“Come to my birthday party,” said a friend, “we’re going somewhere in Bristol which does really really nice cocktails.”

My heart sank. Anywhere that does really really nice cocktails, invariably (in my experience) thinks that a choice of beer is a choice between a Becks and a Tiger. Boring, boring, beer.

So imagine my delight when reaching The Rummer Hotel in Bristol (above), I flicked to the back of the cocktail menu to discover… the beer menu (that’s a Word doc).

And what a beer menu indeed. I sampled an Anchor Steam Beer; an odd lager called Curious Brew Brut (made with champagne yeast); and a delicious slow-drinking Station Porter made in Gloucester – I could also have chosen proper decent German smoke-beer, Cooper’s Green, or even Nigerian Guinness (which isn’t brewed with barley, but uses sourgum and maize instead).

What a joy to discover a place that understands that a huge choice of whisky might be interesting to a whisky drinker; a huge choice of cocktails might be interesting to a cocktail drinker; and a huge choice of beers might be interesting to a beer drinker. Top marks go to The Rummer Hotel. I shall return. Probably. At some point.

Image: Heather Cowper. Used under licence.

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