Brewpubs
germankraftbeer.com
Mercato Metropolitano Elephant
42 Newington Causeway SE1 6DR (Southwark)
First sold beer: 10 March 2018
Mercato Mayfair
13A North Audley Street W1K 6ZA (Westminster)
First sold beer: November 2020
Kraft Dalston
130A Kingsland High Road E8 2LQ (Hackney)
First sold beer: December 2020
The first German Kraft opened in December 2017 in the first Mercato Metropolitano, a lively warren of a food market occupying an old paper factory just off the Elephant and Castle junction. The team behind it comprised Felix Bollen, Anton Borkmann, Andrea Ferrario and Michele Tieghi, who drew on previous experience at Steinbach Bräu in Erlangen, Franconia.
At first it was just a bar, but a 20 hl Hungarian-built brewhouse was in action a few months later, capable of making lagers in traditional Bavarian style with a three-step mash. The brewery is equipped with a grist mill and a water treatment unit also used to produce bottled water for the market. The kit is shoehorned in behind the main bar within one of the market halls, while fermentation and conditioning tanks are just outside in the verdant semi-tropical garden.
The owners of the market site intend to redevelop it for housing, so the brewery here will have to find a new home eventually, although the timescale is not yet confirmed as two planning applications have been rejected.
The second Mercato Metropolitano opened in November 2019 as an indoor street market in the spectacular galleried surrounds of the former St Mark’s Church, a Grade I-listed 1820s Greek Revival building in the upscale heart of Mayfair. A second German Kraft with a 2.5 hl brewhouse and 5 hl fermenters was installed in the crypt the following year.
Besides a bar adjacent to the brewhouse, beers are also sold at a further bar at ground floor level on the high altar, constructed from over 1,000 golden glass bricks made by melting down broken glasses collected at Elephant. Currently all dispense here is from keg due to problems with the dispense tanks.
A third site followed later the same year, an ultra-modern brewpub-bar-restaurant created as a four-way collaboration with the neighbours at Elephant, craft gin distiller Jim and Tonic; kebab restaurant Le Bab; and ‘aparthotel’ operator Locke, which provides accommodation on the upper floors of this newly built Dalston complex. A 5 hl German-style brewery operates in the basement, feeding six serving tanks behind the upstairs bar.
German Kraft added a small non-brewing site in Brixton Village Market in summer 2023 (43 Granville Arcade SW9 8PS).
Beers are almost entirely sold on the sites themselves from tank and keg, with some exchange between them. Most core beers are brewed on the biggest kit at Elephant, with the smaller kits in Dalston and Mayfair used for changing specials and seasonals. Brewing on site is fundamental to the concept: according to the brewery, it not only guarantees freshness but cuts carbon emissions by 75% by reducing packaging and transport.
The head brewer for the group is now James Mozolewski.
Updated 7 August 2023.
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