Simply walking the quiet, lavish suburban streets of St.Leonards and Naremburn gives us the impression that this is a tight-knit, community minded area. That same impression extends in to the small but well organized bar as locals cruise in for a few cold crafties and bump in to old friends in the process. It’s safe to say there is a really friendly vibe going on and we encountered that personally as we sat and had a lengthy conversation with Kat, the lovely girl behind the bar.
The self styled nano-brewery’s output is small-scale but very carefully crafted and it’s reflected by their limited range. The bar offers six taps and two hand pumps, two taps were reserved for their ‘strong sour Saison’ which was super refreshing, yeasty, spicy and fruity with a slight hint of bretty sourness and the other was the ‘Belgian Wit’ which was in the traditional style with spicy phenols, bubblegum, fresh herbs and citrus rind. Unfortunately only one of the hand pumps was flowing but it was more than made up for when we wrapped our lips around their English Bitter which was brilliant, took us back to the bars of London with its flat co2, sweet caramel backing and soft floral and earthy hops. It was a shame there wasn’t any more of their beers on offer so we couldn’t help ourselves and finished off on a few ‘shmiddy’s’ (a half pint glass which appears to be some kind of North Shore invention) of Akasha Korben D coz it’s just..that..good! By the way, take away’s are also very limited. They only had their Pale Ale in bottles but we must say they were very good indeed.
It’s hard not to like the place, it certainly has a very comfortable and laid back atmosphere with some really cool pieces of furniture to keep your eyes busy; namely the wall of bottles which when we look at is really hard to stop ourselves from humming “100 bottles of beer on the wall 100 bottles of beer”! More of their own beer would have been excellent but hey, you can’t win all the time. Not bad, a cool little bar we’ll definitely return to if we’re back in the area.