As promised, Cambridge Railway Craft Beer. Well, very close to the train line anyway at the end of a dead end backstreet.
The Calverley Brewery Tap occupies a garage of the type I’ve been clearing recently to stock our church’s annual Mammoth Sale.
This year’s sale highlights include the following gems;
Mrs RM isn’t going to let me keep that gorgeous looking Mansfield bar towel, even after I stuck it in the tumble dryer for an hour.
But I come to praise the garage craft, not to SR6 it.
Calverley leads the cavalry charge towards a more diverse range of eating and drinking in late night Cambridge, albeit a decade behind Ancoats or Hackney.
On Friday night the makeshift bars and outside seating was packed with 25 to 35 year olds. You could have been in Winchester.
Not the most salubrious of settings, but that’s half the point. A great view of residential Cambridge life from the benches as you munch away on oregano pizza.
The beer is NEVER the reason to go to a pub, but the beer at Calverley was, again, remarkably good.
Particularly the cask stout, one of the tastiest dark beers I’ve ever had, and beautifully fresh (NBSS 4). And of course, despite CAMRA shenanigans, we are still free to pour our 6.4% organic Pale keg into our cask glasses and be stunned at how good beer can be, even when it’s not produced in a Wolverhampton factory.
Anyway, enough Cambridge craft. Back to Bradford BBB next.
retiredmartin 
A place to drink, hardly a pub. I saw a group of winos on the seafront of Brighton a month ago. If they’d assempled some old chairs and tables and sold White lightning and Tennents super to passing hipsters, would that be a pub too?
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The Eternal Question. It has very limited opening, which discounts it for me, but it also had a lot of chat. Welcoming place too.
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You would have got some funny looks if you’d turned up in football colours and asked “wot lagers you got on mate?” 😉
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Yes. The Carling availability test is a good one !
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Lager? Well we have this organic green tea Czech style pilsner.
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“You would have got some funny looks if you’d turned up in football colours and asked “wot lagers you got on mate”
… No you wouldn’t. If you’re mistaking this for a snobby hipster joint, you’re dead wrong. Its full of the exact same crowd as you get in the Kingston down the road. A mix of ages, young couples, old boys having a chat, a group of lads having a night out, work colleagues on a Friday night. Your typical eclectic pub mix. They normally do have a lager on, anyway.
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Agree. Really good atmosphere. Haven’t been in Kingston for a while.
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Its more of a pub than any branch of wetherspoons I’ve ever been in.
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Won’t have that. Loved the Geldart, but Spoons (particularly the Tivoli pre-fire) have a wider age range than any other pub I go in. That’s what I call a pub.
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Pop up pub – I think….
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Is there much of a market for second hand mammoths in ecclesiastic circles around Cambridge?
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Yes, we’re a town which loves our woolly mammoths.
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You’re splitting opinion with this one.
As you know I have a very diverse outlook on life, and I’m sure the beer is excellent, but this place looks shite to me. Almost like a poor man’s Magic Rock Tap, send ’em up to Huddersfield to see how it’s really done.
‘Who lives in a house like that?’
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Perhaps harsh, as just a local outlet for local beers at source. Works well with pizza 😉
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Surely it’s all part of the micro-pub movement – the mammoth in the room so to speak – who can make the most ‘rustic’* environment for a micro – pub (that people will still go to)…
*(posh South Yorkshire term for Richard’s ’s’ word)
😉
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PS can I have the mansfield beer towel for my pub shed, if it doesn’t sell at the church sale??
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Yes you can, on exchange for a Strongs of Romsey one.
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Like they say – if you don’t ask….:)
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How about a Doom beer tasting glass and three marbles…?
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just the 3 marbles and you’re on !
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funny isn’t it. Calverleys is one of the most relaxed, egalitarian and, well, “pubby” places to go for a quiet pint and a chat in the entire of Cambridge. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone (who has actually been there) who didn’t like it. Maybe the photos don’t do it justice.
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Agree py. Benches for a shed aren’t everyone’s idea of pub. Hard to capture the feel.
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Of course there are sheds.
Then there are sheds …
#metoo
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I ask this seriously. How different is this really from the Dyffryn Arms in Wales?
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If it’s still there, little changed, in 100 years, it might be vaguely comparable to the Dyffryn Arms.
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Very true. I’m not sure I would travel for Calverley’s like I did Dyffrn Arms. And I won’t live long enough to verify the 100 year mark.
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“Mrs RM isn’t going to let me keep that gorgeous looking Mansfield bar towel, even after I stuck it in the tumble dryer for an hour.”
Sigh. I can commiserate.
“This way”
The beer must be good as there’s not much of a view. 🙂
“Weird fonts”
But a lovely selection.
“and be stunned at how good beer can be,”
I keep drinking beer partly because it keeps surprising me. 😉
Cheers
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