London breweries year by year

The 2010s saw an astonishing growth in the numbers of London breweries. When Young’s ceased brewing on its historic Ram Brewery site in Wandsworth in 2006, only nine commercial breweries were left in the capital, close to the lowest number ever recorded. By the end of 2020, the numbers were above 130. While the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-21 and the subsequent lockdowns didn’t immediately halt the upward trend, its aftershocks, combined with the economic difficulties of the early 2020s, have seen the numbers declining again, though they remain much higher than they were at the start of the century.

Brewery numbers are of course a different matter from output. In the early 1970s, a much smaller number of much bigger breweries were producing over 10 million hl a year. Today, overall output is likely around 1.5 million hl. Many of the most recently opened breweries are very small, some of them home-based operations working in 100 l batches or less.

Below, you’ll find total annual numbers of commercial breweries operating in London from 1971 onwards, with additional figures on how many brewpubs are included, and how many breweries are owned or part-owned by national or multinational groups. In some years, brewpubs made up a high proportion of the numbers, particularly in the 1990s heyday of the Firkin chain.

I’m gradually adding links to lists of individual breweries.

Year	Total	Multinational	National	Brewpubs
1971	11	1	6	0
1972	10	1	7	0
1973	10	1	7	0
1974	10	1	7	0
1975	9	1	6	0
1976	8	1	5	0
1977	9	1	5	0
1978	9	1	5	0
1979	9	1	4	1
1980	12	1	4	3
1981	16	1	3	8
1982	15	1	3	6
1983	17	1	3	7
1984	21	1	3	11
1985	23	1	3	13
1986	21	1	3	13
1987	22	1	3	14
1988	20	1	3	12
1989	15	1	2	10
1990	16	1	2	11
1991	16	2	1	11
1992	17	2	1	12
1993	19	2	0	14
1994	22	2	0	16
1995	25	2	0	18
1996	27	2	0	18
1997	31	2	0	23
1998	33	2	0	25
1999	16	2	0	8
2000	16	2	0	8
2001	15	2	0	7
2002	16	2	0	7
2003	14	2	0	5
2004	14	2	0	4
2005	10	1	0	3
2006	9	1	0	3
2007	9	1	0	5
2008	10	1	0	5
2009	12	1	0	5
2010	14	1	0	5
2011	22	1	0	8
2012	37	1	0	10
2013	52	1	0	14
2014	68	1	0	19
2015	77	2	0	23
2016	93	2	1	27
2017	108	4	1	24
2018	125	9	1	31
2019	130	14	1	28
2020	132	13	1	30
2021	132	13	1	29
2022	122	11	2	29
2023	109	8	2	27

Notes

As on the current breweries page, “commercial breweries operating in London” means businesses with their own physical brewing kit, on a distinct and separate site within the official Greater London boundary, producing beer that is on sale to the public. Separate brewery sites under the same ownership are counted individually. Where two or more companies share a kit, this is counted as a single brewery. ‘Brewers without breweries’ like cuckoos and contractors, are not counted.

Also, as on the main pages, the locality names given after postcodes in the annual list refer to London boroughs, and don’t necessarily correspond to the locality in common use.

I’ve compiled these lists from a variety of sources, including in recent years my own primary research into London brewers and breweries. Key secondary sources are:

• Norman Barber, Mike Brown and Ken Smith, Century Plus Plus of British Brewers 1890– 2012, Brewery History Society 2013
• Jessica Boak and Ray Bailey, Brew Britannia: The strange rebirth of British beer, Aurum 2014
• Mike Brown, London Brewed: A historical directory of the commercial brewers of London from circa 1650, Brewery History Society 2015
• A London Beer Guide: beerguideldn.com
• Ian Mackey, Twenty Five Years of New British Breweries, self-published 1998
• Quaffale: quaffale.org.uk

I’m also grateful to John Paul Adams and the London CAMRA brewery liaison officers for sharing records and information.

More London breweries.