Brewery
6 Mitre Bridge Industrial Park, Mitre Way W10 6AU (Kensington & Chelsea)
portobellobrewing.com
First sold beer: December 2012
See also George and Dragon (Dragonfly, Portobello at the George)
While most recent brewery start-ups in London are the work of enterprising homebrewers, Portobello was an initiative from the established industry. Back in 2006, Rob Jenkins, formerly at Whitbread, Brakspear, Young’s and Wells, was in discussion with other now-redundant Young’s employees John Hatch and Derek Prentice about setting up a successor to the Wandsworth brewery, but things worked out differently and he ended up creating Portobello with head brewer Farooq Khalid. In 2013 they were joined by Joe Laventure, previously with Whitbread and Budvar UK.
The brewery began with a relatively generous 30 hl kit in an industrial unit on an estate between Wormwood Scrubs and Eurostar’s North Pole depot. In 2014, the original kit was replaced with a larger 50 hl model, with fermentation capacity extended several times. The brewery expanded to the next-door unit in 2021, with plans to increase annual production to 10,000 hl and to open a long-desired taproom in 2022.
Though an arrangement with Remarkable Pubs in 2018 to take over the microbrewery at the George and Dragon in Acton was abandoned soon after it launched, in 2019 the company gained its own first pub, the King and Co in Clapham. It soon added the Hack and Hop in the City of London, though this has since closed for redevelopment. The pub estate increased abrubtly to 15 sites in November 2020 following a deal with property company Downing, adding numerous pubs formerly managed by the Antic group.
The brewery confirmed on 11 October 2024 that it had been bought by Sunrise Alliance. For the moment, co-founder Rob Jenkins remains in charge, with no job losses and production continuing in London.
The new owner originated in 2006 as St Peter’s brewery near Bungay, and began expanding in 2023 with the acquisition of Curious Brew in Ashford, Kent, which already owned the Wild Beer brand. A few weeks after the Portobello deal, Sunrise acquired an interest in another London brewer, Gipsy Hill.
Beers “brewed the West Way” are in cask, keg, can and bottle, widely sold through pub chains and supermarkets. The original vision was to produce mainly cask, but although still important this is now only 30% of the business, with 60% of production craft lager in keg and can. The brewery cans and bottles offsite, mainly at Marston’s in Burton upon Trent, but this may change with the additional space.
Updated 31 October 2024.
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