For me there’s nothing better than sitting amongst the stills and talking to the guy who actually makes the stuff when it comes to reviewing pubs and beers.
So here we are at the Brewhouse and Kitchen and they have got it right. It’s an independent pub group telling local stories through beer and food. Beers are brewed on site and the range is unique to the pub.
Inside Brewhouse and Kitchen Tramshed
The Highbury Brewhouse and Kitchen is opposite Highbury and Islington tube and the fit out feels a world away from its previous incarnation as a match day pub. Here, they’ve got football stories in beer such as the ‘The Goalscorer’ IPA named after former Arsenal player Ian Wright and a bitter in honour of the building’s original usage, as the 1906 home to London Trams Highbury to Aldwych route.
However, it’s not the home of the £9 craft beer. It’s very real and deliberately steers away from stocking the big brand beers. They don’t have to, of course, as many of their 97 beers are made on site.
There’s a brewer in every pub and we took the Beer Masterclass at Tramshed (£15 or £25 with food) – a tutored tasting of 8 beer styles with Group Head Brewer Pete Hughes @SwaziPete followed by fantastic food.
Beer meister Swazi Pete
This surprising beer kicked off the evening nicely.
Krombacher dark lager – yes, a dark lager.
Followed by:
Brewhouse & Kitchen Highbury Romford Pele 4.5% abv – English golden style ale
Beavertown Gamma Ray 5.4%abv, American pale ale – hoppy and fruity
La Chouffe Belgian golden Ale 8% abv – yeasty with coriander esters
Innis & Gunn Toasted Oak IPA 5.6% abv – you can taste those Scottish moors
Timmermans Framboise Lambicus 4%, raspberry sour beer – pretty in pink
Schlenkerla Marzen Rauchbier 5.1%, smoked lager – really smoky, like a bag of pork scratchings
Left Hand Brewing Milk Stout 6% abv – lactose milk-sugar style
Until my score pad looked like this:
bingo – full house!
A very unexpected selection.
There’s also a Brewery Experience Day for £99 where you get to brew, taste lots of beer, food, and at the end of the day you get to take home a mini-keg of beer (or pop back 2 weeks later and collect a mini-keg of the beer that you have brewed).
Our evening was rounded off by this fella – the beer can chicken. Served with fries and a Highbury Colonia Estivo 5% Summer hoppy rye ale. Never mind how many beers we’d had it’s still a bit off-putting having a headless chicken sat upright at the table. He’d also had a few as he’d been basting in beer in the oven.
Brewhouse & Kitchen Beer Can Chicken
You can either take the chicken off the can and cut it into quarters or serve it on the can and carve it from there.
With nine already up and running and a few more pubs launching in 2015 Brewhouse and Kitchen is one to watch.
Oktoberfest (Munich beer festival) starts on Saturday 19th September and to avoid Thomas, the Bavarian Head Brewer at B&K Highbury feeling homesick, they are having their very own Oktoberfest. Read more here: brewhouseandkitchen.com/news
Cheers!
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