The Devil's Microbrew

We commemorated Silk's visit to Bristol on Saturday by taking him (and sundry mad scientists who were attending his gas kinetics conference) to the Smiles Brewery Tap, one of our favourite Bristol pubs.

The evening took a turn for the distinctly weird when we decided to try out the new microbrewery-cum-restaurant, Zerodegrees. Being long-term habitués of brew-pubs like Smiles', we weren't prepared for the achingly trendy, glass-walled, pine-floored and utterly packed establishment we found. The 500-odd people there can't possibly have been real-ale drinkers (the only beard, beer-gut and black T-shirt we could see in the place were located, I'm embarrassed to say, about my own person), so what exactly did they think they were doing?

I'm not totally sure what I think about this. As a CAMRA member, I am of course supposed to applaud any attempt to popularise decent beer, and all this stuff was brewed on the premises. I was particularly seduced by the black lager, an utterly surreal porter/pilsner hybrid I'd never even imagined, let alone seen elsewhere. [Edit to add: It seems this may have been a schwartzbier, a traditional German style which I'd just never come across before.] This sort of good-but-gimmicky approach was reflected in the other beers as well -- including a seasonal mango beer (which doesn't seem to be listed on the website).

They also did pizzas, which looked as if they might be rather good.

On the other hand, Zerodegrees appears to be a chain, with another branch in Blackheath and more planned -- all brewing locally, but to centrally-determined recipes. And certainly a CAMRA purist would look censoriously at a brewery whose repertoire was built around these deliberately wacky beers.

I admit I'm likely to go back there (perhaps not again on a Saturday night, unless we manage to achieve protective coloration by dragging along some of our fashion-victim friends -- and yes, we do have some) but I think I'll feel distinctly Faustian in doing so.