Pub 131, Day 48 – Bierkeller

By Rob

Having sank seven pints in Chapeltown, we fully intended to head home. But Lady Fortuna had other ideas. Extending her mighty hand downwards to once again meddle in the affairs of mortal men, she lit my phone up with a message from my cousin – it was her birthday and various family members had, inexplicably, ended up in town dancing on the benches at Bierkeller. On the train back into the city centre, we figured we’d be close by anyway. Why not have one, two, or three more pints – just for good measure?

While sitting in the train carriage, as we trundled back towards the heart of the city, we got chatting to a guy seated nearby. He’d just finished his shift at the KFC in Chapeltown and was heading back to his home in central Sheffield. After snapping a selfie with him for no discernible reason, he asked if he could share a taxi with us. We said he could, because we’re nice people, and because it’s cheaper to split a fare between three than two.

As we arrived at the main station, we headed to the taxi rank. It was at this point that our new compatriot explained he only had a single pound upon his person and that this was, therefore, the full amount he was able to contribute towards the price of the taxi. Now, I was prepared to be magnanimous. Besides, an extra pound towards our journey, which we were making anyway, would make it 50p cheaper for both of us.

Andy, however, was outraged.

“Are you joking?!” He cried. “You wanna split a taxi and put one pound in?!”

Incandescent with rage and blue in the face with sheer disbelief, Andy proclaimed that he’d rather pay the extra pound himself than allow some chicken-frying-freeloader to steal a ride into town. And so we left the poor bloke standing in the December chill as we sped off, comfortably seated in a taxi, towards West Street.

If there was any doubt about whether the previous venue – the Staindrop Lodge – was a pub, then there was zero ambiguity surrounding this next stop. After all, few pubs actively encourage punters to climb onto the chairs and fling themselves around to the sounds of a classic German beer hall (the Backstreet Boys, Shakira, and Anastasia judging from the playlist).

What more can you say? It’s a great big room full of long benches and tables (you stand on the former, but never the latter). People drink enormous steins filled with lager or disgusting ‘cocktails’ and everyone is spectacularly drunk. We each had a stein of Spaten (followed by a second of Beck’s Vier and a third of Lowenbrau). I’d say that the lagers were a welcome change from all the ales we’d imbibed, but by this point we’d have been happy swigging warm scrumpy from an old shoe.

Unbelievably, Andy was at work the next day. “This is absolutely horrendous,” and “I can’t stress how horrific I feel” were just two of the many texts he used to describe the experience.

Pub: Bierkeller (102-104 West Street, S1 4EP)

Rating: 8/10

Pint: Spaten

Brewery: Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu (Munich, Germany)

NEXT UP: Revisiting a renamed pub, at The Bloomery...