When BrewDog got taken over and closed its central Bristol bar something interesting happened: a firm called Saviour Bars took it over, lock, stock and barrel, and kept it trading.
At first, it was just Not BrewDog, with the original signage blanked out with tape, and the menu full of BrewDog beers that needed drinking.
Now, it’s been (just barely) rebranded as The Sceptre Tavern with about 20 beers on keg, mostly from the Big Craft end of the spectrum.
What that means in practice is that it feels weirdly like being back in 2008, and we rather enjoyed ordering Paulaner wheat beer and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale as if we were in our twenties again.
One thing we lost at the height of the UK craft beer boom was access to American classics like SNPA. Once ubiquitous in UK craft beer bars, it got to the stage where the only place we’d ever see that particular beer was in supermarkets.
The Sceptre feels quite temporary, like one of those clothing shops that pops up in an empty former chain store premises on the high street with the intention of parting gullible teenagers from their pocket money.
There’s no denying it’s a great location, though, with beer garden tables on Welsh Back overlooking the river, and big picture windows facing onto Baldwin Street.
We drank our beers under big trees on a warm afternoon and had a perfectly nice time.
The big philosophical question is, of course, whether this counts as a new tick for our (now incredibly drawn out) ‘Every Pub in Bristol’ project. It’s the same building as BrewDog Bristol, with some of the same beers. But it also has a new name, new owners, and a totally different offer.
This time, we’re saying it needs to be ‘re-ticked’, but we won’t necessarily make the same judgement for every refurb or relaunch.
