The new Bruhaha brewery tap in Totterdown, Bristol, is a remarkably successful melding of pub and taproom.
As the crow flies, it’s not far from us, but there are railway lines, a river, and a bloody great big hill in the way.
We schlepped there in the gloom of a late afternoon, in need of something to see off the January blues.
From the approach, the bar looked inviting, with golden light behind big windows bearing the brewery logo, and a crowd visible inside.
The pub (we checked on our spreadsheet) is plain and minimal in terms of decor:
picnic benches
white walls
bare wood
fairy lights
In other words the IKEA showroom school of bar design.
But with two levels, partitions and careful lighting, it felt cosy and intimate, rather than like a shop unit.
Every seat was taken by groups of older people, couples with babies, couples with tiny dogs, couples on dates, groups of lads, and various other combinations.
“It’s great to have more than three people in,” said Steve England, the owner, when asked how it was going by an inquisitive customer. (Not us. We just happened to be standing there when the conversation happened.)
There was only one beer from Bruhaha on offer, a Doppelbock, that was decent enough, if perhaps lacking the crisp cleanness of the German originals. If it was rebadged as a strong winter ale it would pass.
We didn’t struggle to find tempting beers from other brewers on the menu, though. From Good Chemistry’s Oatmeal Stout to New Bristol Session IPA. Lost & Grounded Keller Pils was there as a safe fall-back, too, and tasting particularly fresh and fine.
For the peckish, there was Indian food from the Roti Shack on offer, or nuts from big jars on the bar.
The bar is also being used for various local community groups and activities, such as oil painting classes – very laudable.
We found it hard to leave and agreed that we would not let the obstacle-strewn industrial and natural landscape of Bristol prevent us visiting again soon.
Bruhaha is at 156-158 Wells Rd, Totterdown, Bristol BS4 2AG, and is currently open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Details of events and food pop-ups are on the website.
Vessel Beer Shop in Plymouth has the range of a craft beer bar with the atmosphere of a friendly local pub.
It was opened in 2017, when we wrote about it for Devon Life:
“Katie and Sam Congdon are from Cornwall and Devon respectively but have spent the last half-decade immersed in the craft beer scene in Leeds. Now they’re back in Plymouth and ready to spread the word in their native West Country… For now, it’s a shop with some limited facilities and hours for drinking on the premises, but the plan is to make it something more like a bar in the near future. To start with, there are more than a hundred bottled beers, six keg lines, and a new innovation for Plymouth: a growler machine…”
Back then, we’ll confess, though we were rooting for them, we were a bit worried.
Would Vessel, a little out of town, in a former cooker showroom, find enough business to stay afloat?
Then came COVID-19, putting hospitality businesses everywhere under additional pressure. We could see from social media that Vessel was still going, but struggling.
We were delighted, then, to bump into Katie and Sam at a pub in Bristol in November 2022. They were in town on beer-related business and taking the opportunity to enjoy a session on the other side of the bar.
What was clear from that conversation was that Vessel had not only survived the pandemic but to some extent found its feet, and its people.
How to describe Katie and Sam? They’re the kind of people who default to smiling. They are optimistic by nature, and full of ideas and energy.
They’d made it through the pandemic with a mix of deliveries, takeaway, events over zoom, and sheer enthusiasm.
That challenge out of the way, they told us about plans for expansion, for a brewery, for more trips and tastings.
They talked about their customers with evident affection, and with none of the too-cool-for-school frostiness that sometimes comes with craft beer culture.
As we waved goodbye on that autumn evening we decided we needed to go back to Vessel and see for ourselves how it has matured in five (challenging) years.
Return to Plymouth
When we lived in Penzance, Plymouth was where we went for big city thrills, especially out of season. It often frustrated us, though – where was there to drink, or eat?
Sure, we enjoyed pints of perfect Bass in old school maritime pubs. And, yes, there was at least one pub where we could drink Belgian beer.
Now, even though the city centre looks more ragged than ever (the trees!) there are signs of change. It’s a crude barometer but there are now multiple places to get a decent cup of coffee, or an aspirational breakfast.
Vessel feels like part of this change. Though its surroundings remain down-to-earth, the bar itself – smartly decorated, neat as you like – could be picked up and dropped into any city in Britain, including London.
You might not like the sound of this – when you’re in Plymouth, don’t you want to feel as if you’re in Devon? But if you live way out west, rather than being there on holiday, your attitude will be different.
In that context, you just want good places to drink, where you can find beer from elsewhere, instead of the same old same old.
As it is, Katie and Sam, and their engaged customers, provide plenty of local flavour. Listen to the conversation over the counter and you’ll be in no doubt where in the world you are.
On our visit last weekend we enjoyed Sierra Nevada beer on draught, with some highly competitive pricing: £6.60 for a pint of 7.2% IPA is pretty good going in 2023.
We were also impressed by the range of bottled and canned beers in the fridges, from German classics to fascinating products from UK ‘blenderies’ and farmhouse breweries.
It makes Plymouth worth a visit
If beer is the deciding factor in where you spend your weekend city breaks, Vessel changes the equation.
You could spend three nights in the city, go to Vessel every evening, and never drink the same beer twice.
Add to the mix those previously mentioned old skool pubs, and the potential for day trips to brewery taprooms and micropubs across the border in Cornwall, and you’ve got more than enough to keep you busy.
Vessel is at 184 Exeter St, Plymouth PL4 0NQ, and online at vesselbeer.co.uk
Alpha Bottle Shop & Tap opened in Bedminster, south Bristol, back in May and has been on our to-visit list ever since. Yesterday, we finally made it – and liked it quite a bit.
