The Craft Beer Co.

My brother, who’s also a big fan of craft beer, took me to try this place as it’s one of his favorite places to grab a pint. The selection was great (far better than most any other place I had been to in London) and the variety/​quality was also top notch. It was really nice to see that they had several different bottles of difficult to find Belgian beers including Cantillon and Drei Fontinen. I didn’t splurge on the 60 some Pound Framboos, but we did get a nice bottle of Cantillon. Overall though, the prices were reasonable and the atmosphere was upbeat. They have several locations, and I’d put this place on the must stop list for any craft beer enthusiast, or anyone missing the quality/​selection found at many American «beer bars».

You guys — this is the best selection for real CRAFT BEER IN LONDON! I mean REAL craft beer… not that «real ale» crap that some places rave about. They have such an amazing broad selection from all around the world. Tons of beers on tap and tons of beers in the bottle. They even had Cantillian in bottle! If you like beer — go! (Also you can taste anything before buying!)

Here is what it is:
+ A decent bar;with over 30 ales, beers, bitters, stouts, and porters on tap; with about 50 whiskeys available (from the run-​of-​the-​mill Glenfiddich 12/​18year to the more interesting Lagavulin 16year, Ardbeag Uigeadail, and the higher end Japanese whiskeys)
+ Rocking some generously sized burgers by ’40 Burger’; with lots of sauces, and great fries.
+ unpretentious
+ decently priced
+ a cocktail bar (which should be obvious).
Here is what it isn’t:
— a cocktail bar
— very spacious (though there is a good downstairs)
— the best ‘pub in London’.
But if you want to sample a large range of the best beers and microbreweries, from a place that changes the offerings regularly, its probably the only place to be.
(Conveniently also the best place to wait for a bloody table at Flat Iron on Denmark Street!)

Went for a quick lunch. Wasn’t much food, but we wanted to have a few pints and it was perfect!

Great selection of beers however when I visited a few of the drinks that were on offer had already run out. This was during opening week so there’s a chance that they were slightly busier than normal.
They have a small terrace available on the street to allow some al freshco drinking and when the sun goes down you can retire to the basement where there is plenty of seating area available.
There’s a wide range of drinks covering all tastes and budgets and the serving sizes make it perfect for sampling a number of different beers. It’s well worth a visit

Knowledgeable staff. Good beer. Lots to choose from on tap. Wifipassword is «goodbeer»

Quick glance:
+ huge selection of local ales on tap
+ ask for a taste
+ more seats upstairs
— early closing time on school nights
Full review:
Came here for a couple rounds of drinks after dinner on the recommendation of a friend, who has visited the Islington branch. (In fact there are four locations in total, including Brixton and Brighton).
At the bar, you are met by a dizzying array of ales, lager and cider on tap from various microbreweries. If you are feeling stuck for choice, you can ask the bar staff for a taste before committing to a pint. What a great concept.
There are a few tables upstairs for socialising needs, although you do have to return to the ground floor bar for orders. The pub closes fairly early when we visited on a weeknight, as we were out the door by 11:30pm. Maybe that’s a good thing — it does help encourage you to go home early on a school night.

There was no doubt in my mind that the Craft Beer Co was going to get a 5 star review. In fact I like it that much that I emailed them a few months back to see if they have any plans to open in Manchester (still waiting guys…) — adding to their 3 in London and 1 in Brighton that they already have.
In my perfect world there would be a pub like Craft Beer Co in every city.
The concept is fairly easy to get. Buy an old pub that’s seen better days, restore it to it’s former glory and stick a ridiculous amount of cask and keg beers on tap and hundreds of rare bottles in the fridges behind the bar. Oh yeah — and they sell the best ever pies on the bar to go with your beer (the chorizo one is a personal fave of mine!)
I like the fact that you can have a good old English ale one moment and on your next pint be transported to a land of hoppy goodness through America and back again by pint number 3. The range of Mikkeller is worth going for alone (I counted 7 on tap one night) and the guys behind the bars are really knowledgable and obviously love what they do.
Much more comfortable and welcoming than the Brewdog bars (although worth visiting for other reasons), here’s hoping for a Craft Beer Manc very soon!

It is the best beer in
London. They have lots of terrific and unusual beers to choose from. Price is a
bit pricey, but really worth the money that you paid for every bottle of best
and delicious beer. I will be back in here!

It is the best beer in
London. They have lots of terrific and unusual beers to choose from. Price is a
bit pricey, but really worth the money that you paid for every bottle of best
and delicious beer.

