Discover Greenwich (and a brewery within stumbling distance...)

I went along to the newly-opened Discover Greenwich centre, which replaces the old tourist information place in the Old Naval College grounds on Tuesday.

Though I went there to look at the exhibition - which is actually pretty well done, albeit in a series of short 2-minute snapshots of local history - I ended up being more fascinated by the ''Old Brewery'' which adjoins it.  Meantime Brewery, whose main outlet is the Greenwich Union in Royal Hill, have installed their micro-brewery in an adjoining space.  While the copper vats look magnificent I can't help thinking that you can't get an atmosphere less conducive to beer drinking.

My reflex reaction is that places like this should smell of freshly-brewed coffee rather than beer.  It's going to be intriguing to see how ''The Old Brewery'' (how old is it, open one-and-a-half days?) develops. If there were ever such a thing as a cafébeeria, this has to be it.  Meantime's  bottled beers have always impressed me - way better than their draught beers, but that of course is a personal opinion -  and I'd heartily recommend anyone to buy a selection of them and try them out at leisure.  There will apparently be new-old beers coming on line - their Hospital Porter, based on what old Greenwich pensioners would have drunk, sounds like it's going to be interesting. ''Barman, I'd like a porter to get me home!''