By the River Brew Co, Gateshead
Prestigious venues though they may be, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and Sage International Music Centre on Gateshead’s riverside are in danger of being eclipsed by their brewpub neighbour. By the River Brew Co is a 15-barrel microbrewery, taproom, cycle centre and restaurant, billeted in a community of weathered steel shipping containers. And, my word, how good it felt to stand at its door after three months in hibernation. What a sense of freedom!
Logging in at the door and being ‘fired at’ by a thermometer is no great problem and actually gives you time to study the beer menu. Five fermentation vessels sparkle behind the taproom counter, where 20 keg-beer taps and two cask handpulls emphasise freshness – your beer travels all of two socially distanced metres from gleaming stainless steel to stylish glass. (Like the pub’s clientele, its beer is tracked and traced, its temperatures taken digitally.)
Look up from your well-spaced bench on the extensive boardwalk to pan to a skyline of castle keep, city walls and spires. While Gateshead might lack the architectural exuberance of Newcastle over on the north bank of the river, it more than stands up for itself in the spirit, energy and enterprise of places like this brewpub. BTRBC has an acclaimed restaurant, Träkol, specialises in cooking over fire, while its bike shop offers brunch by day and cocktails by weekend.
The terrace bar is a real suntrap and, as befits a brewpub in the seventh-leastrained-on town in the UK, ever-changing beers include When the Garden Was Dry (6.5% abv), a rhubarb and oolong tea saison, and Double Sunset (3.9% abv), a strawberry kettle sour. Big Trouble in Little Gateshead is a sipping-down pecan maple imperial stout glorying in its 14% abv, while Gateshead Brown (5.2% abv) is notable for the toffee flavours that cling to dentures.
I idle over Nature’s Mysterious Patterns (an American-style pale ale, 5% abv) while a mechanic from the cycle shop walks his charges back and forth like a stable hand in a parade ring. I return to the swirling water, and my beer. Mysterious patterns by the river, you might say.