A gay friendly welcoming bar slightly off the beaten track The Brewery Gate can’t afford to paint itself into a corner.

The Venue
Along with The Jolly Famers and The Castle, The Brewery Gate forms the trio of gay bars in Oxford. The pub’s historical significance is that it’s next door to Oxford’s only brewery, Morrell’s, which was established way back in 1782 and ran 132 of its own pubs. It was forced to close down in 1998.

It’s a fairly traditional old pub — in fact it still has the Morrell’s sign outside — with an all wood bar to the left as you come in. There are two-seater sofas, cream walls, exposed brickwork, mirrors and strings of fairy lights in the spacious main room. It has a dark ceiling and features small red wall lamps and there’s a small pool room right at the back and the waterway actually running right underneath it and this place used to be a stable apparently. There’s a dartboard in the back too.

The People
It’s slightly outside the busy part of the centre so doesn’t really get much passing trade. As a result it draws a pretty regular crowd of the local gay community plus some local residents.

The Food and Drink
You’ve got Kronenbourg, Strongbow, Guinness and Foster’s on tap. There aren’t any real ales or even bitters as the (relatively) new owners say there’s no call for them. The same goes with food although apparently the grub here previously was excellent. In bottles they’ve got Budweiser, Beck’s, Sol and Bulmer’s, plus all the alcopops. Wines come in at around £14 to £15 a bottle.

The Last Word
The Brewery Gate is a cosy little pub but by limiting what they offer they could find it’s also limiting their trade. Time will tell.

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