St Ives Brewery Tasting Room, St. Ives

Official site of St Ives Brewery Tasting Room - stives-brewery.co.uk

Official site of St Ives Brewery Tasting Room - stives-brewery.co.uk

A small pub and bottle shop in a former bric-a-brac store, this is now the tap room for the nearby St Ives Brewery, although the focus here seems to be more on the bottle shop that the pub side of the business. It consists of two rooms internally, both quite small, with the front one containing the bar counter and an array of goods for sale, not only their own beer, but quite a selection of spirits, brewery merchandise such as caps, sweat shirts and tote bags and other items seemingly unrelated to beer such as coffee, pottery mugs and preserves. Décor wise it’s quite contemporary with pale wood strip on the floors, pale green paintwork on the walls and a small bar counter in the corner. The only available seating was a few stools in the window, although there were also some small tables in the room at the rear. The barman seemed a bit clueless, I had only just ordered my pint when someone else brought back a wooden tray with four small glasses in. I saw this and asked if they did thirds. No, we don’t he said. It was only when he’d finished pouring that he mentioned they did beer flights, by which time it was a bit late. Beers on tap were all their own as might be expected, and all keg rather than cask. On this occasion the available options were Drift, Slipway and Meor. No sign of any cider unfortunately, at least not on tap. Overall, I was a bit disappointed with this, and didn’t go much on the pint that I had. Fine to pop in and get something to take away perhaps, but I wouldn’t bother again as a pub.

Brand new bottleshop and bar. Light, bright and just the right side of stark - done to a good spec rather than cheap. The front balcony was a good for people watching. Four of theirs on keg, my Mean As DDH was fairly good for a style I usually don't really get on with and was served-up by a friendly, if over-familiar, barman. Worth a drop-in.