The fresh beer necessities

Fresh food, everyone but a sardine millionaire would agree, is good food. What about fresh alcoholic drinks? The matter is less clear cut. Some, like the best spirits, need to be very stale before they are of any interest whatsoever. Until a malt whisky has spent 10 years twiddling its molecules in a cask, it is worthless; Cognac needs 20 or more. Wines, too, are generally violent and indigestible without a year or two's repose, as those of us who still persist in drinking the Beaujolais Nouveau are about to find out. This is a wine thrashed through fermentation and into bottle far more quickly than it would like to be. It's an ester-fest, not a drink. Wine needs time.

Beer, though, is different. It's simple; it's low in alcohol; it tastes best when it's fresh. If restaurants can make their own pasta and bake their own bread, why shouldn't they brew their own beer? No reason at all. The Freedom Brewery Company does just that at 41 Earlham Street, WC2, and 14-16 Ganton Street, W1; so does Mash at 19-21 Great Portland Street, W1. (The former Coast in Albemarle Street is about to become Mash Mayfair, though there'll be no brewery - the beer will be ferried over from Portland Street.) Since 1998 the City has had Pacific Oriental, and now the brew-restaurant theme is moving out into London's villages, with Zerodegrees opening in Blackheath back in August. There'll be one on every high street soon.

Or perhaps not. It's actually rather difficult to do well; it ups the overheads and staffing bill considerably, while all those copper and steel tanks take up space which might otherwise be occupied by paying customers. The site needs plenty of pulling power to get itself over these obstacles.

Customers thronged Zerodegrees on the night I visited, though since this was 5 November and thousands of pounds' worth of fireworks were about to be lit on Black-heath, this was unsurprising. It also explained why many of our fellow diners wore dufflecoats and flashing antennae on their heads. The beers here are brewed by Grant Johnston, a genuine West Coast American micro-brewer; the food features pizzas baked in a wood-fired oven with that other, Belgo-famed beer combination, mussels and chips. There are also "gourmet sausages" thrown in for traditionalists.

The place certainly looks good. When I lived near Black-heath, the height of local style was a fussy old silver-service Wheeler's. It's all changed: bags of hops and settling tanks in the window on Montpelier Vale draw the curious down a glass-fronted alleyway into the restaurant. What with the double-decker brewery, a large steely bar in the middle and the open-plan kitchen in the corner, the table space is reduced to two areas: a garage-like lower zone, and a rather more intimate, sinuously contoured and carpeted gallery area next to the upper level of the brewery.

Of the four regularly brewed beers, the wheat ale was off that night (it's in the middle of a style change: coriander and orange peel are to Belgianise it), but we enjoyed the subtle, craftily hopped, dry and satisfying Pale Ale and the clean, well-defined, brisk and moreish Stout. The Pilsner, though, was judged bland and disappointing by my guests, who had hoped for a crisp and challenging north German interpretation but found something mainstream American: dilute and easy-going. The name Brown Ale frightened me as I'm not fond of sweet beer but, having talked to Grant, I regretted not trying it since he says it's the closest of his brews to a classic English style. None of these, of course, is real ale. They're keg ales, though naturally carbonated, unpasteurised and unfiltered. Pints cost £2.20, or £1.50 between 4pm and 7pm on weekdays; they are served very cold.

The food was unexciting: soft-ish, denture-friendly pizza dough, despite its woodsmoke rusticity (Americana, £6.25); while the fatty, pallid, rusk-stuffed leek-and-pork sausages, pale onion and oddly sticky mash (£6.95) failed to excite the gourmet among us. The chips served with the mussels were best and, in some ways, more exciting than the murky poulette sauce in which the rough shellfish rattled (£10.95). The staff seemed bemused by the torrent of humanity coursing into the restaurant, though no one panicked. In any case, the music was so loud that a fit of hysterics would have passed more or less unnoticed.

Things were very different when I visited, on a damp Monday night, the Pacific Oriental Brasserie. Even a trickle of humanity would have cheered the place up, though the crowdlessness meant that brewer and bar manager Peter Frost spotted me on his way out and came over for a welcome chat. Frost, an ex-Freedom man, believes passionately that "keg beer can be good beer" - provided the ingredients and recipes are uncompromised. There are just three regular beers here, of which my favourite was the Pacific Bishops (£2.60 per pint), a rich pale-ale style using subtle Fuggles and Golding hops with ample malt bass notes giving the beer a satisfying, pear-fruit finish. The Pacific Weiss (£2.70) was appropriately perfumed, all banana and lemon. The biggest seller, though, is Pacific Pils (£2.70), which once again seemed the most disappointing of the three to me, with rather timid hops and a short, though agreeably glycerous, aftertaste. Frost said that the intrinsic conservatism of the City discouraged experiment: he had tried fruit beers, but the take-up was poor and attracted little interest.

"It's very blokey," said my female guest when she arrived, noting the pit-like, sparsely tabled floor area, the blue-lit bar and the sports screen showing highlights of a Southend v Macclesfield match which didn't even interest the wildly under-employed bar staff. Lunch times might be a better moment to call: there are more tables, more emphasis on food, and the attractive back room, with its three listed ceiling domes, is open, too. The menu is more compelling, featuring bento boxes and a wide range of main dishes of pan-Asian inspiration. We made do, from the limited evening menu, with a Pacific Platter for two (at £11.50): spring rolls, satay, Thai fish cakes and excellent stuffed chicken wings served with a disappointingly sugary dip. Enough for two it wasn't, so we then had a very oily plate of mee goreng (egg noodles with the odd prawn and strip of green, £6.95) which foiled our appetites but left the senses moping. Those with genuine appetite about them would be better advised to go up to the restaurant on the first-floor (called Mezzanine @ No.1). Brasserie, with its over-tones of bustle, kitchen steam and noisy gourmandise, seemed a serious misnomer.

Zerodegrees , 29-31 Montpelier Vale, Blackheath, SE3 (020 8852 5619.

Pacific Oriental Brasserie , 1 Bishopsgate, EC2 (020 7621 9988).