Promoting an international beer culture that recognises and celebrates beers of quality, distinctiveness and local character, brewed with care and passion.
Best beer and travel writing award 2015, 2011 -- British Guild of Beer Writers Awards
Accredited Beer Sommelier
Writer of "Probably the best book about beer in London" - Londonist
"A necessity if you're a beer geek travelling to London town" - Beer Advocate
"A joy to read" - Roger Protz
"Very authoritative" - Tim Webb.
"One of the top beer writers in the UK" - Mark Dredge.
"A beer guru" - Popbitch.
Shared brewery 92 Enid Street SE16 4AW (Southwark) mashpaddlebrewery.com First sold beer: June 2022
Nick Harkin, a homebrewer with a background in financial services, is the man behind this communal brewery in the heart of Bermondsey, which opened following a successful crowdfunding round in summer 2021.
Mash Paddle offers homebrewing beginners to brew their own beer on professional-grade homebrew-sized kits, with a commercial license, its own small batch brands and onsite taproom, a little like the now-defunct UBREW. It’s also a social enterprise, working to support people with criminal convictions.
Finding a suitable home for the project proved more challenging then expected, but an announcement on 30 January 2022 confirmed that it had secured a site in Enid Street between Bianca Road and the Kernel.
‘Soft opening’ began in June, initially only with a bar stocking other people’s beer, but a few small-scale trial brews began to appear soon afterwards. Full brewing facilities were delayed a little while a more powerful electricity supply was installed but the site was fully operational by September 2022. There are two 40 l SS Tech kits with separate vessels, and two 30 l ‘all-in-one’ Grainfathers, plus various miniature cylindroconical fermentation vessels and a hand canning machine
Demand for house beers has been so strong that they are now mainly cuckoo brewed at Bianca Road and Distortion, though in spring 2024 the brewery is planning to add its own larger kit so it can produce at more commercial scale.
Own beers are in keg and can, with the facility to can beers also available to other users.
Brewpub no longer brewing 45 Southwark Street SE1 9HP (Southwark) flatironsquare.co.uk First sold beer: May 2021 (as St Felix Place) Ceased brewing: by April 2022
In two historic railway arches close to Borough Market, this combined brewpub and food court was initially a collaboration between musician Ben Lovett’s Venue Group and Lagunitas, one of the US breweries owned by Heineken.
Lagunitas was founded as an independent craft brewery in 1993 in the town of the same name in California’s Bay Area, though moved a year later to Petaluma not far away. In 2014, it opened a second production site in Chicago, Illinois. Heineken bought 50% of the company in 2015 and the remainder in 2017.
On first opening, the London venue was known as St Felix Place. It closed temporarily over the holiday period of 2021-22 and reopened in January with reconfigured outdoor space under the name Flat Iron Square. Staff from Brixton brewery, another Heineken subsidiary, took over the brewing, but it seems this only lasted a few months.
The equipment had been removed by summer 2024 and the link to Heineken has apparently loosened: the bar now also stocks both mainstream and ‘crafty’ brands from other multinationals like AB InBev as well as the occasional independent.
Cosed brewery Ealing W5 (Ealing) First sold beer: October 2020 Brewing ceased: January 2022
Brewers Thomas and Martin, who grew up locally, took responsibility for every aspect of the brewing process at this small home-based operation, working as sustainably as possible with a 2.5 hl kit.
Motivated partly by the relative paucity of breweries in west London, they created considerable interest locally and planned to expand to a bigger site with taproom. Unfortunately market conditions were not in their favour and brewing reportedly ceased early in 2022.
The origin of the name will be obvious to anyone who has noted the bird life in the average London park recently.
Brewery, visitors by appointment only Petts Wood BR5 (Bromley) marlix.co.uk First sold beer: December 2020
Old friends Mark Irwin and Alex Mears had been homebrewing together for 20 years before starting this part-time, home-based brewery, currently in action once a month at the weekend.
Beers are brewed in small batches for sale through local outlets, almost entirely in cask.
Closed brewery and beer firm Original site: Harringay N4 (Harringey) Second site: Suffolk, outside London First sold beer: May 2021 (at original site) Moved outside London: September 2021, ceased brewing on own kit by end 2021, company wound up January 2024.
This was originally a part-time self-built 1.5 hl nanobrewery created by homebrewer and philosopher Josh Mellor at a private address in the area known as the Harringay Ladder. Only a few months after opening, in September 2021, Josh relocated to a site in rural Suffolk, where he’s originally from. But this didn’t work out, and by late November he’d returned to London, based in Deptford. By now, he was cuckoo brewing on a larger scale.
Early in 2022, Josh began working for BBNo, which was in the process of reconfiguring its presence in Bermondsey following a major expansion to a new production brewery in Greenwich. Josh’s nanobrewery moved to BBNo’s Bermondsey arch and was used for producing BBNo specials for the taproom, though this ceased in March 2023.
