GAVIN AITCHISON lets the train take the strain on his pub crawl to the latest Pivovar bar, the Harrogate Tap

IT takes 32 minutes and six stops for the 19.11 from York to reach Harrogate. That’s 32 minutes in which to allow your imagination to run wild and anticipation to mount.

A further 40 seconds enables the eager passenger to nip past the dawdlers and to dash across the footbridge to the town’s newest venue, on Platform 1.

And just a few more minutes is enough to see what an utterly tremendous job the owners have done with the place, taking a derelict building that had hitherto been wasted for decades and turning it into an ornate bar boasting astonishing beers from around the world.

Welcome to Harrogate Tap, the newest addition to Pivovar’s family of bars, a new sister pub to Sheffield Tap, Euston Tap and our dearly-beloved York Tap, as well as to Pivní in central York and the new Tapped Leeds.

The Harrogate Tap is long and narrow, running along the back of the York-bound platform. Windows behind the bar overlook the platform, meaning those waiting for the train home can watch as it pulls in – and then perhaps pulls away again, depending on their willpower.

Nine keg fonts dominate the centre of the bar. To each side are six cask ale hand-pulls. Alongside those are three more keg beers, the everpopular Bernard lagers that appear in all the Tap bars. And behind them, in a series of fridges, are around 150 different bottled beers.

It seems an understatement to say Pivovar create exciting bars.

Their venues are not so much pubs as cathedrals to beer, their customers thirsty pilgrims, their bars altars to brewing idols. Harrogate’s motto is Arx Celebris Fontibus: a citadel famous for its springs.

Pivovar’s could easily be Arces Celebris Zytha: citadels famous for their beers. The drinks they offer are far more magical than the weirdly wonderful water on which Harrogate was built.

Amid the vast choice, it seemed only polite to begin with the owner’s own creation. Jamie Hawksworth, founder of Pivovar, set up Tapped Brew Co 12 months ago and the beers have been an instant hit. Bramling X is a golden ale but with rich flavours of the sort usually found in darker pints; currant and blackberry flavours being balanced by a crisp bitterness.

Next was Thornbridge’s Kipling, an old choice for me but one I never tire of returning to. It’s a pale ale brewed with New Zealand hops and oozing tropical fruit flavours such as mango and pineapple.

If it was impressive, the next was truly outstanding. KeTo RePorter by Birra Del Borgo in the Apennine Mountains of Italy is the sort of beer you might drink only once but will still remember for months afterwards.

The brewery’s RePorter (King Porter) is enhanced and elevated by the addition of Kentucky Toscano tobacco leaves, ordinarily used to make cigars in Tuscany but used here to “aromatise” the beer, say the brewers. The result is a dark, spicy, chewy beer that seduces then smothers the palate. It’s outstanding, and I had to ask for a glass of water afterwards to prevent the rest of my beers becoming redolent of the smoke-rooms in pubs in years gone by.

Along the bar, Roosters of Knaresborough impressed with High Tea, brewed in conjunction with local merchants Taylors, using jasmine flowers and green tea. I could not pinpoint jasmine but the half I had was dry and floral and more-ish nonetheless.

Magic Rock’s Ringmaster, Thornbridge’s Bracia, most of the keg range and half the bottles also called to me. But so, alas, did the station tannoy.

Therein lies the one drawback of this place – not a defect with the bar itself, but a gap in the Northern Rail timetables. The final direct train back to York is at 9.05pm, meaning those who don’t live in Harrogate are forced into an early exit. Back out on to Platform 1, back on the train home to York – and back to York Tap to seek out those tantalising beers we didn’t have time for on our travels.

 

Lost and found again

THE Tap building has seen incredible beers long before now – or at least one, anyway.

During the renovation, workmen removing a false ceiling discovered this bottle, evidently left by one of their Victorian predecessors.

Allsopp’s India Pale Ale was one of the most famous beers of its era, one of the early IPAs, originally created to withstand the long journey to Britain’s imperial territories.

This particular one was bottled by Hodgson’s of Harrogate, which appears to have been what later became Hale’s Bar, in Crescent Road. The Tap’s owners plan to display it in the bar in due course.

Twitter: @pintsofview