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Slideshow
Top 10 London craft breweries
With the inaugural London Beer Week Festival set to take place next month, we take a look at just some of the brewers currently making a name for themselves on the capital’s craft beer scene.
From 16 February to 22 March pubs, bars and restaurants in the 13 streets of London’s Newburgh Quarter, off Carnaby Street, will come together to celebrate the first London Beer Week festival, in partnership with the Craft Beer Rising festival, which will take place at the Truman Brewery from 19 to 22 February. Organised by the creative minds that put on London Cocktail Week and London Wine Week, the event will see Carnaby Street’s Newburgh Quarter become the hub of seven days of unique beer-filled activities, offers, pop-ups and tastings.
More than 100 venues, including The Draft House, The Craft Beer Co, Whyte and Brown and Hops & Glory, are taking part with wristband wearers entitled to £3 speciality beers and £5 Woodford Reserve boilermakers (AKA a beer and a bourbon), as well as further promotions and activities, all week long.
The week will also include pop-ups, launches, tastings, supper clubs, brewery tours, masterclasses and offers across town. Award-winning Cornish brewer, Sharp’s Brewery, will be offering VIP food and beer pairing sessions inside its exclusive ‘crate’, as well as having a dedicated space within the hub. While Guinness who will be operating its ‘The Brewers Project’ with vans hitting the streets of London in the form of roaming wristband hubs which will pop up at different locations throughout the week distributing wristbands, guidebooks, maps and samples of two new brews – Guinness Dublin Porter and Guinness West Indies Porter.
Wristbands are £10 and can be purchased at 14 Newburgh Street, Newburgh Quarter. For more information click here.
In honour of London’s inaugural Beer Week Festival, we have rounded up a section of London craft brewers…
Beavertown Brewery, Tottenham Hale
Good for: Cans
Known for its wacky packaging and use of cans, this London craft brewer is named after the old cockney name given to the De Beauvoir area in Hackney where the brewery is based. Beavertown was founded in 2011 by Logan Plant in the kitchen of Duke’s Brew and Que, which today serves as its brewpub. The brewing operations were moved to an 11,000 square foot facility in Tottenham Hale in 2014, capable of producing up to 50 hectolitres a year. The brewery’s lineup includes playfully-named beers such as the Gamma Ray American Pale Ale and Black Betty Black IPA.
By the Horns Brewing Co., Summerstown, SW London
Good for: Its Brewery tap and bottle shop
By The Horns Brewing Co. began life in a garage where two friends, Alex Bull and Chris Mills, would brew beer using a homebrew kit. Their hobby has since grown into a fully fledged brewery which now produces four flagship ales and at least three varying seasonal ales every month, five bottled beers and cask ales. Based in Summerstown in south west London, the brewery has its own brewery tap and bottle shop on site with three cask hand pumps and six keg taps, as well its full selection of bottled beer, available to purchase.
Introducing the brewery, its founders state: “We believe in confronting tasteless beer and strive to brew, drink & enjoy beer that is far superior in taste, flavour, mouth-feel, aroma and appearance. It is very clichéd, but we really do believe in taking life ‘by the horns’ and doing what you can to make it better, and it just so happens our passion is beer!”
Camden Town Brewery, Camden Town
Good for: Lager lovers
Known fore its eye-catching labels, Camden Town Brewery has made quite a name for itself since bursting onto London’s craft beer scene in 2010. It was founded by Jasper Cuppaidge who boasts a heritage in brewing, his grandmother being Laurie McLaughlin who ran McLaughlin’s Brewery in Rockhampton, Australia, from 1910 to 1960, along with an estate of 60 pubs.
Cuppaidge started Camden Town having become frustrated that one of his favourite beer styles, lager, was getting “short thrift” in the beer market. “Most of what was available was bland and fizzy and anything half decent was imported, expensive and seen as a bit exclusive. No wonder lager had a bad name,” he said of his motivation to start Camden Town. Cuppaidge has since made it his goal to “make lager, to make lager better, to make lager recognisable and to make lager great.”
