Cloisters Bar – Take me to church
Cloisters Bar – Take me to church
A perfectly serviceable pub, if you're in the area.
Nothing pleases me more than a pub with a big board on the wall which tells you exactly what beers it has on. Cloisters Bar gives all the information you want - brewery, style, ABV and crucially, price – for its 10 casks.
Tweaking the premises of the old parsonage of the church next door, Cloisters Bar has few features which nod to its past. The gantry is an exception, made up of a series of wooden arches with stained glass set within them. Other than that, it has some of the trappings of a traditional pub, such as the fireplace in the centre and some classic memorabilia dotted around the place. It consists of one large room split into two sections: the open area by the bar, and some smaller, snugger tables on the other side of the entrance.
The barman got the hump when I asked him what his freshest beers were that day. But I had a reason for asking – the beer is normally very good, but I have had a dud pint there before which tasted like it had been sitting in the cask for a while. It comes with the territory when you’re keeping that many real ales on at the same time.
To his credit, he pointed at two options, and I went for an Azacca Mosaic from Two by Two Brewing (4.7%, £5.40). As he slammed it down on the bar in front of me and marched off downstairs, I had to take his word for it.
In any case, it was fresh. As you’d expect from the name, the hops left a dry taste in the mouth and pierced the back of the throat, as if I’d got a pine needle stuck down there. It’s the kind of overly-hoppy beer which last felt exciting a decade ago. It wasn’t my cup of tea, despite the unfilteredness making it the colour of a milky Early Grey. (I’m shocked to read that the brewery describes it as having “low bitterness”.)
But I can’t blame anyone but myself for choosing it – and certainly can’t blame the pub for serving it. The rest of the cask selection is an assortment of Scottish beers and those from further afield, largely the north of England. They’re mostly pale, but there was a chocolate stout and a heavy on last time I went.
Cloister’s Bar is part of a small family of pubs run by Edinburgh Real Ale Ltd, and both its siblings are superior. It’s worth walking the 15 minutes to The Bow Bar, or if you’re on the other side of town, dropping into The Stockbridge Tap.
Where is it?
Where next?
Also in the Tollcross area is the reliable Blue Blazer.
The chaser
Talking of freshness brings me on to “fresh ale,” a new type of keg beer announced by Carlsberg Marston’s back in March. I’ve been thinking about it after a piece from Camra chairman Nik Antona in the latest Wetherspoon’s News magazine.
Usually, real ale (the stuff served by hand pulls) goes through a second fermentation in the cask when it’s in the pub cellar. But it only lasts about three days once it’s open. Keg beer doesn’t do that, and it lasts a lot longer - which means it’s less likely to go off and pubs don’t have to chuck as much away. Of course, the two types of beer taste very different.
What Carlsberg wants to do with “fresh ale” is have the secondary fermentation take place in the brewery, before it’s put into kegs and shipped out. It says this lets it last for 14 days once opened. It says this is good for the pub industry, which is clearly struggling right now.
Camra, on the other hand, hates this idea. As an organisation set up to protect cask ale, this quite literally goes against everything it stands for. Its main gripe, which is totally legitimate, is that Carlsberg will have pubs serve the kegged stuff through hand pulls. “For generations,” writes Nik Antona, “a handpump on the bar has been a mark of assurance in cask-conditioned beer.”
He uses the words “duped,” “betrayal” and “misleading” to describe this practice. Carlsberg says it will label its “fresh ale” as “brewery conditioned” on the pump clip. But most drinkers won’t understand that this means it’s not real ale. What’s more, Antona says Camra has not found any evidence of that label being used anywhere. (This could be because the “fresh ale” is only being trialled in a few pubs and only on three beers – Hobgoblin, Wainwright Gold and Wainwright Amber.)
I agree with Antona that it’s misleading to serve a keg beer through a hand pull. I also agree that large beer conglomerates should “champion cask beer by brewing more of it, rather than hiding a keg beer on the bar, using a handpump.” There is a risk that this crowds out cask beer, which I love.
Having said that, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued to try one.
Great to find a pub without Sky Sports in the background. Likewise the Bow Bar and the Stockbridge Tap. What better reason for a visit.