The last day in London, time for one more BrewDog bar to complete the challenge!
So we had brunch in BrewDog Shoreditch, to recover a bit from the previous day, and we received the coveted ninth stamp. We decided not to claim the pint of Punk IPA we had earned straight away—it was still a bit early for pints—but to save it for whenever we can visit the soon-to-be-opened BrewDog Canary Wharf. That way, we can sort of earn the Big Smoke Badge twice, making it 10 bars out of 10!
Assuming the BrewDog bars would be too crowded on a Friday night, we decided to spend the evening on the Bermondsey Beer Mile, hoping for slightly fewer people, and to check out a couple of new places.
Since BrewDog got involved in the Hawkes Cidery, we decided to give their craft ciders a try at their taproom. The guys from Anspach & Hobday regularly visit Brussels, now it was our turn to visit them.
London Calling Sweden is a bit special, since their beer isn’t made on the Mile, or even in the UK! It’s brewed by Poppels in Sweden and imported. No brewing in the Moor Beer Company Vaults either, since that’s all done in Bristol, but at least the beer made it to London!
We started our day in BrewDog Tower Hill, the biggest bar in the chain, since it opens earlier than any other, and it serves breakfast. Bacon rolls for the win!
Another attraction of the bar is the full-size brewing installation, technically making this the only—at least for now—BrewDog brewpub. Since the beers brewed there are only available in that bar, we had to try some, even if it wasn’t even noon yet…
Since we didn’t want all of our trip to be about beer, we also visited the National Gallery. There were so many paintings there I had to learn about for an exam just a couple of weeks ago! For instance: these Bathers, the first by Paul Cézanne, the second by Georges Seurat.
To start, we wanted to get some of the more remote bars done, so first up was the most southern BrewDog bar in London: BrewDog Clapham Junction.
We arrived mere minutes after they opened, but the welcome couldn’t have been warmer! We had some pizza to prepare us for an evening of beer, later topped up with some crack fries in the most western bar, BrewDog Shepherds Bush.
BrewDog Camden just underwent a ten day refurbishment, but luckily for us, it reopened tonight, reason for a big party. Unfortunately, they had some trouble with a few beers on tap, and the stamp was nowhere to be found…
The last bar of the day is the first one we hadn’t actually visited before: BrewDog Angel. In this bar there are some home brew kits one can use to brew their own beer, but for the occasion of a Two Tribes Tap Takeover, a professional brewer had taken over the mash paddle. Even before we had our drinks, we were given the grand tour, and invited to participate in the brewing process.