Where To Find The Best Pints Of John Smith's In London

The beer that has taken over Britain. Words by Jimmy McIntosh.

Good morning and welcome to Vittles. Each Monday we publish a different piece of writing related to food, whether it’s an essay, a dispatch, a polemic, a review, or even poetry. This week’s newsletter — on the best London pubs to find the beer on everyone’s lips right now — is by Jimmy McIntosh.

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Where To Find The Best Pints Of John Smith's In London

The perfect pint is out there — if you know where to look. Words by Jimmy McIntosh.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you won’t have failed to notice that one beer is having more than a bit of a moment right now: John Smith’s. The beloved creamy bitter from Tadcaster has gone from fusty old-man’s drink to fad beer almost overnight, thanks in no small part to northerners in London, perfectionist landlords and an army of online influencers who can be seen rating pints in the capital’s best pubs. The hype is inescapable. You see it in the pub gardens, where rumbustious boys with football scarves tied around their heads compare cream-topped glasses, endlessly angling them to confirm that they have, indeed, got the perfect pint. You see it in the effusive puff pieces from privately educated journalists who’d never drunk a drop of the brown stuff until 2023. You see it on social media, in the hyper-local London meme accounts which have made the consumption of John Smith’s a conscientious lifestyle choice, along with Perelló olives and wild garlic. All of this, coupled with the drink’s strong branding (those award-winning Jack Dee adverts, its iconic Magnet logo that adorns the walls of pubs throughout the country) has seen John Smith’s slowly take over Britain, to the point where it is now the UK’s number-one keg ale brand.

However, not every pint of John Smith’s is poured equal. Booze expert @millionbevs, tells me that ‘I’ve never known such a wildly varied pint – it could be piss and vinegar and old boots, or it could be the nicest pint ever.’ This is because, despite being produced in industrial quantities, micro-adjustments by the bartender can affect the final quality of the beer. First of all, John Smith’s needs to be kept at the optimum 6–7°C. Secondly, unlike other beers, which can be served from an unwashed receptacle covered in grease marks, the John Smith’s glass must always be clean and embossed with the Magnet logo – no drinking Extra Smooth from a Stella Artois goblet (despite the drink tasting more or less exactly the same no matter what vessel it’s in). Finally, it needs to be made with a patented one-part pour at forty-five degrees. 

But there is one other crucial element: the people. A pint of John Smith’s cannot be purposefully poured by just anyone. It is a skill, a science – perhaps even an art form. Quality Wines chef and Yorkshireman Nick Bramham tells me that part of the appeal of John Smith’s is in observing the craft and ritual that goes into making it. ‘It’s the studied nonchalance of the barmaid’s pour,’ he tells me. ‘The gleaming amber hue, the bulging froth, the bittersweet taste of ancestral knowledge in every sip.’

Still, there are some aficionados who claim that even if the conditions are otherwise perfect, John Smith’s in London just doesn’t taste the same as it does up in Tadcaster, where the equivalent of a whopping 228 million pints of the chestnut stuff are produced each year. Pellicle Editor-in-Chief and prominent pint savant Matthew Curtis tells me that ‘beer always tastes better where it’s made’, which is why so many John Smith’s acolytes insist on making the pilgrimage north to taste it at source. ‘To be in Tadcaster – the town that so effortlessly walks the tightrope that is the A64 between Leeds and York – and experience a pint of Smooth is to taste a beer as it should be: purest brown.’ 

That’s all well and good, but what should those of us who suffer cluster headaches every time we venture outside the M25 be looking for? To make things easier, we’ve put together a handy guide on where to find the perfect pint of John Smith’s in London this summer.

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What to look for in a pint of John Smith’s 

The famous tilt test

• It should withstand the all-important ‘tilt test’ – if you tip your glass slightly and the head starts dripping suggestively down the side, it’s all a bit no-no. If the texture is similar to watered-down Devonshire custard, then you’re good. 
  

