Citizen Smith

Citizen Smith could easily have been dismissed in our search for a pub, slating itself as a "Drinkery". The day to this point had been spent with Lou, her mum and sister; while watching another participate in the Head of The River. It was early evening and we literally needed a stop gap before the weary rower arrived after team drinks. Located opposite Putney Rail Station its main appeal was that it wasn't the nearby Wetherspoons and it had plenty of free tables. Hardly a ringing endorsement but we just needed a pub. Looking like a venue for a girls night out of overpriced cocktails and Tom Cruise wanabee barmen, as opposed to a meeting place for the Tooting Popular Front, I wasn't hopeful, but it was preferable to squeezing into the Rugby fans at the Wetherspoons.

Greeted by an Aussie waitress (well this is Putney) we were told that a menu was on the table and she would come and take our order. My impulse was just to ask for something generic rather than waiting for her to make her rounds again. Lucky I didn't. Far from having just a standard British and European  choices there was a far better mix than expected. Next to the four pages of cocktails there was an ample choice of draught Meantime (Kolsch, Pale Ale, Smoked Back, Stout) and Cornish Coaster for the UK, bottled Little Creatures and Coopers for Down Under and from our friends across the pond a mix of draught and bottled Sierra Nevada (Pale Ale and Porter), Brooklyn Brewery (Lager and Brown Ale), Goose Island and Liberty as well as a number of German offerings such as Schneider Weisse. Its fair to say that my interested had now piqued.

My mission for the day had been to create a good impression which I think I had to this point. This could have been a tipping point however as I pored over the choices. It was a case of do I go for a Sierra Nevada which at £4 a pint seemed reasonable to the £5+ i've paid in East London or bring back memories of Bedford Avenue with a Brooklyn Lager. After much deliberation its was the Meantime Smoked Back which clinched it. Having had a particularly lethal traditional German smoked beer weeks earlier I was interested to taste the Meantime take. Lou's mum (also Australian) attracted the waitresses attention and enquired as to which beers were chilled. With a quizzical look the waitress ventured that all the beers were served cold and they didn't actually warm any of them up. Not wanting to explain the difference to the waitress between chilled and what some people refer to as warm or room temperature I suggested a Sierra Nevada.

The Meantime Smoked Back arrived and I tasted cautiously. While still retaining the malty, smokey taste of the Rauchbier it was a lot more subtle, suiting a wider audience. While caught in my one man tasting session I was oblivious to Lou being short changed by a tenner. The waitress was apologetic and slightly embarrassed and all the more so when she did exactly the same thing to the next table. Perhaps its time for the Drinkery to invest in some product training and calculators. Leaving after the one beer, it won't be somewhere I would return to out of choice but if faced with it as a best alternative I wouldn't say no to a Sierra Nevada.