London – Greenwich (Borough of) – Blackheath – Zerodegrees Microbrewery

This is the Zerodegrees brewery outlet in Blackheath and although they now have other outlets around the country, this is where it started. Blackheath is located just a short walk away from Greenwich (with its meridian line), hence why they chose that name for the business in 2000. They were early adopters of the pizza and craft beer concept, one which I very much applaud.

Only the outside of the pub is open at the moment and there are also only a handful of tables available. Most people were ordering food as well, but my stop wasn’t for a decadent lunchtime purpose. Staffing was excellent, plenty of helpful staff and they were knowledgeable about the beers, so there was a welcoming feel to the whole arrangement.

The specials list, which wasn’t entirely balanced in terms of the types of beer, but these are challenging times and at least there were three additional options. The brewery has also produced a ferocious number of beers over the years, with some rather interesting and innovative flavours and beer types.

There are some standard Zerodegrees beers, alongside the specials. One thing that I’ve never seen at anywhere that is interested in beers is that sort of price differential between a half pint and a pint. CAMRA don’t like this and it really seems to try and discourage people from trying numerous different beers. It gave me a bad vibe about Zerodegrees, almost that they knew their product was of a poor quality and they thought people wouldn’t try additional products after trying one. It meant that I scrapped my intention to have a pint of Lollipop and half of the Linus Blanket to just half a pint of the former, as I had doubts about their quality. I did try and just cut it down to 2/3rds of a pint, but the pub doesn’t serve anything in thirds. I forget the luxury of places like the Artichoke in Norwich.

The Lollipop milkshake IPA was fine, at the appropriate temperature as someone I won’t mention will be pleased to know, although it’s a slightly strange drink given it’s got a sour element. I quite liked it, although half a pint was actually enough.

All told, I rather enjoyed this visit, but I still don’t entirely understand why the brewery isn’t keen to promote people trying a variety of their beers. Having a third of a pint samplers which customers could buy seems near universal at breweries, but here they seemed to be wanting customers to stick to the same product. So nothing really bad, but I’m not really sure whether I understand whether this place is pushing their food, their cocktails or their beer. I rather got the impression that beer was third on their list of priorities.