Beersmith Gastropub: When CBD Stands For 'Central Beer District’
By Noelle Mateer
A brewery in the CBD is just like a brewery anywhere else, but more CBD-esque. There are tasting flights and vats of beer. Ales are Indian and pale – but unlike at other Beijing breweries, the patrons in this District look like they just finished some very Central Business. We see a woman who works at a luxury boutique hotel speaking to another woman who works at a luxury boutique hotel. People are in shirts, in slacks, in moderately pricey shift dresses – which, to be clear, are not outrageous items of clothing. They are simply outrageous within the context of a microbrewery.
Beersmith Gastropub attracts a very different crowd from, say, Slow Boat’s late hutong Taproom (God bless its eternal memory). And even in Great Leap’s yuppier moments, when expats flood into the bar’s Sanlitun outlet after their jobs in fancy-country embassies like Germany’s or Canada’s, it’s hard to imagine the management there ever hiring a five-piece reggae band – let alone one that performs keytar solos.
There’s a reason we’re mentioning this place in the same breath as Great Leap and Slow Boat, though – the beer is that good.
Beersmith is a laudable, if more buttoned-up, addition to Beijing’s ever-expanding craft brew scene, with its excellent beers all made by Great Leap alum Tom Ashton. The IPA (RMB58) is worth traveling across town for. The Pilsner (RMB48) goes down like a silky, sexy keytar solo. And the crisp dry-hopped cider (RMB60) uses Shandong apples. Don’t care about Shandong apples? Your loss, they’re the greatest!
Food has its highlights. A Wagyu beef burger (RMB88) is all kinds of mouth-melty and the beer-battered French fries (RMB48) are heavenly little crunch-bullets. The rest of the dishes don’t quite rise to this standard of godlike pub-grub goodness, but that’s OK – they are more than adequate for accompanying beer. And with beers this good, the booze is definitely the focus at Beersmith.
Daily, 11am-2am, 1/F Hotel Jen Beijing, 1 Jianguomenwai Dajie, Chaoyang 朝阳区建国门外大街1号 (6505 2277)
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