THE CAMBRIDGE TAP. DON’T GET TOO EXCITED, PAUL

September 2024. Cambridge.

If you’d asked me to guess beforehand what a 3 pub crawl round Cambridge would comprise, I might have guessed Champ, Maypole, Free Press.

No-one could have predicted the Town & Gown and Cambridge Tap.

Two McMullen’s conversions, the first from a cinema, the Tap from a Cambridge Building Society next to the giant Spoons.

I wonder where the shoe box with my retirement savings when they moved ?

More importantly, I wonder what McMullen were thinking when they acquired this as a flagship.

Sometimes words are unnecessary.

It’s a cluttered bistro for tourists and John Lewis shoppers, with standard 2024 pub menu (just more expensive than the Spoons),

and pretty much evidence you’re in the house of a respected, cask breather using, family brewer from down the A10.

But there’s a handpump, dispensing a lone Gade, “a Hoppy West Coast inspired Pale Ale with a British cask twist“. I guarantee you’ve never heard of it.

Paul bought the pint and a half (lightweight, me); I attempted to find the loos again (lightweight, me).

Recipe for disaster here after five pints…

Back downstairs, I awaited Paul’s damning verdict.

It never came. The glass may seem to steal from Beavertown,

but this was high quality cask, cool and rich (NBSS 3.5). Far, far, better than in the Town & Gown; how, I cannot say.

Two years ago the Tap had been cask-free, as t’other Paul from Kent found out, relying on their Rivertown keg,

So, a real ale gain to shout about, even if McMullen’s themselves don’t.

Zap, as they say in Hertford.

Unknown's avatar

Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

10 thoughts on “THE CAMBRIDGE TAP. DON’T GET TOO EXCITED, PAUL”

  1. “Paul’s damning verdict never came”. If that’s the cask beer that sells there then so be it and I have no criticism of the pub, but I must admit to much preferring my previous AK Mild. I have never been one for citrussy beers and being so very “packed full of carefully selected American Hop varieties” I couldn’t tell whether or not “this was high quality cask”. The Eagle is said to be the Cambridge pub for discoveries but we discovered from McMullens’s two houses there that what’s killing pubs is bar staff made idle by customers making one drink last all evening.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I suppose I should say I rarely comment on the beer itself, Paul, as people’s tastes are so different, just the quality of cellarmanship and turnover in the pub. Like you I’d prefer the AK, but that pale beer was cooler and crisper in the Tap to me.

      Like

      Reply

  2. I can’t eat red cabbage whether pickled, sticky, or any other, because being that colour I can’t instinctively grasp how it ought even begin to taste.

    With beer served in what appears to be a pre-school child’s – slightly larger maybe – tumbler, I have a similar problem.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Etu,
      I’ve always liked red cabbage ( which my mother served with her Lancashire hotpot ) as much as green or white cabbage and can eat yellow tomatoes but couldn’t eat purple potatoes and probably not carrots other than orange. No logic to it really.

      Like

      Reply

      2. ‘Vitelotte’ potatoes have a dark blue, almost black, skin and dark violet-blue flesh; they have a characteristic nutty flavour and smell of chestnuts.

        Like

      4. Etu,
        There was a very generous portion of red cabbage today in my Sunday lunch as Stafford’s Sun Inn. It was actually purple rather than red and that reminded me that I would have preferred purple rather than green broccoli. None of the vegetables were overcooked and the Tiger was drinking well.
        A Sunday bus to and from town was only introduced seven days ago, as I was returning from Norfolk, and today it nicely avoided much of the rain for the Sun and the Railway.

        Like

  3. Pleased to see that two years down the line, the Tap has some (one) cask on sale. Good burgers, as well – according to my report from May 2022, but as recorded I managed to get the Cambridge Tap confused with the Cambridge Brewhouse.

    It’s my age, don’t you know.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment