Previously Little Creatures Regents Canal.
Brewpub, brewing currently suspended
1 Lewis Cubitt Walk N1C 4DL (Camden)
babelbeerhouse.com
First sold beer: 5 May 2019 (as Little Creatures Regents Canal)
Brewing suspended: August 2022
Brewing resumed: March 2023
Brewing suspended again: December 2023
This substantial brewpub in the Kings Cross redevelopment opened in May 2019 as the London outpost of Australia’s Little Creatures, founded in Fremantle in 2000 as a pioneering and influential craft brewery, although part of Japanese brewer Kirin’s Lion Group since 2012 and now allocated to its Lion Little World subsidiary.
Veteran Lion brewer Laura Smith, originally from New Zealand, was the inaugural head brewer, presiding over a neat 5 hl steam-heated Lehui brewhouse from China visible through glass in one corner. Brewing was suspended during the 2020-21 Covid-19 lockdowns and Laura returned to the southern hemisphere in 2021, though production resumed when the pub reopened in the spring of that year.
Brewing was suspended in August 2022, when Lion Little World sold all its UK breweries, including Fourpure in London and Magic Rock in Huddersfield. The new owner is Odyssey Inns, founded by Stephen Cox, a co-founder of Utopian Brewing in Crediton, Devon, who has stepped down from his role there to run the new group. In October the bar was renamed Babel Beer House, with Little Creatures brands no longer stocked.
The brewhouse remained in place and the new owners resumed production in March 2023. At least one own-brewed ‘tank’ beer was usually available, fermented in and dispensed from the line of cylindro-conical vessels behind the bar under blanket carbon dioxide pressure. Other beers sold were usually sourced from sister breweries Fourpure and Magic Rock or third parties.
By December 2023 brewing had been suspended again, and in March 2024 management of the site was transferred to a new company, Perfect Hive. It remains to be seen whether production will be revived.
Updated 20 March 2024.
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