The brewery’s flagship lager is its 4.6% unfiltered Hells Lager made using pilsner malt and perle and hallertauer hops.
Meantime Brewing
Good for: Having its own hop farm
Meantime started life in a small flat in Greenwich in 1999 where Alastair Hook and friends hatched a plan to brew their own beer. Having settled on a location in Greenwich, the group set about founding “the largest and most expensive” start up brewery seen in the UK in 80 years. Nearly 16 years later the it is still going strong. Last year the brewery released its Thames Hop IPA produced from a hop farm located directly on the Greenwich Meridian Line. Having planted the 48 hop roots in 12 wooden planters on a site next to the O2 arena, Meantime has claimed that the venture represents London’s first permanent hop farm in over 100 years. It marks the latest move by Meantime to spark public interest in London’s brewing history and follows its 2013 initiative to make a crowd-sourced beer from hops grown by different people around London. The name Thames Hop IPA was chosen from suggestions offered by the brand’s Twitter and Facebook audience.
Windsor & Eton Brewery, Windsor
Good for: Cask ales
Windsor & Eton Ales was brought to life in 2010 off the back of an ambition to bring brewing back to Windsor following the closure of Burge’s Brewery in 1931. In just seven days, the brewery was up and running with its first beer, Guardsman Best Bitter, going on sale in pubs on St George’s Day, 23 April, 2010. The brewery specialises in cask ales noting: “Our ambition remains simple – to make great traditional cask ales and have great fun on the way”.
The brewery also runs its own Knight Club which offers members access to special Windsor & Eton events, discounts and merchandise with meetings held on the third Tuesday of each month. While strictly not based in London, the brewery is a member of the London Brewers’ Alliance, which welcomes breweries from within the M25.
Brixton Brewery, Brixton
Good for: Supporting locally sourced produce
Founded in 2013 by two local couples, Jez and Libby and Mike and Xochitl, Brixton Brewery is one of London’s newest independent breweries. All of the brewery’s beers are handcrafted in small batches drawing on traditional techniques but with a “dash of New World flair for distinctiveness”. Its limited edition Effra Ale was brewed using hops grown less than a kilometre from its doorstep by Brixton’s Urban Hop Growers.
Tap East Microbrewery, Stratford City
Good for: Its specialist beer bar
Tap East is a microbrewery based in Stratford City. It produces six brewer including a tonic ale, Chinook and Citra hops APA and coffee stout. However its main attraction is its specialist beer bar which offers a regularly changing range of 16 Tap East and guest draught beers as well as over 100 bottled beers from around the world.
Weird Beard Brew Co., Hanwell
Good for: Lovers of facial hair, and “in-your-face hop-focused” beers
Weird Beard Brew Co is based Hanwell and was founded by two home brewers inspired by the American and burgeoning British craft beer movement, along with “great music, exquisite food, epic beards, and the outstanding beer community in our hometown of London”. The pair quickly grew out of their garage and set up Weird Beard with the aim of making “experimental, no-holds-barred beers that we feel excited about and we want to drink.”
Sambrook’s Brewery, Battersea
Good for: Its banker to brewer backstory
Duncan Sambrook was once a city accountant working at Deloitte. In August 2008 he jacked it all in and by November was sampling his first beer having founded Sambrook’s Brewery with two university friends.
Today, the brewery produces eight beers which includes a range of keg, cask and bottled beers. It also hosts an open evening on the third Wednesday of each month at 7pm, tastings and private tours.
Belleville Brewing Co., Wandsworth
Good for: American style beers
Bringing a London twist to some classic American style beers, this microbrewery carries the tagline “beers from over there, brewed over here.” It became the subject of a big beer battle in 2013 over its name, with brewing giant AB InBev claiming could be confused with its own Belle-Vue Belgian Lambic fruit beer. Bellville emerged victorious and was allowed to continue using its name. The brewery currently produces 11 beers including Commonside Pale Ale, Chestnut Porter and Northcote Blonde.