Closed brewery
25 Bermondsey Trading Estate, Rotherhithe New Road SE16 3LL (Southwark)
fourpure.com
First sold beer: October 2013
Ceased brewing: September 2024
Always one of London’s most ambitious new breweries, Fourpure became one of the biggest. Founded as the fourth Bermondsey brewery by former City technology firm executive Dan Lowe and his brother Tom, both homebrewers, it rejected the railway arch model in favour of the less restricted space of a conventional industrial unit between the lines at the southeast end of the strip, near Millwall FC’s New Den stadium. The name refers to the four traditional ingredients of beer.
The Lowes recruited John Driebergen, formerly of Meantime, as head brewer and installed a 30 hl kit bought second-hand from Purity in Warwickshire, alongside a 1 hl pilot kit. From the start, the brewery was equipped with a canning line in a nearby unit, one of the first in a new London brewery.
It subsequently expanded several times, with additional warehousing, a 2017 enlargement into an adjacent unit to make space for a new 50 hl German-built GEA Craft Star brewhouse and three outdoor silos for base malts and spent grain. The old kit was sold to Brockley Brewery for its expanded site at Hither Green.
In July 2018, Fourpure became the sixth London craft brewer acquired by a multinational, the Japanese group Kirin, as part of its Australian-originated Lion Little World Beverages subsidiary, though with the same management as before. Further expansion into two more adjacent units followed in summer 2019, one of them entirely occupied by an extensive taproom.
In 2022, John Driebergen and his assistant Ollie Parker left to found Great Beyond.
Following the trend of multinational breweries reducing their craft-style interests in the UK, in August 2022 Lion Little World sold all its UK breweries, including Little Creatures Regents Canal in London and Magic Rock in Huddersfield. The new owner was In Good Company, also known as Odyssey Inns, founded by Stephen Cox, a co-founder of Utopian Brewing in Crediton, Devon, who stepped down from his role there to run the new group.
Fourpure was for some years also the major production centre for Big Drop cuckoo-brewed low alcohol beers, and in May 2023 invested in that company.
In Good Company announced in August 2024 it was closing the brewery and taproom, and shifting production of both Fourpure and Big Drop to Magic Rock. CEO Steve Cox expressed regret at the closure and confirmed there would be job losses, but said it was necessary to ‘safeguard the brand for the future’. The subsidiary that owns the Fourpure brand has since been put into voluntary administration.
Beers were in keg and can, with much sold through supermarket chains.
Updated 21 October 2024.
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