london beer related. . . .

R

robert ames

robert ames
in feb 2014 i was in london for a week and on my to do list was to get to a pub that had samuel smith on the pump. it had been a while.

the only pubs that i could find just had goofy lager lout shit on co2. beers i'd never heard of. no sign of nut brown ale or taddy porter, etc. nothing in cask. not a pump in the entire pub.

the samuel smith pub on the south side of holborn just east of tottenham court road that i have frequented in years past is gone.

fuller's london pride is still in the city.

what's going on? is something rotten in the state of yorkshire?
 
Search Samuel smith in Wikipedia. FN 10 links to a map with 20 locations in London. Note the pubs are no longer branded Samuel Smith.
 
CAMRA's pub guide is here. They're the society for cask beer in the UK and although they aren't perfect, they've done an incredible job at resurrecting cask beer. Also, although you seemed not to find one, there are definitely more places serving good beer and beer out of cask than there were 5 or 10 years ago. This year's 'Cask Report' suggests that ~70% of pubs seem to have beer on cask (though more and more pubs keep closing, which is its own problem).

Sam Smith appears to mostly sell their stuff though tied houses, so it wouldn't surprise me if you can only find those beers at affilliated pubs (which may or may not be on the CAMRA list--I haven't looked). Craft beer has really taken in off in England and so there's a lot of great beer there now--you might want to broaden the search beyond the Sam Smith.
 
Not sure if you're planning another visit to London but you can use the perfectpint dot co dot uk site to search for specific beers served in London pubs.

But I don't think they produce draught Nut Brown Ale or Taddy Porter - just bottles. Bitter, Mild and Stout are the Samuel Smith beers you're likely to come across on draught.
 
dave--thanks for the info. right now i don't recall so much which beers i had draught from sam smith in the past, but at least i could find them on draught.
 
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