! If you get a chance, go to a country pub too.

Weatherspoons is pretty good for a beer and meal if you are on a budget.
 
Here's a good one for you in London if you also need some brewing books...... Wife took me to a play while we there, and decided to get a beer and some fish & chips at one of the many pubs near there before the show. Turns out this place "The Crown" is on Brewer's Street (right next to the theater) . While eating I notice they have a book swap, not only a book swap but BEER BREWING BOOKS (zoom in below) Too bad i didn't have any "leave one" type books on me or i would have picked some of these up.

This was just over a week ago, so may be some left [emoji16]
IMG_6373.JPG
IMG_6369.JPG
 
Here's a good one for you in London if you also need some brewing books...... Wife took me to a play while we there, and decided to get a beer and some fish & chips at one of the many pubs near there before the show. Turns out this place "The Crown" is on Brewer's Street (right next to the theater) . While eating I notice they have a book swap, not only a book swap but BEER BREWING BOOKS (zoom in below) Too bad i didn't have any "leave one" type books on me or i would have picked some of these up.

This was just over a week ago, so may be some left [emoji16]
View attachment 621700View attachment 621701
My wife's got several plays lined up each night while we're in London, so I might check this out while she's there one evening. I dig a good bookstore, beer-related or not.
 
If your looking for US craft style beers, I agree with the above posters that you've got to seek out special spots. Mind you, you'll probably be dissapointed in comparison to range of utra-sour/huge IBU/cloudy stuff/(the latest gimmick) you can get in North America.

I'd disagree, that's something that's changed a lot even over the last two years - provincial Tesco supermarkets now have a couple of fruit sours and NEIPAs (although Sainsburys is still stuck in the 1990s), M&S stocks Mikkeller. They may not be the world's greatest examples, but craft culture is becoming fairly mainstream these days, even if it just means something like Punk IPA on the bar. If you're sticking to big cities then you will have a choice of specialist places if your want craft - I'd say in London places that do cask really, really well are rarer than soso-craft bars.

Apologies for coming a bit late to this but I'd agree that if you're only visiting you want to do the things that are unique to British beer culture, which are Proper Pubs and cask ale. There have literally been books written about this kind of thing catering to different audiences, so it's perhaps appropriate to start with those :

The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) divides opinions somewhat, but it is increasingly concerned with preserving pubs rather than real (cask) ale. Their (free) whatpub.com lists every pub in the country with some basic details, which at least will give you an idea of who owns it (vital as most pubs are either tied to breweries or owned by a couple of big pub companies who tend to stifle character) and what beers are on (Doom Bar is a good indication that they're not being too ambitious on the beer front) but some of the details like opening hours can be a bit out of date. Their Good Beer Guide (paid-for book or app, or you can usually find a copy in places like the Harp, not to be confused with the pay-for-entry Good Pub Guide) is compiled by members and should be an indication of reliable cask ale quality (although don't rely on beer being at its best Tuesday/Wednesday, particularly out of city centres). Their list of Historic Pub Interiors is not the most user-friendly but is a good starting point for architecturally interesting pubs, divided by national and regional importance - the nationally-important ones are listed here in a more user-friendly form. To be honest, if you want character in your drinking establishment then it's hard to beat Gordon's wine bar down the side of Charing Cross - it's slowly coming to terms with the start of the 20th century (sic) but you feel it's not quite there yet.

The CAMRA London pub book was last updated in 2015 so is a good starting point but inevitably a bit out of date now - the author, Des de Moor is in the middle of updating it so has quite a bit of material on his website for free.

Londonist have a slightly haphazard approach to pub reviewing, and are geared more to "niceness" rather than beer quality, but at least they have their listings on a map and are a good antidote to the beer geek bubble.

For Bristol, see Boak & Bailey's recommendations who are pub historians based there. Also get their book, 20th Century Pub is a great review of a less fashionable time in British pubs. They've distilled some of that into a freebie, The Pubs of Boggleton, 1837–2017 which shows how British pubs have evolved in that time, it gives you a good idea of how we got to where we are. I can't find something they dug up from ?WWII explaining the subtleties of British pub culture to foreigners, but you may enjoy this on Aussies in London in the 1960s. Whilst you're out west, keep an eye out for the Wild Beer Co who have some interesting takes on the wild/sour theme.

Two other must-reads are Retired Martin and BRAPA, who are each trying to get round every pub in the Good Beer Guide and really get inside the skin of what makes pubs tick.