Josh continued to cuckoo brew as a side project but wound up the company in early 2024.
Beers were in keg, naturally conditioned bag in box and bottle, often brewed to unusual and distinctive recipes.
Mellor’s beers on sale at Stroud Green Farmers’ Market.
Closed brewery 1-28 Echo Building, East Bay Lane E15 2SJ (Waltham Forest) First sold beer: January 2021 Brewing ceased: November 2024
London beer veteran Mark Pether bought the disused 16 hl brewhouse (once at Ascot Ales and now on its seventh owner) from his former employer Crate when they went into administration and took it across the River Lee Navigation to a new home at Hackney Bridge, a recently developed quarter of the Olympic Park.
The brewery was a collaboration with music entrepreneur Vikram Gudi and took its name from one of Vikram’s companies. With no capacity for a taproom at the production site, in April 2022 the brewery opened an offsite bar at Leytonstone High Road London Overground station.
Sadly Mammoth was unable to sustain production and closed its brewery in November 2024, with the taproom closing a few weeks later.
Beer firm, suspended brewery Original site: Stamford Brook W6 (Hammersmith and Fulham) Taproom: 1 Bouverie Road, London N16 0AH (Hackney) macintoshales.com First sold beer: January 2018 Brewing suspended: by June 2023
Charlie Macintosh began commercial brewing with a mission to make “modern, balanced ales that respect the ingredients and tradition” on a domestic scale, using a self-built 2 hl kit in a converted garage in Stamford Brook.
As demand grew, he began cuckoo brewing for larger runs, and as of July 2023 has set aside his home kit in favour of a long-term arrangement with Orbit. The same month he opened a taproom in a secluded yard near Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington, with an adjacent space used as a warehouse and office.
The current site is slated for redevelopment, but likely not for a few more years, and Charlie retains an ambition to move to his own kit at some point.
Beers in cask-, keg- and bottle-conditioned form are made with home-crushed malt and whole leaf hops.
Closed brewery Wood Green N22 (Haringey) greywoodbrewery.co.uk First sold beer: March 2020 Ceased brewing: April 2020
Designer and beekeeper Adam Armstrong had been a keen homebrewer for several years when the management at his local pub the Westbury suggested he make a commercial brew for them. He responded with a 1.5 hl batch for sale through the pub.
The first brew was well-received, but a few days later the Covid-19 lockdowns started and activities were suspended. Adam considered reviving the business as the lockdowns ended in 2021 but no further commercial brewing took place and by the end of the year he’d given up his brewing license. He’s continuing as a homebrewer and may revive commercial brewing at some stage if market conditions improve.
The name is from a possible derivation of the place name Haringey: ‘enclosure in the grey wood’ (though a more likely etymology is ‘Hering’s enclosure’, from a personal name).
The only beer brewed was in cask, sold through the Westbury.
The Greater Good Fresh Brewing Co (Pinter), London E17.
Brewery (of sorts), no visitors please 11A Uplands Business Park E17 5QJ (Waltham Forest) pinter.co.uk First sold beer: September 2020
The brainchild of two former musical festival promoters, Ralph Broadbent and Alex Dixon, this isn’t a conventional brewery but supplies a hi-tech home beer-making gadget, the Pinter, billed as a ‘Nespresso for beer’, and ingredients packs to use with it.
Technically, it’s not a homebrewing system as there’s no liquid to heat up: instead you use a special ‘fresh press’ concentrate, cold water and yeast in a single 10l vessel which took seven years to develop. This is cunningly designed to accommodate fermentation, conditioning and dispense, typically taking 4-5 days to produce drinkable beer.
Ralph and Alex point to the environmental benefits of their system which they say reduces packaging by 70% and CO2 emissions by 50% compared with bought-in beer. The business is located in the Walthamstow brewing hub of Blackhorse Lane.
I couldn’t get the Mark 1 version supplied as a review sample to work so can’t comment on the results, but I understand others have had better luck. The Pinter 2 was released later in 2021.
Fresh Press packs are created by ex-Camden Town brewer Evangelos Tsionos and are designed to fit through a letterbox.
Closed brewery 5B Elms Industrial Estate, Church Road, Romford RM3 0HU (Havering) First sold beer: May 2021 Ceased brewing: October 2022
Founded by lawyer and homebrewer Rash Singh Mahal with the help of brewer Thomas Newman on an industrial estate in the Ingrebourne valley near Harold Wood, this 8 hl setup was originally planned to launch in 2020 but delayed by the pandemic.
A taproom opened at the brewery in spring 2022 but soon closed due to licensing problems. The brewery itself closed in October 2022.
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London’s Best Beer
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