The Beer Shop, Nunhead, SE15

Personally I would still regard this as a micropub, even though there was some music playing when I was in there on Saturday afternoon. It's certainly small enough. It's still essentially as described by the previous reviewer, except for one very important improvement - there were three real ales available instead of the one that Pubsignman encountered. As you would expect, there was nothing from the usual suspects, with Gipsy Hill Hepcat, One Mile End Salvation, and Track El Capitan all on. There were also seven keg beers on, and all were advertised on a board above the bar counter. One very strange thing was the white wall on the right, which had hundreds of numbers written all over it. My companions and I couldn't work out what it was all about, and the barmaid said it was a big secret that would be revealed soon. Can't wait. Continuing with the bizarre theme, they have a pop up street food bar in the tiny garden (Fridays and Saturdays only), and when I visited they were offering Japanese street food (!), which seemed to consist of small pancakes with Cornish seaweed and other stuff on them for a fiver a pop. I think I'll stick to pork pies, sausage rolls and the like. As is usually the case with micropubs, this one also majors on functionality over luxury, but I found it a very agreeable place to stop off for a swift one.

Just across from Nunhead Green, this is a craft beer bar in the micro pub style. The pub is located in a former shop premises which for a brief time was also used as a recording studio, where, among other artists, Ghost Poet recorded his Mercury Prize nominated album 'Shedding Skin'. Nowadays we find a very compact single room bar with wooden floorboards and large, branded front windows, completely steamed up on my cold January evening visit. A few high benches with barrels underneath stand in front of the windows and are supplemented with high stools, whilst two rows of tables with benches and standard chairs run down either side of the room. The left side has a plain, white tongue and grove panelled wall, whilst the right hand side has a wall mounted rack full of beer literature, a beer board and a long, stencilled screed which waffles on about how nuns used to brew near this site, which may or may not be true - it certainly reads as a load of nonsense. A small servery area stands in the rear left corner, attached to which is a pole which has the pump clips of the available cask and keg beers stuck on it. Above the bar is a nice beer bottle and can display, set into a set of unusual clip holders and this was complimented by an already fairly extensive pump clip display arranged around the toilet door. A jazz soundtrack played quietly throughout my stay, which presumably invalidates this from the strict micro pub qualification criteria, as would the fact that keg beers are available, but to my mind the place is a just a variation on the micro pub model. A peek behind the bar counter showed that there is space for four cask ales on stilage, alongside all manner of keg dispense and three real ciders in boxes. There was just the one cask ale available when I arrived - Gipsy Hill Beatnik - which I had just had a poor pint of in a nearby pub, so I opted for the Tempest Long White Cloud on keg which was available alongside Runaway American Brown. It turned out to be a tasty beer and I was grateful to the friendly, knowledgeable barman for giving me a quick description prior to ordering. Of the three remaining casks, beers from Siren, Gipsy Hill and Brixton were still conditioning. I wasn't really sure what to expect from this place beyond the usual micro pub experience. I thought it worked pretty well as somewhere you might pop in for a quick pint if something interesting is on, and if I lived locally I would doubtless make good use of their take-out options. However, it is very small and people seemed a bit more insular and unlikely to strike up conversation than in a typical micro pub, which can make it awkward to get comfortable when busy. Worth investigation but perhaps not somewhere to spend an entire evening.

Small shop conversion to a micro pub.One room with a tiny bar at rear.Quite a few tables and chairs.Noisy with people talking over the loud music.Three cask beers Gypsyhill -dissident,Arbor -mb bomb and Head in a hat -1945 ipa good condition but dull(hops are still on ration it seems).Ridiculously expensive bottled beer.Bench outside.

Official site of The Beer Shop - www.thebeershoplondon.co.uk

Official site of The Beer Shop - www.thebeershoplondon.co.uk