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

H E L L O Unilocal; j’ai avoir retourné, I have.
I’ve now lived in London since 13÷9÷12, and I shall give ye my best appraisal:
1. The Craft Beer Co. is the purest, most economical, most satisfying venue for quality draught beer I have experienced in this City. In 20+ cask attempts, I have failed to achieve a less-​than-​perfectly-​presented [half-]pint*. In 5+ keg attempts, I have failed to achieve a hint of staleness or tap grit. The beer is CARED FOR.
The cask selection cycles in a very thoughtful way, generally devoting about a ¹⁄₃ of the 16ish (?) hand pumps to a single brewery. This lends each visit to Craft a distinct flavour (HA HA that’s a pun), and provides a uniquely consistent way to acquaint oneself with the various cask-​focussed craft brewers around town/​country.
The [at least 16] keg taps lean heavily on the American/​Scandinavian neo-​tradition. Mikkeller, To Øl, Nøgne Ø, and Haandbryggeriet-​the-​pronounceable have all staked claim. Then there’s a sometimes highly surprising American smattering: Jolly Pumpkin Madrugada Obscura? Um, wow. Needless to say, these fellas are all horrifically pricey from the American PoV — but MUCH more reasonable than identical offerings I’ve observed at, e.g., the White Horse in Fulham.
If your wallet is obese, there is also the hilarious selection of American craft bottles: priced above any sane stateside drinker’s wildest estimation, but oozing the demented passion of RUTHLESSLY high-​class curation. Ain’t no state in the union able to get all them bottles in one place. Ah, maybe New York. Or California. Maybe.
And the topper. The bourbon list is… the full lineup of Van Winkle. Just hangin’ out back there. Don’t seem to draw much attention. (No really, London, this is a riotous in-​joke. You have no idea.)
2. There are 1 or 2 other pubs here worth your time: stay tuned, I shall reveal all.

Tuesday night was awesome. Wednesday morning (and afternoon) was less so. I’d been meaning to go to CBC for a while, but for some reason most of my friends think that Clerkenwell is «miles away» (bloody West Londoners).
The exterior of CBC is pretty unassuming (the hanging baskets may also make it seem like a bit of an old man pub, but it really isn’t) and for a place so close to the city, the clientele is very mixed. Anyway, the place has 16 cask ales on tap (all from the UK I think), and a further 10 – 12 keg taps of beers from all over. Oh, and then there are the bottles. So. Many. Bottles. The staff are also very knowledgeable, and even during busy times they’re great at recommendations.
The beer here isn’t cheap — generally it’s priced according to alcohol content, which is fair enough. For example, a half pint of To Øl’s Final Frontier is £3.95, but it does clock in at 7.1% (and is rather delicious), and it’s one of the few places where the bar staff don’t frown on you ordering half pints.
Highlights from our trip were: Red Willow Smokeless, a very nutty porter; the Southern Tier 2X Milk Stout (which, by the way, is an excellent choice if you want to ‘get into’ stouts — it’s a bit sweeter than normal stouts which takes an edge off the bitterness); the aforementioned Final Frontier — an American style IPA which has a rather unique character; the other IPA which I can’t remember, but was uberstrength.
The top dog of the evening, however, was the Southern Tier Choklat Stout (650 ml bottle). This was one of the smoothest, chocolatiest, most delicious stouts I have ever tasted in my life. Like… hot chocolate… and beer… in the same drinking vessel! And, despite clocking in at 11%, you really can’t taste the alcohol (and thus it is absolutely lethal). Be warned: this is very very very expensive (I can’t remember exactly how much…), but SO WORTH IT.
I think next time I’mma eat before I go. Needless to say, the evening ended with a stroll down to Blackfriars doing an acapella version of the Game of Thrones theme tune.

A super addition to the neighbourhood; I especially appreciate that the Craft Beer Co. is bustling even when almost everything beyond the Cottage Chicken on Leather Lane is quiet.
A random assortment of my friends, from those that live in Whitechapel to those that live in Paris, have invited me here for a pint and given it’s well easy for me to pop over from my flat I usually take them up on it.
To wade through the massive selection, speak to a barkeep and let him or her know your ideal flavour profile — this method’s proved successful for me (and they’ll usually let you sample before you commit to a pint.)

Huge selection of different beers both on draft and bottled both local and from other countries. In fact it’s a bit daunting to know which one to choose when you arrive at the bar and instead of three or four beers, the entire length of the bar is beer taps. I’m not going to pretend to be enough of a beer expert to critique the selection apart from noting that it was pretty big. Also the bar was pretty crowded to had to take pot luck on the few that I tried.
Apart from the main theme of the beer variety, it’s a nice enough space and additional points for having clean, modern toilets!

They definitely have a lot of beers here so that’s good if you’re a fan of beer. The service staff is quite nice and they will give you samples and gladly discuss their selection with you.
i was happy to sit here for many hours and go beer for beer with some of the London Unilocalers. They certainly have enough ales, both in cask and on draft to accomodate. We pretty much took up half of the bottom floor and had a grand old time while doing it.
Towards the end of the evening I had one of the scotch eggs which was rather tasty. I was also rather pissed by that point so my palette might have been a bit off.
Definitely a cool spot and certainly worth stopping in to. You won’t be disappointed.

