Well, it didn't take long for events to make my pub guide post out-of-date, on not one but three counts!Firstly, the leasehold of the Free Press is up for sale as Craig wants to concentrate on running the Alexandra. Apparently, though, it's going to stay a pub and they're specifically trying to find a new landlord who's a good fit for the place as it is. Secondly, the Man on the Moon has been taken over by Terri and Jethro from the Cambridge Blue. This is good news from a beer point of view, although it's not clear how much it's still going to function as a music venue. Thirdly, and perhaps most excitingly, the building behind the guildhall that used to house the university's pensions department has been turned into The Pint Shop, Cambridge's first entirely new pub since the Regal opened in the late nineties.
The Pint Shop's website claims that its concept is based on the original Beer Houses of the 1830's. In practice, though, anyone who's drunk in places like Craft Beer Co or any of the Tap pubs will recognize fairly quickly that what we're dealing with here is a Craft Beer Bar. Notably, it's the first pub in Cambridge to have a beer range dominated by new-wave breweries like Magic Rock, Kernel and Buxton, and the first place to offer a really serious craft-keg selection.
All this has understandably generated rather a lot of excitement from local beer geeks, so we dropped in on friday to check it out.
The first impression was that they've done a brilliant job with the conversion. Some of the pictures online make it look a bit sterile, but the reality, full of happy chatty beer drinkers, was relaxed and friendly. The main room was a small but not cramped bar, with lots of wood and white paint, while meals are served in a separate dining room. When we were there, the crowd was mostly made up of fairly regular friday night types, and not noticeably dominated by the expected craft-beer hipsters.
The beer was almost all from on-trend new-wave craft breweries, with ten keg and six cask fonts on the bar. The beers range from Kernel's easy-drinking Table Beer up to heavy-hitters like Rogue's I^2PA - a big resinous beast clocking in at 9.5%. The selection was perhaps overly biased towards hoppy pale ales, and consequently lacking a bit of variety, but it sounds like they're already trying to correct that. While the prices of some of the stronger keg beers might surprise people who aren't used to craft beer prices, the mid-strength cask options are about in line with most other Cambridge pubs on that front. As an alternative for the non beer drinkers, there's also a shelf of 30 gins and a range of posh soft drinks - a friend who'd made the tactical error of having to drive home still enjoyed the quince cordial and the home-made lemonade.
The food also looks tempting. The bar snacks are fairly upscale, with interesting sounding things like rabbit pasties and fennel pork scratchings listed, albeit at equally upscale prices. We didn't see the full meals, although based on the sample menu on their website, we'll be going along to try them out as soon as possible.
Overall, then, the Pint Shop adds a great new dimension to the Cambridge pub scene, particularly in an otherwise fairly crap area of town. I don't think it'll be long before we pay another visit.
