Craft Beer Taproom on Robertson Quay: GULP's Riverside Taps

GULP Taproom and Bottleshop sits on the Singapore River at 7 Rodyk Street, #01-29/30, Watermark Robertson Quay, Singapore 238215, with eight rotating taps and more than 200 beers, wines and spirits in its fridges. For anyone after a craft beer taproom near me in River Valley, the hours are generous: Monday 4 pm to 10.30 pm, Tuesday to Thursday 4 pm to 11 pm, Friday 4 pm to midnight, Saturday noon to midnight and Sunday noon to 10 pm. It is pet-friendly, and tables on the river path fill first.

GULP was set up by three friends who met through craft beer, and the business trades as GULP Pte Ltd, whose registration number dates it to 2023. It sits in the building marked as Godown 89 on many old maps of the Singapore River. The taproom has published its own short history of the site, and the old photographs on its walls illustrate it.

In the 1850s this stretch at the top of the river was mud flats and swamp between the Killiney estate orchards and Chinese villages. Warehouses rose around 1900, including one owned by the merchant Lim Ho Puah, who inherited the Wee Bin and Co trading business. The Danish East Asiatic Company later ran a warehouse on the spot, and after the river clean-up the building housed light industry, with a mechanics workshop exactly where the bar is now. The Watermark condominium, completed in 2008, kept the original exterior walls.

GULP leans heavily on imported beer, especially from Britain. Its shop lists breweries such as Vault City, Polly's, Track, Brew York, Left Handed Giant and Tempest from the UK, Basqueland, Funky Fluid and Sudden Death from Europe, The Veil and Knee Deep from the United States, and Garage Project, Mountain Culture and Hong Kong Beer Co from the Asia-Pacific. The eight taps rotate through that list, so expect hazy IPAs, fruited sours and the occasional lager rather than a fixed house line-up.

The fridges are the other half of the business. Anything on the shelves can be taken home, and the online shop offers free same-day delivery on orders over S$100 and four-hour click-and-collect at the bottleshop, which suits anyone who finds a beer they like at the bar and wants a four-pack for the weekend. Alcohol-free and gluten-free beers have their own sections, a help for mixed groups.

Food is a short menu of large handmade pies in all-butter rough puff pastry, each served with creamy mash. The steak and ale pie costs S$22 and comes with beef gravy and a sweet, spicy achar pickle. Chicken tandoori, with tandoor-cooked chicken in a butter sauce, is S$23, and the vegetarian beetroot and feta pie is S$19 with beetroot chutney and mint yoghurt.

A rotating special costs S$24; past specials have included beef and haggis, beef and cheddar, tartiflette and chilli con carne. One pie is a full meal for one person, so share it if you are only snacking between pints. The achar is the detail that makes the steak pie worth ordering over the special, a local touch on a British-style dish.

The calendar is busier than most bars of this size. GULP River Runners meet every Thursday at 7 pm, with 5 km, 6 km and 9 km routes along the river that start and finish at the bar. Winyl, a wine-and-vinyl night, has reached its fifth edition with tickets at S$28, and Just The Sip tastings with visiting breweries such as Cloudwater and Sudden Death cost S$35 to S$40.

The biggest event is GULPFEST, which ran over two days in June 2026 with tickets at S$99 a day. Every past event listing on the taproom page is marked sold out, so book as soon as a date appears. On Thursdays the runners return to the bar after their loop, so claim a riverside table before 7 pm.

GULP stays open when much of the city closes. Over Chinese New Year 2026 it opened from 2 pm to 11 pm on both the first and second days, February 17 and 18, and its blog pitched the riverside as a retreat for visitors finding Singapore shuttered and for locals escaping family reunions. Public holidays are therefore a good time to come, though the hours can differ from the usual timetable.

Not everyone in a group drinks beer, and the bar plans for that with a curated list of natural wines alongside spirits and alcohol-free options; in January 2026 it published a guide to craft alcohol-free beer for Dry January. Since 1 April 2026, Singapore's Beverage Container Return Scheme has added a refundable 10-cent deposit to cans and plastic bottles, which applies to anything you carry home from the fridges.

Rodyk Street runs behind the Watermark condominium on the north bank of the river. The nearest MRT stations, Fort Canning on the Downtown Line and Great World on the Thomson-East Coast Line, are each a walk of under a kilometre. The river promenade itself is the best approach, a flat path past the bridges and hotels of Robertson Quay.

After a pint, the promenade leads downstream towards Clarke Quay and upstream towards the quieter end of Kim Yam Road. If GULP is full on a Friday, the riverside is lined with bars and restaurants, and taking cans from the fridge to enjoy at home is the simplest fallback when every table on the path is taken. Reservations can be made through the taproom page, which is worth doing for groups on weekend evenings.

Address: GULP Taproom and Bottleshop, 7 Rodyk Street, #01-29/30, Watermark Robertson Quay, Singapore 238215. Hours: Monday 4 pm to 10.30 pm, Tuesday to Thursday 4 pm to 11 pm, Friday 4 pm to midnight, Saturday noon to midnight, Sunday noon to 10 pm. Eight rotating taps, 200-plus bottles and cans, pet-friendly. Pies from S$19. Run club Thursdays at 7 pm.