But you're wanting specific recommendations. First off - I personally would skip a brewery tour unless you have lots of time and it's one of the properly historical ones like Hook Norton or Elgoods - to be honest stainless steel conicals look much the same wherever you are and you're just wasting pub time.

The problem with cask ale is that a) it needs someone who knows what they're doing in the cellar (rare in London) and b) it needs throughput (which favours the big cities, but eg on a Tuesday a cask that's gone on at the weekend may be getting a bit tired, and the same applies for many pints in the first hour or so of service). But when it's right, it's magic. Frankly the Harp (two blocks east of Trafalgar Square, handy for the southern bits of theatreland) is not a great pub experience in many ways - it varies from rammed to insanely rammed, getting a seat downstairs is a headline event - but that means that their beer is always spanking fresh.

So for tourists to London wanting to know what cask ale is all about, the two safe pints are the Old Peculier in the Museum Tavern (just by the British Museum) and Harvey's Best in the Harp. Then see if the Harp has Fuller's Porter on and have one of those, have a half of London Pride and then go back to the Harvey's because it's just better. If you like hoppy (ish) stuff, then get a half of Dark Star Hop head and APA because it's kinda antisocial asking for samples in somewhere as busy as the Harp, decide that the less-feted APA is better, then go back to the Harvey's.

As for mini-pub crawls in the centre, one goes down High Holborn calling at the Princess Louise and Cittie of York which are wonderful buildings but run by Sam Smith's so the beer's a bit cheap and cheerful. I tend to go for the bottles, their fruit beers are an oddity that's better than you might expect. You then end up in the Old Mitre off Hatton Garden and stay until you fall over.

Another is to leave the missus wandering round Borough Market, nip in to the Utobeer stall in the middle of the market for a trendy bottle/can or two, then go sister bar The Rake for cool kid stuff like Cloudwater DIPA if you're lucky, maybe a stein of Paulaner in Katzenjammers in basement of the old Hop Exchange, then check out the amazing interior (shame about the beer) of the George, the only proper coaching inn left in London, and then on to the Royal Oak, which is just the essence of normal pub-ness, but with a range of well-kept Harvey's beers that you can actually afford (unlike anywhere round Borough Market). Stay until closing.

The Bermondsey Beer Mile is a thing, but historically it only happened on Saturday (although that's now changing and to be honest there's now too many to do them all on one day) and at the end of the day it's a bunch of (generally very good) breweries doing the same old things with Citra etc in keg as their counterparts worldwide. There is some cask (notably at the Eebria shop) but it is literally a bunch of railway arches and industrial estates, so it's not one for other halves unless they are really into their beer. Cloudwater's first venture outside Manchester gets a lot of attention, and the Kernel are perhaps the elder statesmen, but I've got a soft spot for the slight oddness of Anspach & Hobday.

But to be absolutely honest, if I was coming from overseas, I'd get more excited about having the chance to drink the full range of Tim Taylor beers on cask in a pub where they knew what they were doing - as that's something that you won't get anywhere else in the world. So if you're not stopping in Yorkshire (do consider stopping off for a few hours in York pubs to break the train journey if nothing else) I'd go to the Bricklayers at the south end of Putney Bridge ahead of going to Bermondsey, but do go to Bermondsey if you've got a few days there.

One good thing about cask ale is that you can be fairly confident that the production yeast will be in the cask, so if the pub's quiet enough that you can get chatting to staff then you may be able to scrounge some yeast from an empty cask - use the kettle in your hotel room to steam-sterilise a small jamjar (such as one of those single-serve ones you get in hotels), you may want to streak some onto blotting paper or something if you don't fancy your chances with small pots of liquid at the airport. A lot of the smaller breweries will just use commercial "homebrew" yeasts (there's a lot of S-04 and Nottingham out there), but the bigger regional breweries can be good sources. I'd emphasise that you should only try this when it's quiet, and don't be surprised if you're turned down, particularly in central London.
 
Weatherspoons is pretty good for a beer and meal if you are on a budget.

Personally I've always hated wetherspoons pubs, I guess the beer is okay, but the atmosphere is horrible. Do they still open at 9am? Plus the owner is some pro-brexit nut-job.
 
I'd disagree, that's something that's changed a lot even over the last two years - provincial Tesco supermarkets now have a couple of fruit sours and NEIPAs (although Sainsburys is still stuck in the 1990s), M&S stocks Mikkeller. They may not be the world's greatest examples, but craft culture is becoming fairly mainstream these days, even if it just means something like Punk IPA on the bar.

I agree with most of what you said except the first bit. Sure you can "craft beer" in the UK. But if you are a craft beer lover from the the US, you are bound to be disapointed, in comparison to whats on offer on this side of the pond. Yes you can by a can of Mikkeller from M&S, but if you get anything hoppy you are gonna be dissapointed, as it will have sat around for months/years on a supermarket shelf. I dont think the range of 2 fruit sour beers in Tescos is really going to get your average US craft beer geek too excited.

I was back home a few years ago, and my brother was all excited to tell me that they now have craft beer in the UK, and its all the rage. He had got me in a couple of cans of "craft beer" in the fridge. It was punk "IPA". It tasted to me like a slighty oxidised underhopped APA with cascade. Definately not something thats gonna blow your average US craft beer lovers mind.
 
Personally I've always hated wetherspoons pubs, I guess the beer is okay, but the atmosphere is horrible. Do they still open at 9am? Plus the owner is some pro-brexit nut-job.

To each his own! I think the Standing Order in Edinburgh is beautiful. It was formerly a bank I believe?
 
To each his own! I think the Standing Order in Edinburgh is beautiful. It was formerly a bank I believe?

I guess there is an exception to every rule. Still I think most would agree that you should avoid weatherspoons pubs after 6pm, unless you enjoy being puked on by teenagers wasted on alcopops?
 
Couple of treppenwörter came to mind after writing the above.

Tank lager is becoming a bit of a thing in the big cities, there must be a dozen places in London doing tank Urquell trucked direct from the brewery so I guess that would be interesting if you're coming from afar and not spending time on the Continent. I guess the most central ones would be some of the Draft Houses like Seething Lane (by the Tower of London) or Chancery Lane (if you're doing the Fleet St pubs)?

Howling Hops were one of the pioneers of tank beer in London and they're up on the west side of the Olympic park, there's a bit of a cluster developing there around Hackney Wick station that also includes the Beer Merchants tap, which belongs to Cave Direct one of our biggest distributors. So it has a great selection of bottles, and they're doing interesting things like blending their own "lambics".

Marks & Spencer do a series of single-hop beers, including some of the modern British hops like Jester. Nothing particularly special beerwise, but interesting from a hop geek point of view and since they are in almost every railway station make for good train beers. Euston Tap is great but they charge full "pub" price for takeouts...

A friend who's into Belgian beers really likes Lowlander on Drury Lane (so very handy for the theatre). There's some more ideas for Belgian beers here, although it feels a bit dated. Cask near Victoria station used to have a fridge full of Westvleteren at £30 a pop but it no longer seems to be on their list, they're still great though.

You can't really escape Wetherspoons, they're the UK's supermarket or McDonalds of draught beer. So they're cheap and cheerful, the cask ale is kept indifferently, the staff are generally pretty clueless, but...CHEAP BEER! Personally I don't like the way they treat brewers (McDonalds' cattle are probably treated better, apart from the whole killing and mincing thing. Maybe.) and I'd rather pay a bit more to get beer that's properly looked after and to be in a proper pub. 'Spoons generally aren't proper pubs, but commercial property that's been converted. Some of them can be stunning, notably Hamilton Hall in the old ballroom of the Liverpool St station hotel, but a lot of them are in old Blockbuster video stores and the like. They all open early so they serve the purpose of American diners for breakfast, which can be handy if your hotel doesn't do breakfast and you're not too squeamish about where your sausage comes from. So they're not really for me - but then I don't eat Big Macs either.

I'm trying to think of anywhere near the London tourist spots for homebrew stuff and I'm struggling - it's tough to make the numbers work at central London rents. If you're going to Bath by car you could place an order with www.themaltmiller.co.uk and pick it up from the warehouse (just off the motorway in the outskirts of Swindon). Probably your best bet would be in Edinburgh, where www.brewstore.co.uk is one of the best homebrew stores in the country (they're possibly the only physical shop to carry liquid yeasts) and are mebbe 10-15 minutes walk from the Royal Mile.

Easter is a good time to be drinking cask, the extra traffic means that pubs often have an extra line or two on, and/or put on the "specials" that they wouldn't normally be able to shift a full cask of. Conversely, that can mean more stale beer come Tuesday/Wednesday.
 
I agree with most of what you said except the first bit. Sure you can "craft beer" in the UK. But if you are a craft beer lover from the the US, you are bound to be disapointed, in comparison to whats on offer on this side of the pond. Yes you can by a can of Mikkeller from M&S, but if you get anything hoppy you are gonna be dissapointed, as it will have sat around for months/years on a supermarket shelf. I dont think the range of 2 fruit sour beers in Tescos is really going to get your average US craft beer geek too excited.

