Mighty OakTap Room

Mighty Oak Brewing Company runs its own tap room from a sixteenth-century building on Maldon High Street, pouring cask ales straight from a chilled cellar behind the bar. John Boyce founded the brewery in Brentwood in 1996 before relocating it to Maldon's old West Station Yard in 2001, and the tap room now serves as the public face of that operation. There is no piped music, television or fruit machine, and an upstairs room holds a dozen people for private bookings. Acoustic musicians play most Sunday afternoons. Alongside the house ales, the bar stocks cider from Weston's and Celtic Marches, a small wine list and gin, plus snacks limited to cheeseboards, pork pies, scotch eggs and crisps. The pub keeps to gravity-dispensed beer rather than pumps, prized by regulars as an extension of the brewery itself.