Independence Brewing Company Pune

Planned to catch up with a friend after a long time, somewhere around Koregaon Park. I’d also been meaning to visit Independence Brewing Company for a while now, and we finally landed up there on a hot afternoon. It is towards Mundhwa, as you take a right turn from the end of North Main Road, and I was surprised to see the level of development around that area, coming that side after many years.

The brewery setup is nice and big and they have indoor as well as outdoor seating. There weren’t too many people around at the time, so the AC wasn’t switched on and took a while to kick in. Till then it was like a mini furnace, and only became tolerable after 15-20 minutes.

It is quite a well spaced out place with seating at different levels and thankfully, the tables aren’t too close to each other. As we entered, we saw they had an offer of a free beer for every two consumed (weekdays). There are three beers on tap – presently, they’re serving craft beers from the Gateway Brewing Co – the White Zen, which is a hefeweizen or wheat beer, the Blonde Ale, and the India Pale Ale. I was a bit surprised at the absence of a Stout (available in the bottled variety).

The Gateway craft beers were decent – if I had to rank them, I’d go with the Hefewizen, IPA and Blonde in that order of preference. I wouldn’t go really raving about them, as for me, Doolally sets the benchmark, particularly where the Hefeweizen is concerned.

For food, we tried the Thai curry with garlic and basil rice, and the Paprika and Herb Crusted Chicken Breast. Both were good, though I couldn’t help thinking that the presentation of the latter (with the dip) reminded me of fried fish 🙂 The potato mash with it was actually small potato chunks with chopped onions, which gave it a slightly chaat/pav bhaji-ish taste.

Hopefully, at the next visit, we’ll get to try their own brews besides some of the 8-10 bottled craft beers as well.

Overall, it’s a nice place with good seating and ambience, good food, decent beers (Rs.240/pint), and is a welcome addition to the brewery scene in Pune. At ~ Rs.1,000 per head, it was reasonable and worth it for six beers and food. Maybe they can revise the prices downward once they brew their own beer 😉 and yes, improve the quality of the very random and nondescript music.

They did get their own licence and we’ve been there several times since then to sample the craft beers on tap. While there are “seasonal favourites”, I love their Hefeweizen, Porter, and the Four Grain Saison. Here’s a pic from a recent visit where I tried all the seven beers on tap 🙂