Kmflett's Blog

A Visit to Brewdog Alcohol Free

I’m not doing Dry January and never do. While I know the history of the temperance movement and respect at least some of it, I’m not an adherent.

Of course people have all kinds of reasons for not drinking from personal preference and principle to health and perhaps age (the last two may impact my liking for beer eventually I suspect).

So I welcomed Brewdog’s decision to open an alcohol free beer bar at (the rear of)207 Old St on the northern edge of the City of London.

It was previously part of the Draft House chain that Brewdog bought. I’d been in occasionally and I cant say it appeared all that different(though it has been thoroughly renovated).

Its on two levels with ample, comfortable seating, working wi-fi and a relatively small-ish bar area with 16 taps of low or no alcohol beer. There are also a couple of hammocks. Take care out there.

I stopped by at 6pm one day in opening week earlier in January and it was fairly busy though not rammed.

I ordered a pint of Hazy AF (0.5% £5.90) sat down and pondered how to smash capitalism, as you do.

Anyway more mundanely the beer was not particularly hazy, coldish and carbonated and tasted ok. It tasted less great as I got down the glass and it got less cold. It was still perfectly drinkable but not something that made me think, hmm, perhaps another.

Fortunately one of the original London craft beer pubs, the Old Fountain, is immediately over the road. It was busy, as it more or less always is. I had a glass of a Burnt Mill pale that was decent.

So a beer flexitarian….

I hope the Brewdog AF bar does well. There is a genuine demand and market there for such a venture. Its not particularly attractive to me at the moment, but you never know…