brew.ding

Bring It Home - x x x x

📍 Bought
🍺 Black IPA
💪🏻 5.5%

Specially for tonight we thought we’d do a mid week post of RG’s unofficial World Cup beer! Siren has brought together some of your favourite Berkshire breweries (Double-Barrelled, Elusive, Mysterious & Bearwood) to create this great Black IPA. It’s rich with toasty malts that don’t overpower the fruited flavours from the mosaic hops. Try it before the end of the tournament or Bring It Home to drink whilst watching it come home on Sunday.

The Biscuit Factory -

📍 1 Queens Walk, Reading RG1 7QE
🍺 The Camden range, some other draft, rotating local draft, local cans
❤️ We love local independent businesses

Reading’s local independent cinema is open again & ready to show you all of the upcoming summer blockbusters. There is also a bar so that you can pick up a beer to take into your film. The bar itself is also just a great place to sit. The balcony offers a unique view of the Oxford Road so you can watch the craziness from above. They offer memberships that include cinema tickets & discounts.

This space also hosts a huge range of events - music, comedy, gaming and quizzes. There is something for any interest so make sure to take a look. Most importantly make sure you buy a drink or a snack at the bar while you’re visiting to help the venue.

A few other local businesses exist inside too with the cafe downstairs & Certain Sounds records ready to be browsed in the foyer. The Biscuit Factory has become a community hub hosting local people & visitors. We hope it serves Reading for years to come.

The White Eagle

📍344A Oxford Rd, Reading RG30 1AQ
🍺Standard draft selection, no real ale, big bottled selection
❤️We love huge selection of bottled Polish beers

The Oxford Road isn’t known for its great pubs & we feared that The White Eagle was similar to some of the worst the area has to offer. However this pub is a nice surprise.

There is a relaxed atmosphere whenever you come in here. The beer garden is big & well used. There are pool table to while away the hours. The food is cheap & cheerful. On Friday & Saturday nights there are often DJs with locals having a dance. The TVs are always showing live sport which attracts local fans.

Whilst the keg selection is your standard fare & the cask selection is non existent, there is a wide selection of bottled Polish beers offering something that you can’t find locally elsewhere.

The one downfall is that much like the rest of the pubs along the Oxford Road there are a limited number of clientele exchanging bags of goods half inched from Big Tesco. Something that does annoy us quite a lot when pubs turn a blind eye to it.

Don’t got out of your way to go here big if you’re on an Oxford Road pub crawl, need a spot for the football, or really fancy a bottle of Ksiąžęce then this is the place for you.

Weapon of Choice: Vera -

📍Bought
🍺Single Hop NEIPA
💪🏻5.8%

Bearwood’s Weapon of Choice series is dealing you your hop of choice. This single hop (Vera) New England IPA is beautifully cloudy & has delicious citrus peel. Pop to their tap room & pick up a can.

Who recognises the glass? 🐐

The Castle Tap -

📍 120 Castle St, Reading RG1 7RJ
🍺 Extensive range of interesting beers
❤️ We love how inclusive this pub is

This is not a pub that we frequent but we’d probably put it in the top 5 of pubs that are in walking range of Reading station. We don’t go that often because while it’s close to town it’s off the beaten track from where we live.

The Castle Tap is super inclusive & runs regular events for every local community you can name. The furniture inside & out (including the odd back room you need to walk through to get to the garden) this very cobbled together which adds to the community feel.

The reasonable sized beer selection is always varied. You’re almost guaranteed to find something you’ve never had before from one of the great locals or from around the country. Darts & board games add another level of appeal.

Great pub for a cosy drink & game, hosting a party or catch up, or sunning yourself in their big concrete outdoor space. Part of the central Reading pub royalty but not spoken about enough.

Fragment 02 -

📍Bought
🍺Hazy IPA
💪🏻5.8%

Double-Barrelled are back with part two of their 6 hazy IPA series that will stretch through the summer.

This one features Nelson Sauvin & Dolcita hops. The second of which was unfamiliar to us. Delicious & hazy with lots of vinous flavour, we really enjoyed this second entry in the project.

Pick it up at the tap room or your usual local beer spots.

The Lyndhurst

📍 88 Queens Rd, Reading RG1 4DG
🍺 Mixed local & national cask & draft
❤️ We love the amount of events we run

This pub has had a good amount of local coverage in the past but now it’s our turn to have a take on its latest incarnation.

The pub is reasonably small but has some good value beer including some local keg & cask. There are frequent music events which give it a lot of atmosphere. (Our limited pictures are from the Reading Village Easter Festival.)

The food menu used to be gourmet & is now a little basic. I think we’d only come back for a cheaper pint or for an event.

Honourable mention for the dreaded unused Smirnoff cocktail tap which will eventually go extinct.

Strata Nauts -

📍 Bought
🍺 Pale Ale
💪🏻 4.2%

We’re at The Nags Head today to celebrate Mysterious Brewing’s 3rd birthday! For the occasion they’ve brewed this very easy drinking pale ale in collaboration with the pub.

Strata hops give it a very subtle citrus peel & passionfruit flavour as part of a light, crisp & endlessly sessionable cask pale.

The party is still rocking so if you see this straight away pop down & join in. Mysterious have taken over a lot of the taps & there is street food to be had in the garden.

The Cunning Man

📍Burghfield Bridge, Burghfield Rd, Reading, Berkshire, RG30 3RB
🍺Standard gastropub draft & cask offering
❤️We love the river setting

Sat on the banks of the Kennet, this pub is out of town but also reasonably accessible. It’s about a 75 minute walk along the river from central Reading or a 20 minute bus from the station.

The huge beer garden is great for the summer. You can order food in most of it. The food is good but not that exciting & not super cheap. The beer selection is your average gastropub beer selection.

Somewhere for a family meal or a beer stop off during a river walk or boat ride.

Fragment 01 -

📍Bought
🍺Hazy IPA
💪🏻5.8%

This is the start of a really interesting project by Double-Barrelled. 6 hazy IPAs over the next 6 months, each with a different 2 hop combination, one for taste & one for aroma.

Each can also has a QR code to scan & a puzzle to solve that will lead to a final reward to those who complete all 6 fragments.

Fragment 01 has a hop combination of mosaic & krush giving citrus peel & tropical fruit flavours. We could happily drink quite a few of these.

Pick a can up at the taproom or local beer shops & be ready to head back to complete the set over the coming months.