Beer focus: Top ten London beer bars

These are buzzing times for beer drinkers living in London, of that there’s no doubt.

Not content with spawning a new wave of craft brewers and micros such as Camden and Kernel, the Capital has also produced a fresh breed of new specialist beer venues spreading the gospel of good beer drinking.

Bars such as the Rake in Borough Market and the White Horse in Parsons Green are no longer ploughing a lonely furrow.

A handful of new beer bars are doing more than merely hailing the ale and catering for the CAMRA contingent. They epitomise all that’s exciting and innovative about the global beer scene – be it in cask or in keg, bottom or top fermented or from Britain or abroad.

Crucially, and key in attracting new drinkers to the joys of beer, the focus on beer does not come at the expense of ambiance and atmosphere. Traditionalists may tut at the notion, but good beer alone does not make a decent pub or bar.

So, if you’re in London and if you like beer, you may want to check the following out:

CASK Pub and Kitchen, Pimlico

Don’t be hoodwinked by the inauspicious exterior, for inside this corner pub in Pimlico, located on the edge of a council estate, lies a blissful beervana.

What surely must be the most bountiful collection of beers in London boasts more than 400 bottled varieties, around a dozen real ales and a further ten keg beers on draught.

Thornbridge, Brewdog and the Sussex-based Dark Star share the handpulls alongside with guest ales and seasonal beers. Mainstream lager brands have been jettisoned in favour of British craft lager Moravka and Rothaus Pils, a lauded lager from the Black Forest.

CASK is also the only pub in the UK to serve Mikkeller beers on draught. The Danish ‘cuckoo’ brewer is a prolific purveyor of esoteric ales and 50 of his efforts are available in both bottle and keg – including “Beer Geek Brunch Weasel”, a coffee-infused stout brewed with beans that have been passed through the intestines of an Indonesian weasel.

Every month, the pub hosts a “Meet the Brewer” tonight featuring an up-and-coming brewery and all the beers are available to take away and be drunk at home. But, quite frankly, it’s difficult to know why you’d want to leave.

6 Charlwood Street, Pimlico, London SW1V 6EE, +44 (0)20 7630 7225, www.caskpubandkitchen.com

Drafthouse, Clapham

Clapham was the first of three Drafthouses opened in South London – the other two are in Tower Bridge and Battersea. The concept is the brainchild of Charlie McVeigh, a former financial journalist and restaurateur who, a year or so ago, realised that beer wasn’t being given the reverence it deserved.

Shaking beer out if its socks and sandals and slipping it into something a lot more sophisticated and suitable for dinner, McVeigh has opened three beer bistros with a relaxed restaurant vibe and a dedication to discerning beer drinking.  

Seventeen shiny draught fonts adorn the long, curved bar serving an eclectic yet not overly obscure array of beers from both the UK and beyond. Sambrook’s, the local Battersea-based brewery with whom the bar works very closely, enjoys a prominent position alongside lager from the Cotswolds, a milk stout from Colorado and the rye-based Schremser Roggenbier.

More recently, the Drafthouse triumvirate were three of only a handful of lucky UK venues chosen by Budweiser Budvar to serve its unpasteurised, unfiltered “Budvar Yeast” beer, brewed in small batches just four times a year.

The Drafthouse also prides itself as the home of the third where drinkers are offered the opportunity to take a beer “flight” made up of three 1/3 of a pint servings.  

94 Northcote Road, SW11 6QW, +44 (0)20 7924 1814, www.drafthouse.co.uk

Euston Tap, Euston

Neil Armstrong and all the other astronauts were right. Euston does have a problem – it is rubbish, the most uninspiring of all of London’s main train termini.

But it’s improved immensely since the arrival of this beer bar located in the West Lodge – an impressive stand-alone Grade-II listed Porterstone edifice built in the 1830s.

The magnificence of the building, however, is surpassed by the marvelousness of the beers offered inside – more than a hundred can be found in the two enormous chillers, while 27 rare and renowned are offered on tap in a space that’s very small but extremely brewtiful  

Pinching an approach often seen in America, the Euston Tap has placed the fonts on a copper-clad back wall and from them, an eclectic and seriously rare variety of special suds do pour. Eight of the pumps are dedicated to cask ale and some magnificent British micros.

190 Euston Rd London NW1 2EF +44 (0)20 3137 8837, www.eustontap.com

Jolly Butchers, Stoke Newington

Before it was an esteemed ale house with a boss selection of beer, the Jolly Butchers was renowned for being an intemperate institution more lauded by locals for its late licence and its liberal attitude to pretty much anything.

The new owners have restored the Victorian vestiges to their former glory and retained many of the finest features- arched stain glass windows, split stable doors, pillars and traditional tiles. They’ve also installed some awesome ales.

As well as lauding London’s growing legion of micros such as Brodies and Meantime, there’s a real cask-conditioned cider, a real perry and some classic Belgian beers alongside draught Aecht Schlenkerla, a smoked beer rarely seen on tap elsewhere.

