Beer Guide London Visits 5 – West London

So after a remarkably restrained day on Saturday, and with a day off work on Monday, what better way to spend Sunday than to some of the more local revisits.

My first destination was BrewDog Shepherd’s Bush, my favourite BD in London and conveniently reachable by bus from home. One of the reasons for heading here, asides from the need to revisit, was to collect my new BrewDog Visa 2.0 booklet. I got quite a few stamps in my first visa, including, for a brief period, a complete set of English bars, but now they have relaunched it. The plus side of the new version is that you can now claim your rewards directly from any BrewDog but the downside is the need to collect stickers by drinking core range beers as well as the stamps for visiting. But you know me, a challenge is a challenge…

As ever there was the usual excellent range of beers to select from, including some still lingering from Collabfest. I enjoyed beers from Denmark, Ireland and a 10% honey beer from Wild Weather in Berkshire.

I strolled across Shepherd’s Bush Green and jumped on a Central Line train for the short ride to Ealing Broadway where my second stop is conveniently sited opposite the station entrance, Beerkat. This is a great little bar that is owned by Laines with 12 beers on tap. There was a slightly confusing conversation where I tried to point out that they had the pricing wrong for one of the beers before I finally convinced them that a couple of figures had been transposed on the third measure pricing. It meant I saved 27p!

From here it’s just a couple of minutes walk to BrewDog Ealing which opened in April of this year. It’s a very impressive bar in a great location in central Ealing, it even has an open fire! Not as extensive a range of beers but I did pick up another couple of Collabfest beers including the Black IPA with Carolina Reaper chillies from Hyllie Bryggeri in Sweden. The chilli was noticeable but it was still a surprisingly drinkable beer.

Now it was time to relive my student years and jump on a 207 bus along the Uxbridge Road, I dread to think how many miles I have clocked up on this particular bus route! My destination was Acton and I hopped off more or less opposite one of my targets, but it would have to wait as I only had a little over half an hour to visit A Pint Of Hops before it closed. Luckily it’s only a couple of minutes walk and I was soon enjoying a beer in this great little bottle shop and bar. A friendly, knowledgeable, welcome is guaranteed here and, as ever, I left with several interesting bottles and cans.

I retraced my steps back to the High Street and my final visit of the day, The George & Dragon. This used to be the home of the now defunct Dragonfly brewery which was bought out by Portobello Beer but my understanding is that they are no longer the owners. The brewing kit is still in situ at the rear and hopefully one day it will be used in anger again. Having visited several times over the years whilst under it’s different owners I have to say the beer range on this visit was possibly the best I can remember. There is also a fridge which had some very good beers in it, including Orval, Rocheforte and Duchesse de Bourgogne. This was one of those occasions where you hear stories of what has been happening and visit expecting to be disappointed only to surprised when you actually get there. It’s the reason we keep revisiting our Guide entries!