Sheffield Tap

It was work annual conference time, this year's event was being held in Sheffield so I decided to combine the conference with a pub crawl of the steel city. I had arranged a tour guide, my 'football friend' Jack who I have known since he was a youngster. He is studying politics at the university and is into his third year so I was grateful that he could spare me the time, especially as he has six hours of lectures a week !! Please note that he has to prepare for these lectures in what is a very dry subject before you all suddenly start signing up for a politics degree !!

I was dropped off at the train station after the conference so where could be a better place to start than the station's pub? Now I've had bad experiences of station pubs, The Bridge, a pub that has thankfully bitten the dust as part of the Birmingham New Street development, is a prime example. Cramped, dingy, expensive, no toilets and, amusingly, it had an all day menu that consisted of one item, a hot dog !!

The Sheffield Tap on the other hand was how a station pub should be so there's very little wonder why it was included in this year's Good Beer Guide. The pub is literally situated on platform 1b, this is the view out of the pub window..

If this pub was on platform 9a at Birmingham New Street I'd be forever missing the 17.49.....and the 18.03....and the 18.19......and the 18.49....

It is a fabulous place, it describes itself as a 'World Beer Free House' and has world beers dispensed from eleven traditional cask hand pulls and twelve continental style swing handle taps. Not only that, the pub also stocks over two hundred bottled beers !! Wow !! Mind you, I'm not sure whether or not they sell hot dogs !!

After much deliberation I eventually settled for a local ale, Magic Rock Breweries Rapture Red Hop Ale, all the way from Huddersfield, and at £3.20 a pint puts the £3.80 for Fosters charged at The Bridge over two years ago into perspective. This place should be moved brick by brick to form the centre piece of the new New St station...

The pub contained various rooms so I settled down in one of them and reflected on the day's key messages (no, really I did !!) while enjoying what was a really nice pint in a great venue. Please note the brewing equipment in the background..

For those of you who like going down the foreign beer route you may want to book yourself a sleeper from platform 1b, a bottle of Trappista Rochfort is a snore inducing 10% ABV !!

Although I was in corporate business attire rather than an anorak I could quite easily have lived a train spotter's life and passed away a few hours looking at trains from my fabulous vantage point but I'd arranged to meet Jack so my pint was a solitary one.