Brewery
Original site: 8 Tyrrell Trading Estate, Tyrrell Road SE22 9NA (Southwark)
Second site: 283 Belinda Road SW9 7DT (Lambeth)
Current site: 497 Ridgway Road SW9 7EX (Lambeth)
clarkshaws.co.uk
First sold beer: 29 September 2013 (at original site)
Self-styled “beer imps” Ian Clark and Lucy Grimshaw’s enterprise began in a small industrial unit in East Dulwich. It expanded in early 2015 to a railway arch near Loughborough Junction in partnership with the London Beer Lab, with the intention of sharing the 8 hl kit with other small brewers.
This didn’t work out, and Lucy and Ian took the unusual decision to downscale rather than attempt to expand, figuring that a smaller brewery selling mainly through an on-site taproom would suit them better both financially and in lifestyle terms. They completed the move to their current home, in another arch close to Loughborough Junction station, in October 2017, installing a compact 1.5 hl brewhouse and three small but high-spec cylindroconical fermenters, with the old kit going to Southey.
For a while they supplemented their capacity by cuckoo brewing at Bexley in response to the occasional big order, with their own fermenter kept on the site, but this arrangement had ceased by the end of 2019.
The brewery works hard to reduce its environmental impact and makes a point of using UK ingredients even for its hop-forward beers. Its products are all unfined and vegan friendly, packaged in cask, keg and minikeg and hand bottled. They’re mainly sold directly through the taproom and on market stalls.
Updated 9 December 2021.
Leave a Reply