Includes information for Short Stack.
Cock Tavern
Brewpub, brewing suspended
315 Mare Street E8 1EJ (Hackney)
First sold beer: 24 July 2012 (as Howling Hops)
Brewing suspended: by end 2019 (as Short Stack)
Howling Hops Tank bar
Brewpub
9 Queens Yard E9 5EN (Tower Hamlets)
howlinghops.co.uk
First sold beer: June 2015
The Cock Tavern, a classic corner pub a few steps from the famous Empire music hall and Hackney’s ‘cultural quarter’, was reopened in 2012 by Pete Holt, owner of the Southampton Arms. The new venture included a 6.5 hl house brewery in the cellar, previously used by Camden Town at the Horseshoe pub in Hampstead. Named Howling Hops as a nod to blues musician Howlin’ Wolf, it brewed over 100 different beers in its first two years and was soon creating interest far beyond the pub under the supervision of brewer Tim O’Rourke.
In June 2015, brewing operations relocated to a new brewpub in an upcycled warehouse at Hackney Wick billed as the UK’s first ‘tank bar’. Here, a much bigger 25 hl kit from Bavarian Brewing Technologies is used to fill a battery of 10 1,000 l conditioning tanks lined up behind the bar from which beer is poured directly.
The kit at the Cock remained in place, rented by the pub’s former assistant manager Ian Morton as the Maregade brewery. This moved out in November 2017 and subsequently closed. Early in 2018, Howling Hops renewed the brewing license at the Cock with the intention of reinstating brewing for specials, some of them served using a cut-down version of the tank system, under the name Short Stack. But thanks to the limited space in the cellar and demand at the Tank Bar, activity was intemittent and had lapsed by 2019.
Howling Hops beers are sold from tank at Hackney Wick, and in keg, can and sometimes cask outside it, both at other outlets in the group and elsewhere.
Updated 11 December 2021.
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