202-204 Stoke Newington High Street, N16 7HU, +44 (0)20 7249 9471, www.jolllybutchers.co.uk

Mason & Taylor, Shoreditch

Smack bang in the middle of uber-trendy Shoreditch and just a stone’s throw from the old Truman brewery, Mason & Taylor is all the proof you need that beer is an integral component of urban elbow-bending.

Clad in concrete (including the bar) and swathed in steel with exposed wiring, M&T is a minimalist affair but it’s assortment of ales is anything but sparse. The stone bar draws up a dozen draught beers, ranging from the accessible to the obscure, of which three are real ales and several are local London brews.

The 40-strong beer list, which changes every couple of months, is compact and cleverly compiled under the headings of “Pale”; “Fruit”, “Amber, Red and Brown”; “Black” and “Oddities”. They even have a “free from” section for imbibers with allergies.

If that’s not enough, there’s terrific tapas to soak up the suds and on Sundays, they roll out the roasts.

51-55 Bethnal Green Road, E1 6LA, +44 (0)20 7749 9670, www.masonandtaylor.com

Old Brewery, Greenwich

There can be few beer venues in the world that can boast a more prestigious position than the Old Brewery in Greenwich. Located at the Royal Naval College, a world heritage site, it occupies the former site of the Royal Hospital brewery, where seafarers’ sickness was once allayed with daily rations of beer.

There’s a deftly designed restaurant beneath a striking beer bottle chandelier, a wonderful walled garden and a bar area whose walls are adorned with many of the 4,500 beer bottles that were bequeathed to Alastair Hook, Meantime’s founder, by the late and great beer writer Michael Jackson.  

There’s also a pilot brewery on which Meantime’s brewers blend a rich brewing past with contemporary cutting-edge craft brewing to create an eclectic array of small-batch beers including Hospital Porters, Scotch ales, Tudor-style ales and wild yeast beers .  

The Old Brewery, The Pepys Building, The Old Royal Naval College, SE10 9LW, +44 (0)203 327 1280, www.oldbrewerygreenwich.com

Southampton Arms, Gospel Oak

Sparse, straightforward and seriously splendid, this no-nonsense North London local simply does the basics stupendously well.

Big brands are barred and brews from abroad are banned because it only sells beers and ciders from independent British breweries.

Five ciders, perries and an eight-strong array of cask ales are served in dimpled mugs alongside sizeable slabs of cheese, pork pies, Scotch eggs, scratchings, dry-cured salami and baps brimming with roast pork.

The bulbs are bare, the floorboards worn and there’s a real fire and a genuine old ‘Joanna’. They don’t have a phone, take bookings or reserve seats. It’s brilliant.

139 Highgate Road, NW5 1LE +44 (0)7958 780073, www.thesouthamptonarms.co.uk

The Rake, Borough Market

Owned by the boys behind leading wholesaler and distributor Utobeer, the Rake is widely regarded as the beer bar that rolled out the red carpet for the many that followed.

Based in the heart of Borough Market and very much at the forefront of the British beer scene, it belies its extremely modest size with a quite astonishing selection of beers that, thanks to its Utobeer affiliation, champions rare and revered beers before other venues can get their holds on them.

It caters very much for the connoisseur and often plays host to tastings, beer festivals, new beer launches and the beer blogging community.   

14a Winchester Walk, SE1 9AG +44 (0)20 7407 0557

White Horse, Parsons Green

If all Mitchell & Butlers pubs had the same approach to their beers as this iconic London local then Britain would be a far finer place to live. There would also be a lot less work being done.   

The “Sloaney Pony” (copyright 1982) is to great beer what Shergar is – or was – to mysterious equine whodunits and it’s been celebrating the diversity of beer and beer and food long before it became all the rage.

In voluptuous Victorian surroundings in salubrious Chelsea, it serves a selection of cask ales through lines cleaner than a nun’s conscience and has also built up a 135-strong bottled beer collection.

Having taken over the reins from the esteemed ale-lover Mark Dormer several years ago, licensee Dan Fox has more than maintained the White Horse’s thoroughbred reputation with fantastic food (each dish has a recommended beer), switched on staff, regular beer festivals and sterling cellarmanship.  

1-3 Parsons Green, SW6 4UL, +44 (0)207 736 2115, www.whitehorsesw6.com

Zeitgeist @ Jolly Gardners, Vauxhall

A German theme pub surrounded by council flats in Vauxhall may not sound promising but this former frequent of notorious ne’er-do-wells is fantastiche.

While other German venues resort to the swaying, stein-clinking generalisation that is the Bavarian beer hall, owner Jurgen Mannel has given hackneyed preconceptions Das Boot.

He stocks more German beers than any other in London and, given German loyalty to local breweries, maybe even Germany.

Dunkels Helles, Kolsch, Pilsners, Rauchbiers and alt biers are all accounted for amid the 50-strong range of beers imported directed from Germany and served alongside various types of pork products, dumplings and the like.

49-51 Black Prince Road, SE11 6AB, +44 (0)20 7840 0426, www.zeitgeist-london.com

Ben McFarland, 31.03.2011