Best bar in London? I don’t think so. Personally I think its sister pub, the Cask Pub and Kitchen in Pimlico, is better. But with its incredible range of beer the Craft Beer Company is still worlds away from your average boozer in London.
Sixteen to twenty beers on tap. Around 200 bottled beers in chiller cabinets. Very few that you’ll recognise. Plenty of leftfield stuff from around the world. Some strong, some expensive but also plenty of more affordable and ‘session’ ales too.
I think it falls short of the Cask Pub and Kitchen in that it doesn’t serve food beyond snacks, the selection of Belgian beer is bafflingly small (even Belgo’s range trounces it). There’s not a huge amount of seating space down by the bar (there’s more upstairs, but no bar there) and it gets busy: even with five bartenders there was a five minute wait for drinks. I doubt I’ve ever had to wait more than a minute to be served in the Cask Pub and Kitchen.
Still, there aren’t many pubs with this kind of range of beers in London. If you like your beer and are based in the area, you should definitely check out the Craft Beer Company.

Went to check this place out only days after it opened. So brand new you could still smell the fresh paint on the walls of this renovated pub. They kept the period mirrored ceiling yet it really feels like a more modern, brighter, space. If you’re a traditionalist you may not totally enjoy the décor, however if you like your ale, give this place a chance. They have a HUGE selection of beers from around the world as well as from local breweries. By the cask, on tap, and bottled, take your pick. You will have loads to choose from, just check out their extensive beer menu.
This is a beer’s connoisseur’s paradise, but you really have to be a connoisseur in order to know what you are ordering as the bar staff did not. In an establishment trying to promote itself as a mecca for all things beer, questions about what distinguishes one beer from another are bound to be asked. Yet somehow the bar staff when asked upon many different occasions about what they were serving, had their default answer of ‘I don’t know.’ What they do offer are many tastings should you want to sample before ordering which is a help.
The place was busy and cheery both times I went. I am only giving it 3 stars –for now– as I think it still has a ways to go. I will be going back to check it out again for sure.

Even though this pub has not yet been open a week, it has already established itself as the best beer bar in London. If you want an unmatched beer selection in a truly gorgeous setting, there is no other pub in London that competes.
If you’re looking for a run-​down London boozer with mass-​produced beers like Guinness and Erdinger on tap and packets of crisps to munch on this isn’t the place for you. This is a bar dedicated to beer for those who appreciate beer. Trust me, within six months this bar will be regarded as one of THE destination bars on planet earth.
The greatest asset of CBC is the selection. There is no other bar in the UK that has this variety of cask, keg and bottled beers available. There’s really no disputing this. The vast selection of beers is in no small part a function of the pub’s manager, Tom. Here’s another point that will not be proven wrong: there is no bar manager in the UK (and in the majority of the world) that knows as much about beer as Tom. He has an appreciation and knowledge of beer that will boggle the minds of most people, seasoned drinkers or not.
While I’m not a big drinker of hard alcohol and admit to having essentially zero knowledge of the stuff, people who do know about sprits are raving about the selection here.
The place itself is lovely with plenty of seating, ornate decorations and one of the more attractive draft systems in the city. There is a lot of room on the first and second floors, but given the huge crowds that have occupied the bar since it opened the space can seem small.
The only downside to CBC is the costliness; you will pay for the experience of drinking in a worldclass bar. The cheapest pints (UK cask ales, basically) can be found for £3.40, and prices go up from there.
In terms of pure beer bars, I would say the only other places to rival CBC are the Euston Tap and the Cask Pub and Kitchen. But right now the Craft Beer Co. is taking beer in London to a new level.

I’m going to have to disagree with Leighton S. on this being «perhaps the best beer bar in London». But The Craft Beer Co. does beer, and it does beer well. My mates and I went two days after the grand opening, and it seems to have already established a very loyal cadre of fans.
According to the sign — plaque, rather — posted outside of the establishment, there are 37 craft beers on tap and an additional 300 beers in bottles, readily available. I love craft beer, but the downside is that the selection borders on the realm of overwhelming.
The atmosphere is really quite nice. Upscale, but casual and unpretentious. Outside, there were dozens of patrons enjoying their beers on the sidewalk, and it was a great mélange of bankers from the City, students, and random locals. And everyone was incredibly friendly.
The beer selection is simply ridiculous. I was with a friend from Norway who said that some of the Norwegian beers available were difficult to find back home. There were plenty of breweries whose selections I thought I knew quite well, but apparently The Craft Beer Co proved me wrong on that.
The downside: as is to be expected from a place specializing in craft brews, particularly in that location, drinks can be pretty pricey. I’ve developed a soft spot for the Clerkenwell Lager, which runs at £5.50 per pint. I noticed choices on the beer list that were in the range of £14-£16 for a 500ml bottle.
I’m really excited to go back, but I think I’m going to wait until the whole grand opening buzz dies down. You should probably do the same.