Carriages, Aberdeen 18th April 2007

Managed to escape from my boss for half an hour before flying home, and popped into Carriages, a hotel bar.

Not just any old hotel bar though, this had an impressive semicircular bar area with ten handpumps, all of them with a different real ale on. I only had time to try two...

Houston Hunny Bunny (4.1%): Honey tones and an indistinct hoppiness make this a good but not exceptional beer.
Highgate Davenport's Original Bitter (4.0%): Dishwatery, northern style beer. Not my thing.

The other eight available beers were Youngs Bitter, Adnams Bitter, Caledonian 80, Fuller's London Pride, Black Sheep Best, Flowers Original, Greene King IPA and Courage Directors.

Whilst not the pick of pubs in town, it was certainly the best hotel bar I've even been in! I didn't try enough to say how well the beers were kept. How they manage to turn over enough stock to be able to serve ten different beers, I don't know. Looks like a competition between here and the Prince of Wales which has eight pumps.