The EveningStar

Ale has poured on Surrey Street since 1854, and beer history was made in this cellar in 1994 when Rob Jones began brewing Dark Star beneath the bar — a brewery that grew, moved out, and was eventually swallowed by Fuller's and then Asahi, a chain of events the pub answered by simply becoming what it had always behaved like: an independently run free house, its seven casks now drawn from the independents that carry the torch, Burning Sky prominent among them. CAMRA's surveyors were in this February and the Good Beer Guide entry is a habit, not an event. The brewery got bought; the pub got free. Sussex drinkers know which end of that trade they're on.