• The pipes have to be spotless, which will give you a beer that is caramel clean with a dry, malty sweetness. Together with the creamy, clean body, it should make for a supremely refreshing, easy-to-drink pint – ‘Pure silk in a glass’, as the slogan used to go. 
  

• A good pint of Smooth needs a head that’s 382mm creamier than a can of Campbell’s. Why? A little thing called ‘balance’. What do you mean ‘What does that mean?’ If you have to ask, you’ll never understand.

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The Pubs

The Cock Tavern, Euston

The Cock Tavern in Euston is a true bitter-lover’s paradise and is widely regarded as serving the best John Smith’s in the whole of London. The quality of the Smooth here is so famous that you often catch the melodic strains of a thick North Yorkshire accent at the bar, desperate for a taste of home. For Bramham there’s nothing like the ‘Proustian rush of a pint of Smooth’ at pubs like The Cock. ‘One sip and I’m immediately jolted back to God’s Own Country: Batley Labour Club,’ he tells me.

Set on a crossroads in Somers Town – a curiously gentrification-resistant locale just north of the Euston Road – you’d be hard-pressed to find a more perfect patch of pavement on which to feel the fading glow of the 5 o’clock sun than the one outside The Cock. At night, the generously sized pub jolts to life in a chorus of trad music and raucous bar chat. Landlady Sheila Gavigan has created one of the most welcoming third spaces in all of London, and entire evenings can pass by there in a blitz of banter and bitter. ‘Loads’, she tells me, when I ask her how much John Smith’s she sells on any given night. ‘It goes down a lot more smoothly than a heavier drink like Guinness, so you get all sorts of people drinking it.’

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The Queen Elizabeth, Walworth

Amid the boom in continental lagers with confected back-stories, one of the things that has attracted young drinkers to John Smith’s is its authenticity and sense of history. In the mid-nineteenth century, when John Smith started brewing his own beer, Tadcaster’s hard, magnesian limestone water proved ideal for making bright bitters, which were gradually replacing darker porters as the working man’s drink du jour. However, it was in 1993, with the introduction to the market of Extra Smooth – the nitrogenated version of their original ale – that the seeds of the current John Smith’s explosion were sown. 

At The Queen Elizabeth (or The Lizzy, as it’s affectionately known), you can be sure that you will always receive a flawless drop of Extra Smooth. This two-roomed battle cruiser is located just north of Burgess Park, and was rebuilt in 1955 by Watneys. Today, it retains its post-war bar and splendid mirrored back-fittings – it’s a bit like stepping into a time portal, back to when the Walworth regulars would crowd around a piano singing until the early hours. The soundtrack might now be provided by a digital jukebox, but it’s just as welcoming and vibrant in 2024.

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The Park Tavern, Finsbury Park

Nestled in the strange betweenland twixt Finsbury Park and Crouch Hill lies The Park Tavern. One of North London’s very best sporting pubs, this is home to a delightful little beer garden that’s as well-kept as a septuagenarian’s allotment. While the Premier League is almost always roaring away in the banquetted back bar, it’s in the front of the pub where horse-racing fanatics and Smooth lovers find their creamy solace. On a recent visit, I asked one punter – who gave his name as John – what he liked about the Extra Smooth at The Park Tavern. ‘It’s cheap’, he responded, before turning back to the 3.15pm at Punchestown. 

With the recent surge of Smith’s has come publican pioneers pushing its form, taking advantage of the drink’s bitter toffee notes to create daring new cocktails. It was at The Park Tavern that I was first introduced to one of the strangest but most refreshing combinations I’ve ever tried: half John Smith’s and half ginger ale, by the writer Oscar Rickett. ‘The bitter ginger-beer shandy is a concoction of my dad’s,’ he tells me. ‘It goes down well in all contexts and in all seasons – for when you need a little less booze in your system but you don’t want the brain-frying buzz of the lager lemonade shandy.’ A must-try.

