LOUNGE Ten to Filthy Cow, from louche fun (coddling celebs) to brioche bun (nestling a burger), No.10 Tib Lane has an interesting back story. We’re just pleased with its latest manifestation as Bock Biere Cafe, a genuinely cosy Belgian beer cafe banishing all those pretend tank-led Czech beer halls cropping up like a blight (the wonderfully wacky Albert’s Schloss the dishonourable exception).
The three storey bar is the latest project from former Granada PR Iain Hoskins, fresh from success in Liverpool with Ma Boyle's and Ma Egerton’s. Bock is a dark Gwerman winter beer named after a goat or the town of Einbeck where it was first, depending on how colourful you like your legends.
Rather contrarily there’s not a Bock beer on the list, which is overwhelmingly a homage to Belgian beer culture – no bad thing to our mind – with ten taps and 50 bottles. There are few real leftfield oddities of the kind you’d find in the comprehensive racks of Mort Subite in Altrincham, but it’s a tidy, well-priced list.
We tackled four beers off the draught array, all of them in 33cl measures because none were shy in alcohol,or flavour.
Our session beer, weirdly, was from the very un-Flemish or Wallonian city of Bristol, where local brewers Lost and Grounded pay their homage to those Farmhouse beers of Belgium.
Hop-Hand Fallacy (4%, £2.30) is very drinkable and just when you think it’s just hoppy it surprise you with a citrussy complexity.
Brugse Zot `Blonde (6%, £3.40) is from Bruges brewers Haave Maan, blojde creamy amd moreish – then the strength kicks in, almost Duvel-like.
Two Belgian classics to finish off – Chimay Trippel White (8%, £5.30), orange-hued, drier and hoppier than the other beers from this Trappiste brewery and the glorious, dark Westmalle Dubbel (7%, £4.30), complex, darkly fruity and surprising bitter in the long aftertaste.
]These beers need food, so we look forward to the introduction by the end of the month of food here. Sharing platters at first, maybe in the long-term mussels (what else?), but a big hit, we are sure, will be the planned fondues, a choice of savoury cheese of Belgian chocolate.
For the moment, enjoy, the dark wood, sumptuous leather, marble tops and bar brick surroundings, classy soundtrack fetauring the likes of Fleet Foxes and Nick Cave duetting with Kyllie. Candles give it a timeless feel as if you had just stepped into a Rubens canvas with all those buxom half-clad wenxhes (oh no, those are the ghosts of Lounge Ten).
Bock Biere Cafe, 10 Tib Lane, M2 4JB. Open from 11am to midnight. @BockBiereCafe