Bedminster is made up of multiple neighbourhoods, from the theatre and coffee shop gentrification of Southville to the betting shops and greasy spoon caffs of East Street. The pubs there tend to be either (a) busy and down-to-earth, with stern warnings to shoplifters in the windows; or (b) shut.
The borders, though, have fuzzy edges and are porous and, as you might expect, the gentrification is leaking. There are now vegan delicatessens and houseplant emporiums alongside branches of Gregg’s and Poundland.
Alpha occupies a retail unit in a 1980s red-brick shopping arcade, across from a kebab house and next door to a charity shop. It feels out of place, for now – but probably won’t in five years’ time.
It’s a small establishment, about the size of most micropubs, with two full-size tables, a couple of smaller ones, and a ledge in the window lined with stools.
The opposite wall is taken up with fridges presenting a wall of colourful canned craft beers, with a handful of German and Belgian classics studded among them.
Newbarns Stout.
Behind a small bar, there are five taps for draught beer.
The menu suggests measures of one-third, half or two-thirds of a pint, and beers come served in modern tumblers or delicate stemmed glasses.
Newbarns Stout was the standout draught beer, being one of those straight-up better-than-Guinness stouts we’re always pleased to encounter.
Donzoko Northern Helles slightly confused us, resembling lager very little. As a lemony pale ale, however, it worked well enough.
As a special Christmas treat, we paid £17 for a 750ml bottle of Burning Sky and Beak Brewery Bière Piquette at 5.9%. They’re good, Burning Sky, aren’t they? You could relabel this pink, tastefully tart beer as Cantillon and nobody would bat an eyelid.
As with a lot of ‘contemporary spaces’, the acoustics were a problem: we could hear people on the other side of the room more clearly than we could hear each other. Those dangling mufflers they have at The Good Measure and The Drapers Arms would come in handy here.
It’s also the kind of place which attracts the owners of small dogs. If you like dogs, that’ll be a selling point. We only tripped over them once or twice. It was fine.
Nitpicking aside, the fact is, we felt warm towards Alpha. Bare brick and low light made it cosy and continental, rather than clinically austere.
Compared to, say, Small Bar in the city centre, it felt owned, not managed, and distinctly grown up.
It certainly deserves to be on the trail, despite being out of the city centre, and will be going into our Bristol pub guide when we revise it.
At the same time, Bedminster currently has something for everyone and we hope it stays that way.
One or two craft beer bars are a welcome addition but there has to be space for The Barley Mow and The White Hart, too.
Somewhat against the odds, a new bar opened on Gloucester Road over the summer.
Sidney and Eden is the latest development from the team behind Bottles & Books, which had previously evolved from a comic book and bottle shop into a teeny-tiny tap room.
Technically S&E isn’t an additional bar on the scene as it takes the place of something vaguely bar-like that existed in those premises before. But this is very much a New Venture, with a clear idea of what it wants to be – a neighbourhood craft beer bar that can compete with city centre destinations.
It has 20+ taps and, from our observations, makes a point of covering a range of styles within that. It’s weighted towards the IPAs and exotic stouts but there’s also room for local standards such as Lost and Grounded Kellerpils and Belgian classics such as Saison Dupont.
Prior to Lockdown 2 it seemed consistently busy, at least by the standards of interregnum levels of activity. We saw a number of people we know from the Drapers in there, suggesting that, like Bottles & Books before it, it provides a complementary offer.
We managed a couple of sessions there before lockdown, under the awning in our woollens, including a truly delightful evening trying a succession of silly pastry stouts and enjoying them immensely.
We hadn’t really thought about the neighbourhood craft beer bar as a concept before. Our assumption has been that this sort of specialist tasting venue is still sufficiently niche that it only really makes sense as a city centre destination.
Sidney and Eden is a good 40 minutes walk from the centre, or 15 minutes on the bus. It’s well connected on public transport if you’re coming from the centre or from Filton but not if you’re in any other part of the city. With that in mind, it really has to appeal to sufficient numbers of local people to be a success.
But if you’re going to do it in any neighbourhood, this one is a really good choice.
It’s directly on Gloucester Road and thus benefits from (a) the presence of other good pubs nearby and (b) the general independent spirit and commitment to shopping local.
We suspect there was plenty of pent up demand in the nearby residential streets. If house prices are a measure of wealth then it’s a pretty prosperous area (we rent and, in fact, are having to move away from the area to somewhere cheaper) and yet, despite the large numbers of drinking establishments nearby, none had a serious craft offer (definition 2) until now.
Sidney and Eden certainly improved the quality of our lives in the couple of months it was open, and we really hope it survives the winter and thrives beyond. It’s currently open for pre-ordered takeaway beer.
We try not to be excessively triumphalist (‘The victory of Craft is assured — not one step back!’) or overly pessimistic (‘We’re doomed!’) but, on balance, this is a worrying sign — a small crack in the plaster that might be nothing, or might indicate that one side of the structure is about to fall off.
For now, it goes into a slim file of evidence alongside the time we had a small-town craft beer bar to ourselves for two hours one Sunday lunchtime, and this story from our Saturday news round-up about a supposed craft beer bar being turned back into a traditional pub.
We haven’t named the bar or linked to the Tweets in question because, although it was a public exchange, our instincts tell us it’s private business and that people struggling to pay their bills probably don’t need a pile on. The picture is from the Beavertown tap room and is a serving suggestion only.