But they're not going to get too excited either about the beer offering of Walmart in Idaho, which would be the equivalent (Bud Lite and clamato?!?!? WTAF???). And Walmart in Idaho wouldn't be carrying craft beer from Germany like Weihenstephaner, and will still face the same issues with shelflife and coldchain etc. Wherever you are, the supermarket environment is never going to be ideal for beer, but it's hugely important in terms of mass-market accessibility, and it's changing rapidly.

It's far from ideal, but if you use the Ratebeer rankings of top 15 beers & ciders by style as some kind of guide as to what "beer geeks" get "excited" about, then you'd expect the US to have just under 5x as many entries just on population grounds, and that's exactly what you find (154 vs (28 England + 3 Scotland) ). It's not even particularly driven by styles - the UK features less than you might expect in bitter, but has a third of the APAs and American Ambers. Sure there are differences - we're big on ordinary stout, not in imperial stout, but that's why you travel.

Realistically, you've no excuse to drink bad beer over the course of a 10 day holiday - and if you don't get excited at the thought of a night that might include tank Urquell, bitter from the wood in a 17th century pub, the Siren breakfast stout that won Champion Beer of Britain, Elgood's Coolship, cask Landlord and/or Harvey's Best in tiptop condition, Cloudwater DIPA and a Westvleteren 12 as a nightcap, then you're not a beer geek.

I was back home a few years ago, and my brother was all excited to tell me that they now have craft beer in the UK, and its all the rage. He had got me in a couple of cans of "craft beer" in the fridge. It was punk "IPA". It tasted to me like a slighty oxidised underhopped APA with cascade. Definately not something thats gonna blow your average US craft beer lovers mind.

But then, nor is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale or something like that, even if it is perhaps the defining "US craft style beer". Horses for courses. The bleeding-edge mindblowing stuff is always going to be tucked away in specialist places. At least the UK has more sensible distribution laws than the US which means even the geek favourite stuff can easily get nationwide distribution to the specialist places, and these days they generally use coldchain distribution.

Anecdote from "a few years ago" doesn't really relate to where we are today, when things are changing so rapidly. Two years ago the idea of the "cool kids" like Northern Monk, To Øl and Mikkeller being available in supermarkets would have been fantasy, likewise the idea of Cloudwater being on sale on trains. In fact I think we'll look back on 2019 as a golden age, before the widespread availability of "good enough" beer in supermarkets killed off the core business of a lot of the independent retailers that have made the current scene so diverse.

I'll finish with Jeff Alworth :
Where the British tradition still survives is cask ale (usually but not entirely in the form of bitter), and it is the most “crafted” beer style made anywhere. If we ever wanted to exalt a beer type that requires the most hands fussing over it, a beer resistant to making at large scale, one that can’t really be put in a bottle, one that is as likely to wilt from environmental conditions as freshly-plucked lettuce, it is cask ale. When you’re served a pint at the right temperature, poured properly, that is perfectly fresh and well-handled, it’s a marvel of coordination. There’s a reason Americans picked the bones of British brewing while leaving its cask soul behind: it’s just too hard to make.
 
Sure, you can argue that cask beer is "craft ale" from a semantic perspective.

However, the reality is that cask ale and craft beer mean 2 different things, eg traditional british styles served in a cask and amercian/innovative styles served in a keg. "Pub" and "craft beer bar" are two different types of establishment. If pubs serve both they will advertise that they serve cask ale AND craft beer. You dont go to a craft beer bar for a pint of landlord.

I think you are making a bit of a straw man argument here. I didn't say you cant get decent beer that would excite beer geeks, in the UK. My argument was that if you go to Britain, you might as well drink cask ale in a proper pub, as the selection and quality of craft beer eg WCIPAs, sours, NEIPAs ect is much better in the new world. Sure, things are improving in the UK and craft beer is getting trendy, but if you are visiting Britain, you might as well seek out the stuff you cant get back home, ie cask ale in a proper pub. You can drink westy 12 back in the States, or on a trip to belgium, no reason to seek that out in Britain? Sure you can find czech lager in the UK, but I would save that for a trip to the czech republic? But you cant get Harvey's on cask in the states.

Your're right the UK craft beer scene is growing. I was back in the UK in March 2019, and I noticed that a lot more places were advertising "craft beer", and selections were getting better, in the supermarkets. Much of it though is pretty meh. Brits are proud of their scene, I get it. But in reality the UK scene is like 20 years behind the scene in N.America. Speaking as someone with experience of both sides of the pond, I can tell you that (unsurprisingly), the place that invented craft beer, does craft beer best.
 
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