When you are walking around in Singapore they are so many places where you can take a seat and grab a nice cold beer. There are also more than a few where, should you be so inclined, where you can go and indulge yourself in the Singapore Craft Beer scene. Good Luck Beerhouse is just such a place. It is small, so you do risk walking straight past it but if you can read words on walls and don’t spend all your time with your head down staring at your phone then there exists the possibility that you’ll not pass right by. It is on Haji Lane, a narrow lane bursting full of independent shops selling clothing, posters, knick-knacks, food and of course, Craft Beer. Good Luck Beerhouse is not some giant commercial beer hall that fits three hundred people and still looks half empty. This place would look full if six to eight people stayed inside and if two or three people hung around out front, that’s how small it is. And in my book, all the more reason to support it. There are other bars in the area, what made this place win was ist opening hours. If you’re out and about doing tourist things, or if it just happens to be lunch time, or it’s a Wednesday, then you might want an interesting alcoholic beverage. Who then, wants to have to wait until 16:00 for other places to open? Here you can go, grab a drink, sit outside where it’s nice a warm and watch all the interesting people going by. The area around is rather interesting as well there is some incredible graffiti right around the corner, behind the bar. Maybe we call it street art or urban mural? It’s not like someone’s gone around tagging, these are some very conceptually beautiful pieces that have obviously taken a great deal of time for planning, preparation and execution. Basically if you are heading to the Masjid Sultan you are in the right area, roughly. There will be a number of narrow streets bustling with people and small store fronts but only one will have a black sign hanging outside with neon lights on it saying Craft Beer & Dim Sum. That’s the one you want.
Going inside there isn’t really a lot you can miss. There are two fridges along one side of the room and some seats and tables along the other. At the end is the bar and the toilet door, separate of course. Behind the bar is a chipboard wall with all the taps attached to it and with the tap list blackboard above it, it’s all very minimal but it works. I suppose it has to be kept to a minimum really, too much in a small space would quickly looked cluttered. On the side of the room with the seating there is chalk mural on a blackboard painted wall. I make this assumption as that’s how it looked, it may well have been white paint on a blackboard, either way, it looked very good. When we visited there was a young girl working. She was very friendly, asked how we were doing, if we needed any help choosing what we wanted, explained a few of the beers to us in terms of flavour profile, very nice and helpful. Before we get to the beer list I will mention, although I may not always be altogether sensible I am not an idiot, it was +/-30C outside, it wasn’t even lunchtime yet, I hadn’t eaten anything so far and I still had a big day of sightseeing ahead of me. That in mind, I took in much more of the ambience of this place than the beer it was offering.
1 – Happy Belly – Daryl’s Urban Ales (Singapore) | Fruit Sour | 4,8% abv | 5 IBU
The lovely lady poured me the beer of choice and handed it over. I mentioned to her that I wanted something a little lighter and more refreshing, that’s why I picked the mango and passionfruit sour, after all I was finding the weather a little too hot. She smile and assured me she found it hot as well, and see lived there. I took my round bulbous glass with me outside and set it down on the shelf table that built up on the edge of the street. I really like this glass if you have a beer with no foam, as I did with this sour, it fills the glass perfectly and with such a bright and vibrant orange colour it stops looking like a beer altogether. It doesn’t even look like a fruit juice, it just looks good. If you’ve looked for beer on Instagram before you’ll know what I’m talking about. Hazy beers, thick with colour, completely opaque. They look as if you could almost chew them. Only having had one beer here you’re not going to be able to garnish how experimental or varied or interesting the tap list was here so I believe it is worth adding a little bit more detail in that respect. There were twelve draught taps (plus a whole lot more available in the fridge in bottle and can form) on the wall, the vast majority, like ten out of twelve, were Singaporean. I found this really, really good. The Singaporean offering weren’t boring, they were delicious sounding, creative, interesting, had I have been able to stay longer and indulge myself a little more I certain would have. It speaks volumes to Singapore, and to the breweries that were being showcased here, the likes of Daryl’s Urban Ales, Brewlander, Rye & Pint, when you’re producing top drawer Sours, DDH IPAs and Stouts. Not to mention that Good Luck Beerhouse also have a range of their own brews. It doesn’t always need to be the biggest, brightest, most well-known bar, breweries, brewpubs, taprooms that are the best “must visit” experiences. Sometimes it the small ones, the somewhat hidden ones that make the story better. Good Luck Beerhouse definitely did just that for me today. The pursuit of hoppiness continues…
In The Pursuit Of Hoppiness 