Leeds – Head of Steam Headingley

Although it looks like I’ve visited a branch of William Hill, the sun was annoyingly in the way for taking a photo of Head of Steam which is next door. I could have stood outside the window of the bar and taken a better one, but there were customers inside looking out and they might not have been entirely surprised and delighted of me taking a photo with them in it. This location was previously Havana Bar although a basic Internet search shows that there were consistent and substantial problems with that venue, of the nature that I won’t go into here.

The bar area, which is all modern as would be expected from a Head of Steam. There are two floors here, with the first floor being used as additional seating and also some sort of games room set-up. It wasn’t massively busy when I visited early evening on a Wednesday, but there were a few customers dotted about. Service was immediate and friendly, all efficient and well managed.

I went for the Litmus – Strawberry, Basil and Black Pepper from Atom Brewing of Hull. The beer had a perfectly enjoyable taste, but the tastes of strawberry, basil and black pepper were all too faint for my liking, which was slightly disappointing. A taste of black pepper running through a beer should be strangely slightly decadent, but it was lost on me.

There was a more relaxed and comfortable vibe to this bar than the Brewdog down the road, with a much better curated list of beers as well which cut across most different styles. Some of the furniture probably needed replacing, but this is a student bar which probably does a considerable amount of trade on weekend evenings, so I can imagine everything takes quite a knock. Also as another of my random comments, Head of Steam have these tables in a couple of locations which aren’t even because of the chunky wood and although I know that wood isn’t necessarily flat (it’s not that visible in the photo to be fair), I suspect a few drinks get knocked because of these slight slopes on the table.

Anyway, all very lovely and it’s nice to visit another Head of Steam, there aren’t that many left for me to go to now.