Breweries and brewpub
Original site: Duke’s, 33 Downham Road N1 5AA (Hackney)
Second site: 4 Stour Road E3 2NT (Tower Hamlets),
Tottenham site: 17 Lockwood Industrial Park, Mill Mead Road N17 9QP (Haringey)
Former brewpub: Marketplace, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, 782 High Road N17 0BX (Haringey)
Production site: 102 East Duck Lees Lane, Enfield EN3 7SS (Enfield)
beavertownbrewery.co.uk
First sold beer: February 2012
Perhaps the most ambitious and restlessly expansive of new London breweries, Beavertown was founded by Logan Plant, son of Led Zeppelin singer Robert. It began with a US-style brewpub and barbecue restaurant, Dukes Brew and Que, with a 6.5 hl kit in a corner of the kitchen producing beers designed to match the food. The name was taken from the local pronunciation of De Beauvoir Town, the Hackney district where it was located. Demand for the beers steadily increased and the brewery installed extra fermentation capacity in a lock-up some distance away, transporting hopped wort by car.
On 10 May 2013, brewing relocated to a bigger site in Hackney Wick next door to the new Truman’s brewery, with the same brewhouse as at Dukes but several more fermenters. Once again demand outstripped capacity and in April 2014, the business moved again to a much bigger site on an industrial estate near the Lee Valley Park at Tottenham Hale, with a new 50 hl kit fabricated in Bulgaria and an on-site taproom. A bottling line was soon ditched as Beavertown became one of the first breweries in the UK to popularise ‘craft’ beer in cans, providing a perfect canvas for the distinctive style of designer Nick Dwyer, a former waiter at Dukes who is now creative director.
Early in 2015, the fermenters expanded into another unit opposite, also home to the brewery’s Tempus side project, where beer is aged in a variety of wooden wine barrels, Belgian-style foeders and even ceramic amphorae, and the original Dukes brewhouse, now used as a pilot kit. In December 2017, Dukes was quietly closed as it was “no longer a natural fit for Beavertown’s future”: after a brief period as Beef and Brew, in October 2019 it was reopened under its original name the Duke of York by Barworks. By now even the Tottenham plant was bursting at the seams, with some beers contract-brewed in Belgium.
In June 2018, Beavertown announced it had sold a minority stake in the company, subsequently confirmed as 49.1%, to the Dutch-based multinational brewer Heineken. The investment financed yet another expansion to a site beside the River Lee Navigation near Ponders End, not far from Camden Town‘s production brewery. Opened in August 2020, this is the biggest purpose-built brewery in London for decades, with a potential output of 500,000 hl a year. It boasts a high-end 150 hl brewhouse from Krones in Germany, 38 fermentation and maturation tanks and new canning and kegging lines, the latter capable of handling 30,000 330 ml cans per hour. From 1886, the site housed the Edison Swan Electric Light Company, where the first electronic valves were developed: the factory later passed through several hands including Philips, AEI and Thorn, before closure and demolition in 1970.
Plans for the Enfield site originally included an extensive visitor centre and taproom with a waterfront terrace, and even a promise of a boat service linking with the Tottenham site, which has been retained. These plans were disrupted by the 2020-21 Covid-19 lockdowns, though the production brewery has been open to the public for special events during 2021.
A third brewery in the rebuilt Tottenham Hotspur stadium opened in April 2019, using a 35 hl German-built BrauKon kit and opened as a brewpub on match days. Brewing here was suspended early in 2023 and the equipment had been removed by early 2024.
The Corner Pin, a historic landmark pub opposite the stadium, reopened as a Beavertown outlet in September 2021. Following a long closure during the Covid-19 pandemic, the taproom at the Tottenham Hale site reopened in February 2022.
In September 2022, Heineken bought the remaining 50.9% of Beavertown it didn’t already own. Logan stepped down as chief executive but remained as an “adviser”.
In December 2023, in the middle of the busiest period of the year for hospitality venues, both the Corner Pin and the Tottenham Hale taproom were closed ‘temporarily…whilst we work on improving the experience’.
Beers are in keg and can, with Tempus beers hand-bottled in distinctive 375 ml bottles.
Updated 29 April 2024.
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