Laine’s Brew Lab
Brewpub no longer brewing
Peoples Park Tavern, 360 Victoria Park Road E9 7BT (Hackney)
peoplesparktavern.pub
First sold beer: February 2014
Ceased brewing: by January 2022
Laine: Acton
Brewpub no longer brewing
The Aeronaut, 264 High Street W3 9BH (Ealing)
First sold beer: November 2013
Ceased brewing: December 2016
Laine: Thieves Brewery
Brewpub no longer brewing
Four Thieves, 51 Lavender Gardens SW11 1DJ (Wandsworth)
First sold beer: January 2015
Ceased brewing: by January 2020
See also Ram Inn (Laine).
Gavin George’s small Brighton-based pub chain InnBrighton first installed a brewery in October 2012 in its North Laine bar in the celebrated Brighton shopping area of the same name, thus the beer brand Laine which has since been extended to the whole pub group. Its first London brewpub was the Aeronaut in Acton, reopened in November 2013 following a major refurbishment with an 8 hl brewery clearly visible behind the bar. The original head brewer was Nic Donald, whose achievements included persuading brewing legend Derek Prentice to collaborate on a guest beer in July 2014.
Another 8 hl kit had by then appeared in the eastern wing of the Peoples Park Tavern, a very large pub on the edge of Victoria Park. Jim Wilson, formerly of Brentwood Brewery and Tap East, was the first head brewer, though he’s since moved on. Interestingly, this was the second brewery on the site: in 1986 the pub became the Flounder and Firkin, the sixth brewpub in David Bruce’s pioneering Firkin chain, brewing until 1999. Beers brewed here were sometimes been branded ‘People’s Pints’ though the brewery was later renamed the Brew Lab and concentrated on more experimental and ‘extreme’ beers.
In January 2015, Laine opened the Four Thieves, in a sprawling former music hall off Lavender Hill in Battersea which had briefly been an Antic pub. As well as an 8 hl brewery, the pub was equipped with a small gin distillery, with the botanicals including lavender grown on the roof in a nod to the area’s horticultural past. Brewing here was initially overseen from Acton.
In April 2016, Laine appointed Jack Hibberd, formerly of Truman’s, to oversee its brewing operations. By then, as well as brewing in the pubs, the company was contracting out some of its best-selling brands, including a tank lager, to Hepworth in Pulborough, West Sussex, one of the breweries that emerged from the closure of historic Sussex brewery King & Barnes in 2000. Hepworth moved to a much bigger purpose-built site with a 65 hl kit at Adversane near Billingshurst, West Sussex, in April 2017: that site is also now used as Laine’s ‘Brew Hub’ for its core beers, including the tank lager supplied to the pubs.
A major fire gutted Laine’s original London brewpub, the Aeronaut, in the early hours of the 1 January 2017, badly damaging the brewhouse. The pub was closed for rebuilding for most of that year, reopening in December but without a brewery.
Laine was sold in May 2018 to Vine Acquisitions Ltd, a company backed by private equity firm Patron, which also owned 1,300 leasehold pubs in the Punch Taverns estate not sold to Heineken when Punch was restructured in 2017. Laine continued as a separate unit under the existing management team led by Gavin. By the time of the takeover, the distillery at the Four Thieves was already mothballed, and the brewhouse eventually followed, with the kit removed early in 2020.
Brewing at the Peoples Park Tavern was suspended during the 2020-21 Covid-19 lockdowns but briefly revived in spring 2021 when the pub reopened.
An announcement on 15 December 2021 confirmed that both Laine and Punch had been sold to US-based Fortress Investment Group for an undisclosed sum, and subsequently the new owners began streamlining and integrating the two groups.
The brewhouse was finally removed from the Peoples Park Tavern early in 2022, with the space converted to customer use. The original intention was to resume brewing with the same kit in a standalone industrial unit nearby, but this was abandoned when the company expanded its brewing capacity outside the capital by buying former London brewery Redchurch in Harlow in October 2022. The kit has since been sold on.
The Ram Inn, Wandsworth, was rebranded by new owners Punch as a Laine pub in January 2023. The pub still houses the brewing kit installed by the previous leaseholders as the SlyBeast brewery which following the change of hands was used for cuckoo brewing by Coalition. This arrangement ended in January 2024 and Laine currently has no active brewpubs in London, and with no immediate plans to revive brewing activity, though brewing continues on a small scale at the North Laine in Brighton.
Beers were mainly in keg and cask and sold at the pub, and occasionally in other Laine pubs in London. Draught core brands, bottles and cans sold at Laine pubs are sourced from the hub brewery in Sussex, though some Brew Lab beers were formerly hand-bottled.
Updated 20 March 2024.
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