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 end-of-year figures for commercial breweries operating in London from 1971 onwards

The table includes annual changes (+ for breweries revived or opened, – for those suspended or closed), numbers owned or part-owned by national (N) or multinational (M) groups, and numbers of brewpubs (BP) included in the total. In some years, brewpubs made up a high proportion of the numbers, particularly in the 1990s heyday of the Firkin chain. Click on a year to find the full list of breweries operational at the end of the year.

Year	+	–	Change	Total	N	M	BP
1971	0	0	0	11	6	1	0
1972	0	1	-1	10	7	1	0
1973	0	0	0	10	7	1	0
1974	0	0	0	10	7	1	0
1975	0	1	-1	9	6	1	0
1976	0	1	-1	8	5	1	0
1977	1	0	+1	9	5	1	0
1978	0	0	0	9	5	1	0
1979	1	1	0	9	4	1	1
1980	3	0	+3	12	4	1	3
1981	6	1	+5	17	3	1	8
1982	2	2	0	17	3	1	6
1983	4	3	+1	18	4	1	9
1984	6	2	+4	22	7	1	13
1985	3	1	+2	24	7	1	15
1986	1	2	-1	23	7	1	15
1987	1	1	0	23	7	1	16
1988	0	2	-2	21	6	1	14
1989	0	5	-5	16	5	1	11
1990	1	0	+1	17	6	1	12
1991	0	0	0	17	13	2	12
1992	1	0	+1	18	12	3	13
1993	4	2	+2	20	15	2	15
1994	4	0	+4	24	17	2	17
1995	3	2	+1	25	16	2	18
1996	3	0	+3	28	16	2	19
1997	5	2	+3	31	20	2	23
1998	4	4	0	31	21	2	23
1999	2	17	-15	16	4	2	7
2000	4	4	0	16	2	2	8
2001	2	3	-1	15	0	2	7
2002	1	0	+1	16	0	2	7
2003	0	2	-2	14	0	2	5
2004	1	1	0	14	0	2	4
2005	1	5	-4	10	0	1	3
2006	1	2	-1	9	0	1	3
2007	2	2	0	9	0	1	5
2008	2	1	+1	10	0	1	5
2009	2	0	+2	12	0	1	5
2010	2	0	+2	14	0	1	5
2011	8	0	+8	22	0	1	8
2012	15	0	+15	37	1	1	12
2013	20	5	+15	52	0	1	14
2014	21	5	+16	68	0	1	20
2015	15	6	+9	77	0	3	23
2016	22	6	+16	93	1	2	29
2017	23	8	+15	108	1	3	25
2018	24	7	+17	125	0	7	32
2019	17	12	+5	130	0	14	28
2020	16	14	+2	132	0	14	29
2021	12	12	0	132	0	14	29
2022	9	19	-10	122	0	11	27
2023	5	20	-15	107	0	10	25
2024*	3	4	-1	106	0	10	24

Notes

‘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.

The locality names given after postcodes in each 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
• Brewery History Society Brewerypedia: breweryhistory.com/wiki
• 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 Cryne at the London Brewers Alliance and John Paul Adams and the London CAMRA brewery liaison officers for sharing records and information.

London breweries homepage and current list.