Pubs and Bars / Pub of the Week
Pub of the week: Bristol Beer Factory tap room
It’s quiet inside Bristol Beer Factory’s taproom on North Street early on a Tuesday evening, a couple of sofas claimed by newspaper-readers nursing a slow pint, and a pair of girls on a table getting to grips with Instagram videos and periodically dissolving into giggles. The black-painted brick walls bring down the high ceilings and make the industrial space positively cosy, while the Nirvana back catalogue playing over the speakers is pleasantly grungy. The barman greets drinkers with a friendly grin and personal recommendations of the massive range of beers on offer, from pale ale Badlands to a creamy Milk Stout.
On tap tonight are eight ales from cask and keg, a hyper-local North Street cider, plus a huge range of cold bottles in the fridge and along a shelving display made from scaffolding boards that runs from the front door to the bar. For those struggling to choose, a flight of three beers will set you back £3.50, and once you find the right one you can take home a mini keg. This is the only place in Bristol you can drink some of their brews.
The beers are created literally metres away, in a building that has been used for brewing since Thomas Baynton set up shop in 1829, a business he named the Ashton Gate Brewing Company. After more than 100 years of use, the building was briefly home to a rubber and tyre company and a printworks before Bristol Beer Factory took over in 2004 and brought the beer flowing back to this end of North Street.
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As well as pints to drink on the premises, the tap room sells bottled beers and mini kegs
By 7pm almost every table is full with groups of friends meeting up for a catch-up and couples out for a quiet evening. Two parents meeting up with their adult daughter perch on a bench, and she takes an uneasy sip of her mum’s gin and tonic: drinking anything but beer in here is practically blasphemous.
The tap room was used for this same purpose in 1865, when Ashton Gate Brewing Company was officially registered on this site, while the current incarnation opened in December 2016. Approaching its second birthday, it’s in good company as it joins other local breweries including Moor Beer and Arbor Ales in opening the doors for the public to try the product straight from the tap.
As the year winds up and Bristol Beer Club members look forward to the special Christmas brews that Santa might have up his sleigh, the team are celebrating being included in CAMRA’s 2019 Good Beer Guide: the only Bristol tap room to make the cut. It’s not difficult to see why as the hours slip comfortably past in the clutches of a cool pint or two of Fortitude, the outside world a long way away.
Bristol Beer Factory tap room
291 North Street, Southville, Bristol, BS3 1JP
www.bristolbeerfactory.co.uk/the-taproom
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