Horseshoe Bar

For the 5th and final instalment we’ll be changing things up slightly, I had heard great things about the Guinness in the Horseshoe bar but you can imagine my dismay when I showed up and saw Union Jacks paned into the window. However, prejudices aside we ventured in and approached it with an open mind. Horseshoe bar is ‘apparently’ the longest bar in Europe but they don’t even know for certain themselves, we’ll run with it anyway for the sake of the blog. Located in the heart of the city centre, this makes it easily accessible for most people and seems to attract a lot of traffic.

A few of us visited on a Friday afternoon and it was pretty much full to the brim. Because the bar is in a horseshoe shape, this makes it quite tight to navigate around especially if there are a few heavy pintmen hanging about the bar. We eventually managed to find a spot to perch at and got ourselves a few pints. Along with the 104 foot long bar, they also have a lounge upstairs focussed on showing a wide variety of live sports fixtures which was also very busy.

Over the course of this blog I have learnt that the extra cold taps tend not to be the answer, which was what they were using at Horseshoe. The Guinness came very cold, perhaps too cold, to the extent that I could’t really taste it. Along with this there seemed to be a few inexperienced operators behind the tap as some of the pours were pretty questionable. The pint itself was okay, certainly nothing to write home about. Unfortunately it was lacking in all areas of the Guinness triad: Domage, Shtick and Creaminess. It was still an enjoyable outing though, but I won’t be in any rush back. 

Setting: 8.5/10

Price: £4

Pint: 7.3