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George IV, Woolwich

Woolwich is home to some exceptional John Smith’s pubs – so much so that it’s known in some ale-aficionado circles as ‘Tadcaster-on-Thames’. There’s the market charm of the Elephant & Castle, where punters queue from 8am for an ambrosial drop of bitter bliss. Or the cosy, carpeted Rose’s (Prince Albert), where you’ll go for the Smooth but stay for the meat raffle. But The George IV, set deep in the town’s residential heart, on a sleepy backstreet not far from Woolwich Dockyard station, may just be the pick of the bunch. Going since the 1830s (but with its current iteration dating back to the 1960s), the pub is an exceptional example of a post-war estate boozer. All the hallmarks are there: the unassuming exterior; the low ceilings; the lengthy, mahogany bar, long since painted over in a Dulux navy. 

But what sets the pub apart is the people inside – a cordial coterie of locals who are as welcoming if you’re a stranger as they are if you’ve got your own glass behind the bar. This isn’t the archetypal flat-roof boozer so maligned by the bourgeois media – it’s a full-on entertainment hub, with karaoke, quiz, and comedy nights throughout the week, as well as an exceptional jerk pop-up in the summer months. The perfect accompaniment to 8–10 pints of delicious 3.4% ABV Yorkshire ale.

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The Scotsman, Southall

Back in 2003, comedian Peter Kay starred for John Smith’s in one of the most famous beer adverts of all time. Created by advertising agency TBWA\London, the spot saw Kay in a curry house on the phone to his young daughter, trying to assuage her fears about boogeymen in the closet. ‘There’s no such thing as wardrobe monsters,’ Kay calmly assured as he sat around the table with his wife and two friends. ‘It’s the burglars that break in through the window that you want to be worried about.’ 

While it’s probably not advisable to follow in Kay’s footsteps and give a child a lifelong fear of open windows at night, you can recreate the experience of ‘two more lamb bhunas’ over a pint of John Smith’s at The Scotsman in Southall, which doubles as an excellent Punjabi restaurant. Walk into this backstreet boozer and you’ll notice virtually everyone supping a pint of Smooth. ‘In places like this, people drink these pints as they’re cheap, and their family and friends drink them,’ David Jesudason, author of Desi Pubs tells me, with John Smith’s ‘ideal to calm a fiery dish with chilli’. The desi pub is a much-loved fixture of this part of West London, and The Scotsman does it exceptionally well.

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Streeties, Canning Town

Canning Town is an area of London undergoing great change. Travelling the A1011 – once a barren thoroughfare towards the sugar factories and shrubbery of Silvertown – now has the feel of flicking through a particularly nightmarish neutral colour swatch, as great hulking juts of monotonous high-rise line the carriageway in differing shades of beige. The once-villainous district has softened its noir edges – since the turn of the millennium, ten different Canning Town pubs have closed or been demolished. But lurking in the shadows of the student housing, one boozer still clings valiantly on in the face of the future: Streeties, a gorgeous backstreet spot that’s home to a delightful drop of John Smith’s, plus added bonuses in the form of a pool table and a parrot. 

Due to the pub’s proximity to nightclubs FOLD and The Cause, it’s often frequented by a younger generation loading up on Extra Smooth before their big night out. ‘I think it’s brilliant to see more young people drinking bitter, which as you know is Britain’s national drink,’ Curtis tells me. ‘For too long the Irish have dominated the nitro pint market. My hope is that this resurgence will see younger drinkers try other brown nitrogenated delights, such as Boddingtons or Worthington’s Creamflow. Once you’re in, the world is your oyster.’ Cheers to that. 

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Credits

Jimmy McIntosh is a writer and musician from London. He runs the Instagram account @londondeadpubs dedicated to pubs that are no more, and the TikTok @deadpubs dedicated to ones that are.

All photos by Jimmy McIntosh