The Craft Beer Co. Covent Garden
CAMRA's North London branch named this its Cider Pub of the Year for 2026, a year after making it runner-up, which is not what anyone expects from a room known for its keg wall.
Why go
For a cask list that is not the same twice. The pub runs fifteen cask pumps, continuously changing cask beers sourced from the finest, independent micro-breweries from all over the UK
, with thirty keg lines and more than two hundred bottles and cans behind them (venue). CAMRA's branch surveyors counted it their own way in February 2026 and logged eight to ten changing beers plus two regulars, which is the honest floor under the operator's number. Takeovers and meet-the-brewer nights have brought in Firestone Walker, Siren Craft Brew, Beavertown and Hoppin' Frog.
It opened in May 2014 as the group's sixth pub, in a building rebuilt in 1961 as part of the Oasis swimming pool complex that CAMRA remembers as "a fairly indifferent pub" beforehand. Snacks come in from Mr Barrick's, including a Scotch egg with black pudding through it. There is no kitchen, which matters below.
Order this / avoid
- Order: whatever is on cask that night, and the cider, which is the thing the branch actually gave it an award for.
- Avoid: treating the food as food. See the hygiene line.
What locals & experts say
- CAMRA, North London branch, on the range, from a record last surveyed 5 February 2026: the pub
would be more at home in Beer Street with its 15 pumps dispensing an ever changing range of beers from across the UK. On top of this are 30 keg fonts. There are frequent tap takeovers and also meet the brewer events.
2 The same record carries the award: CAMRA North London Cider Pub of the Year 2026, and runner-up in the branch's 2025 cider award. - SquareMeal, unbylined, on where the beer comes from: the pub
keeps the focus on quality beers predominantly brewed in Britain, Scandinavia and America.
4 - No beer writer with a byline has covered this address in anything reachable on 1 August 2026, and no chef names it in the 622 rows of London industry recommendations held here. The craft case rests on CAMRA and on the operator's own counts, which is why the confidence on this entry is medium.
Good to know
- Hygiene, and this is why it is not a first send: FSA rating 1, Camden, inspected 19 March 2025, FHRSID 993196. Components are hygienic food handling 15, structural condition 15 and confidence in management 20, where higher is worse. All three are in the bad band, so this is not a case of an old building dragging down a clean kitchen. No re-rating was pending on 1 August 2026, and the inspection is sixteen and a half months old.3
- Sites: the brand runs Clapham, Clerkenwell, Brixton, Islington, Limehouse and Brighton alongside this one. The pub on this page is 168 High Holborn WC1V 7AA. Each site has its own inspection record, and the Brixton pub's rating 5 does not offset this address.
- Timing: noon to midnight Sunday to Wednesday, to 1am Thursday to Saturday.
- Booking: walk in. The site takes drinks reservations online.
- Access: a ramp can be requested from staff. The venue states plainly that the toilets are not adapted for wheelchair users.
- Operator: small group, this site held by The Craft Beer Co (Six) Ltd on a lease from Clairvot Berkshire Ltd. Group scale puts the burden of proof on edge and value; fifteen rotating cask lines and a branch award discharge most of it.
Verdict
should-visit — Worth the walk for the beer, and read the hygiene line before you order a Scotch egg. Fifteen cask pumps here are rebuilt from independent UK micro-breweries, with thirty keg lines and two hundred bottles behind them, and CAMRA's North London branch has now named it Cider Pub of the Year 2026 after making it runner-up in 2025. That branch award is quality evidence rather than architecture, and it is the sort of thing a buyer earns rather than markets. CAMRA's own February 2026 survey logged eight to ten changing beers plus two regulars, against the pub's claim of fifteen continuously changing pumps, and the truth is somewhere in that range either way. Takeovers have brought in Firestone Walker, Siren Craft Brew, Beavertown and Hoppin' Frog. The thing that keeps this out of anyone's first three: Camden inspected on 19 March 2025 and rated the premises 1, with food handling 15, structure 15 and confidence in management 20, where higher is worse. No re-inspection has landed since.