Small Bar is unashamedly a ‘craft beer’ bar. Boasting 25 taps pouring great beer, but no pint glasses and no Stella… So, worth a visit? Read on, gentle, er… reader.

Small Bar: Big Beer!

Thanks to a number of readers for recommending this as our next bar for review.

31 King Street has had a troubled and chequered history these past 25 years or so. From the mid-nineteenth century up to the late 1980’s it was trading as The Bunch of Grapes and everyone was happy. Then for a while it all started to go horribly wrong, and the pub had more names than Zsa Zsa Gabor (topical culture reference for the youngsters). It spent a while as The Indigo Bar, and also as ‘Sublime’ (which between you and me it wasn’t). For a time, I have a vague recollection, it was ‘Mulligan’s Whiskey Emporium’, and I think ‘Dr Thirsty’s Surgery’ appeared on the signage for a bit.

Struggling in 2003

Thankfully, it reopened as THE SMALL BAR in early December 2013, featuring huge numbers of craft cask and keg beers, and I popped in for a late afternoon poke-around early this week…

The bar is still in the room on the left, with a larger candle-lit drinking area to the right and further space upstairs. The décor of the whole place screams simplicity. Everything has been stripped back, even to the point of exposing an original brick fireplace that looks in need of repair. The lighting is a mix of chunky candles and a hotch-potch of long-life lightbulbs on dingly-dangly cables clinging to square wooden pallets bolted to the ceiling.

Far From Sublime

There is no carpet to be seen, and the ‘tables’ in the bar area are upturned barrels. The welcome is warm, though, and the whole place has a sort of informal friendliness about it, as if it is owner Bruce Gray’s beloved treehouse, but he’s very happy to invite you in.

The first thing Bruce says to me after ‘hello’ – and he doesn’t know I’m ‘reviewing’ the bar – is ‘can I give you a taste of anything?’. He has spotted that I am looking at the huge list of beers. This list is mounted behind the bar on individual strips of blackboard, rather like the ones they used to have on railway platforms telling you all the stops the next train will be making. He makes this try-before-you-buy offer to every customer that comes in while I am there, which I think is a really nice touch.

Music Shazam’d At The Small Bar

The Vaselines: I Hate The 80s: Hear on Youtube or buy on iTunes.
David Bowie: The Stars (Are Out Tonight): View on Youtube or buy on iTunes
The Roots & Cody Chesnutt: The Seed (2.0): View on Youtube or buy on iTunes.

The choice of beers is prodigious, and divided up into styles of beer. Belgian/Wheat; Sours; Lager; Pale/IPA; Red/Dark and even a section marked ‘Crazy Shit’. The beers are a mix of cask and keg brews, which will cause some Real Ale traditionalists some concern. Not me. When the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) got started in 1971, it was predominantly to decry the evil of keg bitter. But for me the problem wasn’t so much the fact that it was keg, it was the fact that all this keg beer was mass-produced, sanitised, flavourless pap that seemed to have been brought in solely to save production costs.

Real ale in those days was the last bastion of quality beer in Britain, and rightly championed. These days, however, keg beer isn’t the pap it was in those days. Just because a beer does not go through a secondary fermentation in the barrel, doesn’t mean it is not a high quality product created with the same passion as its cask cousin.

Blackboard strips list the beers on offer

The Small Bar is the perfect place to illustrate the point. While I am there I have two ⅔ pints (that’s what they serve, go figure). I try one cask and one keg beer. The cask is The Tiny Rebel Brewing Company’s Goldie Lookin’ Ale. Both the brewery and the band Goldie Lookin Chain are from Newport, hence the tie-in. It’s an American style I.P.A. which, to my untrained eye, doesn’t look that ‘goldie’ at all, and is notably darker. However, it does have a fruitily refreshing taste, fairly sweet but not cloying, and very gently whispers ‘Summer’s coming’ to your taste buds. Lovely.

The keg beer is Camden Town Brewery’s Gentlemen’s Wit, a pale Belgian style wheat beer. The guy who served me this waxed very lyrical about the roasted lemon used in the brew, which give it a real tang on top of the usual wheaty flavour. There’s bergamot in there too, to give it a more floral aroma. I recognised that distinctive smell the moment I saw on the internet that that’s what it was. Clearly, just as much love and care has gone into this beer as into any cask offering, and I still feel guilty for giving in to a personal weakness and buying a packet of Monster Munch to go with it.

For the more discerning gastronome (is there any other kind), there is a simple food menu, with the emphasis on local produce. Try smoked chipotle pork shoulder sandwiches, or a ‘Coney Island’ hot dog or, and this is a work of sheer genius, a Mug of Mac and Cheese! Now, I don’t bandy exclamation marks around willy nilly like some preening punctuation pimp, but if this scrumptious dish doesn’t deserve one, then nothing does! (Except that last sentence, obviously).

Small Bar in 2014, complete with Herbie in front.

So, the Small Bar is definitely beer led, and the passion for the product shines through, but there is also a high emphasis on customer service, and making you feel glad you came. Whether you’re a beer ticker, or just someone who likes a decent 378ml of beer in convivial surroundings, Small Bar is well worth a visit.

Measuring the Pub against random criteria:
Daytime Ambience: Filling up nicely with the after-work crowd… 4/5
Toilets: Clean… 4/5
Beer/Drink: In excellent condition and a huge choice… 5/5
Food: Simple, but fun and unusual… 3/5

Small Bar Bristol official website.

Disclaimer: All review visits are carried out anonymously where possible, and no money or payment in kind is accepted in return for a positive review.

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