Tuesday 27th October 2015
Bob Thompson
Tapped Leeds is another outlet for the Tapped Brew Co., a rapidly expanding chain of pubs and brew-pubs. It is very unusual in one respect as it has an in-house brewery that doesn’t produce any cask beer. That said, there is nevertheless an excellent range of cask beers to be had here. The pub opened on the ground floor of the Trinity Quarter Shopping Centre on 14th December 2013.
It has a good location that is slap bang in the middle of the city centre’s pub district and no doubt benefits from that on Friday and Saturday nights when binge drinking and pub crawling take on a rawer and more primitive aspect. There is security on the door at those times.
Apart from that it is a great place to visit during the day. I understand that the premises were formerly an establishment called Square on the Lane.
As mentioned earlier, this pub has a brewery and it is very noticeable after you enter the door. It extends along the whole length of the left wall of the large room.
The bar counter occupies most of the right side and in between is the seating area. There is lots of highly varnished wood and a mixture of high tables with tall chairs and also conventional tables.
There is also an alcove with a horseshoe-shaped stuffed bench-type seating. Throughout the room the seating is cushioned with orange-brown leather coverings.
The brewery has the conventional mash tun and copper and then in straight line to the street window there are five fermentation vessels. Each of these is connected by a separate pipe, over the heads of the customers to a pipe junction.
On the right side of the room are three holding tanks of 1,500 lire capacity where this beer is kept under pressure before serving direct to the founts. I looked at the fermentation vessels and each had a label. Three held brews on sale and the other two had fermenting beer within.
I think it works like this. When a brew has fermented out it is pumped to the tanks and it begins to be served. This process continues until the fermentation tank is empty. This beer is dead with no fermentation so is gassed up to get it onwards to the bar. If it is filtered or pasteurised, I know not. Between the copper and the fermentation vessels there is a square copper-clad piece of equipment which may do this.
There are other “craft keg” offerings from other brewers so they must come from conventional kegs. There are fourteen keg beers offered and up to thirteen cask. There is an unusual arrangement regarding the dispense of the real ales and this is by the Scottish system in which air displaces the beer to the tap. This method is also used in the Euston Tap and in both instances I guess that the amount of space available in each pub is the deciding factor for this.
There is normally at least one cask beer from the Tapped Brew Co and this comes from their brewery in the Sheffield Tap on Sheffield station. Their offering was Tapped Ale (3.5%). The remainder of the cask selection was an eclectic gathering. I could have had: Wild Beer Co (Shepton Mallet, Somerset) Bibble (4.2%); Cameron’s (Hartlepool, Co Durham) Gold Bullion (3.9%), Ilkley Brewery (Ilkley, West Yorkshire) Scary Spice (5.5%) or Weird Beard (Hanwell, London) Tsujgiri (6.2%).
The list continued with Thornbridge (Bakewell, Derbyshire)) Lord Marples (4.0%); Dark Star (Partridge Green, West Sussex) American Pale Ale (4.7%); Hopshackle (Market Deeping, Lincolnshire) Double Momentum (7.0%); Vocation Brewery (Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire) Divide & Conquer (6.5%); Magic Rock (Huddersfield, West Yorkshire) High Wire (5.5%), Cameron’s Craft Brewery (Hartlepool, Co Durham) Tontine (4.1%) and Ashover Brewery (Ashover, Derbyshire) Milk Stout (6.0%).
For lovers of the juice of the fruit there was Orchard Pig (West Bradley, Somerset) Marmalade cider (3.9%). All of the draught beers (keg or cask) and cider are shown on labels above the bar each held up by two bulldog clips. This is a common arrangement in some Czech pubs. The beers are served from taps in two rows with the keg stuff on the top row and the cask beers on the row below.
To eat in this pub there is pizza or.........more pizza. Actually I shouldn’t jest, as those I saw looked superb and I watched the chef making them up and can attest the fact that they are the real deal. Very Italian looking and the dough is freshly made with their own beer! You should not miss this pub if you are in Leeds.
Important Information:
Tapped Leeds, Boar Lane, Leeds LS1 5EL. Tel: 0113 244 1953
Sunday-Wednesday 11.00-23.00; Thursday 11.00-24.00; Friday-Saturday 11.00-01.00
The pub is in the centre of the city and easy to find from the railway station.
From exiting the barriers, walk across the concourse to the doors out. Turn left and walk along the pavement passing the Queen’s Hotel on the left. Here, cross the station approach on your right using the pedestrian crossing. Then immediately cross the next street. You will have found yourself on the corner of Boar Lane. You will see the pub on the opposite side about a hundred metres along.
Leeds station is served by trains from all over the country.
