Breweries
Original site: Horseshoe, 28 Heath Street NW3 6TE (Camden)
Arch 55 brewery and beer hall: 55 Wilkin Street Mews NW5 3NN (Camden)
Production brewery: Morson Road, Enfield EN3 4TJ (Enfield)
camdentownbrewery.com
First sold beer: May 2006 (as McLaughlins)
Now one of London’s biggest breweries, Camden Town began with a single vessel in the cellar of Hampstead pub the Horseshoe: look carefully and you’ll see a horseshoe still appears on the logo. The first brews bore the name McLaughlins, from a long-closed brewery in Rockhampton, Queensland, once owned by founder Jasper Cuppaidge’s family.
Struck by the popularity of his beer among pub customers, Jasper found investment to expand with the help of friends and family, including his father-in-law, prominent advertising executive John Hegarty, and pub and bar group Barworks (see Saint Monday Brewery). The expanded brewery was relaunched in June 2010 using a 20 hl computerised brewhouse from BrauKon, Germany, installed under two railway arches by Kentish Town West station. The site has expanded several times since and now occupies an entire run of arches.
In May 2013, Camden Town became the first new London brewery, and one of the first microbreweries in Britain, to invest in a canning line. By 2014 growth in demand had necessitated contract brewing some of the beer in Belgium. In February 2015 the brewery launched a crowd funding campaign to raise £1.5 million with the intention of expanding to a new site.
Then just before Christmas 2015, Camden Town announced it had been bought by the world’s biggest brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev, in a deal thought to be worth £85 million, the second multinational acquisition of a London craft brewer following Meantime. Crowdfunders were offered what was reported as a 70% premium to sell back shares. Initially, the business continued to operate as a separate company within the group, with Jasper as chief executive.
AB InBev’s involvement enabled a major expansion with £30 million invested in a new and much bigger site on an industrial estate in the Lea Valley in Enfield. In operation since June 2017, at the time this represented the biggest new brewing facility created in London since Guinness opened the now-closed Park Royal in 1936, a feat Camden also previously achieved with its 2010 expansion. Brewing is now a 24-hour operation: the 100 hl brewhouse supplied by German company Krones can brew 12 times a day to fill 36 fermenters; the total capacity is around 200,000 hl a year with space to increase to 350,000 hl, enabling all brewing to brought back in-house.
In 2021, the brewery was fully integrated into AB InBev’s UK brewing operation, Budweiser Brewing Group, though Jasper was retained as a consultant.
The Enfield brewery was built with a visitor centre and taproom but these have never regularly opened to the public. The Kentish Town site has been retained as a brewery as well as a taproom, now mainly producing specials under the Arch 55 brand: the public areas were refashioned in 2021 into a Bavarian-inspired ‘beer hall’. Camden Town still owns the Horseshoe, and though a second pub, Camden’s Daughter, was closed after three years of operation in 2018, there are plans for more pubs in future.
Numerous talented brewers have worked for Camden Town. Troels Prahl of yeast supplier Whitelabs helped develop the initial recipes and establish good fermentation practices. Rob Topham, formerly of Fuller’s, was involved in commissioning the 2010 brewhouse, and is still head brewer. Brewing director Alex Troncoso left in 2016 to set up Lost and Grounded in Bristol.
Camden Town beer is unpasteurised but packaged bright, with over 80% sold in keg, the rest in can and bottle. Most of the beer produced is lager.
Updated 9 December 2021.
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