The Craft Beer Co.

Fabulous newly refurbished pub with a wonderful selection of real ales and beers with its own micro brewery on the premises too. love the decor too-a really wonderful example of how to renovate and restore a clapped out pub. Excellent!

Part of a Tuesday night crawl. Beers selection is bigger than our first stop the Holborn Whippet by a long way. Not that we needed such choice at 10pm!  Interior - Simple refresher job to what was a crap pub from memory has done the job. Of course the Eddison light bulbs are everywhere like everyone else these days.

Beers welll kept, though not cheap.  Nosiy inside with a mix crowd from offices and people from near by estates.

Staff - outstanding for product knowledge.

While I’m not much of a beer drinker, several of my friends are….so we met at Craft Beer Co. to check it out. It gets a solid three stars…..and could easily earn a 4th star after a return visit. The space is quite sparely decorated (in a good way): white walls (and upstairs at least) some great silver light fixtures shaped like geese or some other bird. My beer loving friends seemed to like the beer, and there is indeed a huge selection. I certainly have never seen that many cask and keg beers in one pub, and the bottled selection is gigantic. Very impressive effort.
I’m a cider drinker, not a beer drinker. I was a bit disappointed with the cider availability. They apparently usually have two ciders on cask, but the night we were there they only had one, and it ran out before 8 p.m. I “managed” on bottled cider (which was actually quite good), but I was disappointed.
The place was packed, but the bar staff did a nice job of serving drinks efficiently.
If you’re a beer drinker, or you like someone who likes beer, Craft Beer Co. is definitely a “must check out”!

I got to know about this place through Thrillist and wanted to check it out for the rare and unique ales/beers they are renowned for having. The location is a corner of a street market which I found to be a very unusual place to house the largest collection of ales in London. The location must be unusual but everyone seems to know it – cos it was packed everytime I’ve been there.

The selection is very good but I have to say that since we don’t know any of the brands it is very hard to choose – unless you just order something which sounds nice (club hopper beer) or ask the bartender for advice. The place is small with 2 floors of seating and its long sofa type of seating arrangement means that you see 2 people sitting at a place where it can accommodate 6. So yes, the place is small and you need to come early to enjoy a pint but if you like good quality ale/beer – this is the place to be.

More often than not, I am a beer drinker. For all the writing I do about cocktails and gin, this surprises people. But cocktails are expensive and beers tastes nice.

And so, in a bid to drink all of the beer in London, I wangled an invite to the Craft Beer opening. I 'm staggered by how many beers you can get behind one bar. I think I tried about 20 different beers last night. That does not make for a clear head the next morning.

If I recall, Craft have 16 kegs and 20 casks, as well as 300 bottled beers. That's a staggering amount. Tom, the manager, has assured me that all 37 taps will be running all the time. If you've ever been to a pub with an impressive selection of beers, only to find half of them off, you'll be quite excited by this point. The beers range from £3.40 to £65. These guys take their ale seriously. And their spirits too - I spied a couple of bottles of Sipsmith gin.

The pub itself is quite standard (but do look up at the fancy mirrored ceiling). I don't remember what was here before. But that's an issue with this place being on Leather Lane. Clerkenwell is known for its decent pubs, but I wonder if this one is just a little too tucked away. Staff are friendly and helpful, but they've got a lot to remember (it is in fact written on the back of the taps to help them out). They could not have been more lovely, actually. Props especially to Ray for being the friendliest barman in all of London.

They don't have a kitchen here, so no gastro type food. But they're doing an excellent line in Scotch eggs and pork pies. Fancy things, they are. And much better than crisps.

I don't think the bar will be without its issues - if you don't like ale, even with the rest of the drinks on offer, I don't think you'd come here. The staff are going have a helluva job with so many drinks on offer, and I'm curious to see if that many beers on tap can be kept up. And I do think they'll have trouble being in such a quiet street, a few minutes from any other decent pub.

But with that, is a cute venue with a lot of great beer, decent food and friendly staff. I love it here and really want them to do well. They open tonight, go and pay them a visit.