Waterloo Station Beer Hall: 60 Taps and a £15 Beer School

BrewDog Waterloo opens at 8am on weekdays in Unit G, Waterloo Station, 01 The Sidings, London SE1 7BH, and stays open until 1am, or 2am on Fridays and Saturdays. BrewDog calls it its biggest bar: two floors, a capacity of nearly 1,800 and 60 taps fed partly by an on-site microbrewery. If you want a beer hall near me in London that can seat a whole office or a rugby crowd at once, this is the one built for that scale.

The bar is built into Waterloo Station itself, with its entrance on The Sidings, so you can step off a train from the south-west and be at a table within a few minutes. It spreads over two floors, the upper one looking down over the long tables of the main hall, and the beer comes partly from the microbrewery BrewDog runs on site. By day it does not feel like a pub at all: the cafe serves coffee from 8am and BrewDog runs co-working desks under its DeskDog name.

The games are the other draw. There is duckpin bowling, darts and ping pong, which turns a work outing into something more than standing at a bar. In the evening the room changes character. Eleven projectors and 23 screens show live sport on Sky, the volume goes up, and the crowd shifts from laptops and prams to rugby shirts and after-work groups. The bar is child-friendly until 9pm and dogs are welcome.

BrewDog's five headliner beers anchor the taps: a 5.2% West Coast IPA, a 5.0% New England IPA, a 4.3% Session IPA, a 4.1% Draught Stout and a 4.5% Premium Lager, brewed at the company's brewery in Ellon, Scotland. The rest of the 60 lines rotate daily between BrewDog small batches and guest breweries, and the drinks menu prints a code you scan to see what is on that day rather than a fixed list. The brand itself began in Fraserburgh, Scotland, in 2007, as the drinks menu puts it, with two mates, a dog and a bank loan.

If you are new to craft beer, the Beer School is the best-value order in the building at £15 per head. It is self-guided: you get four one-third pints of the headliners and a card that walks you through what to taste in each. The Cicerone-trained staff can also build a flight of any four beers. The honest advice is to skip the £12.50 cocktails here; they are fine, but in a room with 60 taps you are paying for the one thing the place is not built around.

The kitchen runs until midnight every night, and it leans American rather than German. The Holy Trinity tray is the signature at £29.95: brisket, sticky smoked short rib and honey pulled pork with loaded street corn, rainbow slaw, barbecue beans, house pickles and fries. A group of four can share the Holy Smokes at £49.95, which adds a whole Backyard chicken. The loaded street corn on its own is £6.75, and deep-fried pickles are £5.95.

At lunchtime the deal to know is the Lunch Club: a burger or a sub, fries and a pint for £14.95, Monday to Friday from 12pm to 3pm. The melts and subs, such as the Cuban Melt at £10.95, are served on weekdays until 4pm. On Wednesdays, Wings Wednesday brings unlimited chicken or cauliflower wings for £18.95 in five sauces, including a vegan Korean barbecue, but it is pre-book only and the slots fill quickly.

The events calendar is the reason to check the bar's page before picking a night. Every Tuesday at 7pm there is a pub quiz, with a Harry Potter special running through October. On Friday 30 October the bar hosts a Celebrity Traitors final watch party, with a quiz at 6:30pm and the broadcast from 8pm. The Halloween party on 31 October runs from 9pm to 2am with tickets at £5, under an American frat party and celebrity lookalike fancy dress theme.

From 6 to 29 November the screens switch to the new rugby Nations Championship, and BrewDog asks people to book a sport table for the best sightlines. During the October half term, from 26 to 30 October, children eat free when an adult eats and the Kids Eat Free offer is selected when booking. If you want a quiet pint, avoid match days entirely; the room is designed to be loud when the big screens are on.

Because the capacity is so large, walk-ins usually find a seat on weekday evenings, but match days and Friday nights are different: if a big game is on, a sport table booking is the only way to see the main screen. For Christmas, the bar takes parties from three people up to 1,800, and October bookings come with a complimentary drinks reception.

If the bar is at capacity and you are not booked, Waterloo has plenty of nearby alternatives within a few minutes on foot, from the pubs along Lower Marsh to the bars of the Southbank Centre by the river. Give the main room ten minutes; if no table frees up, move on rather than standing by the door, since sports crowds tend to stay until the final whistle.

Start in Leake Street, the tunnel that runs underneath the station tracks, where graffiti painting is permitted and the walls are repainted almost daily. Then walk to Lower Marsh, a narrow market street with independent shops, cafes and lunchtime street-food stalls that has served the area since the nineteenth century, for a look at the neighbourhood before you settle in for the evening.

If you have time before a show, the Old Vic theatre is a short walk east along The Cut, and the Young Vic is just beyond it. Heading north takes you to the Southbank Centre and the riverside walk, where the London Eye and the view across the Thames to the Houses of Parliament make the best free sight in the area after dark.

Address: BrewDog Waterloo, Unit G, Waterloo Station, 01 The Sidings, London SE1 7BH. Hours: Monday to Thursday 8am to 1am, Friday 8am to 2am, Saturday 9am to 2am, Sunday 9am to 1am. The kitchen serves until 12am every day.

Getting there: Waterloo station is served by mainline trains and the Bakerloo, Jubilee, Northern and Waterloo and City lines. The bar is dog-friendly, child-friendly until 9pm and has disabled access and a baby changing station. Vegan options run across the menu, including plant-based wings and The Plant Stack sharing board.