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.
Tim Skelton’s Beer in the Netherlands, the essential English language guide to one of the most interesting and dynamic beer scenes in the world, is now in its second edition — with a little input from me as I edited the text.
The growth of Dutch craft brewing in recent years has been spectacular: from a mere 40 breweries in 2002, the country now boasts around 350. More importantly, between them they offer a dazzling range of styles to equal any in the world — astonishingly for an industry which not so long ago was known only for producing lakes of indifferent pale lager and perhaps a bokbier or two in the autumn.
Tim’s comprehensive new guide provides personal reviews not only of all those breweries but the same number again of beer companies without brewhouses, with notes on thousands of beers and more than 550 specialist cafés and take home suppliers. It covers the scene from Aachen to Zwolle and many off-the-beaten-track places between. Like its predecessor, it should become the trusted companion of many a beer explorer, including visitors from the UK taking advantage of the new direct Eurostar connection.
British-born Dutchman Tim has lived in the Netherlands since 1989 and become an award-winning beer and travel writer and global expert on Dutch beer culture. He’s also the author of Around Amsterdam in 80 Beers (Cogan & Mater) and Luxembourg: The Bradt Guide (Bradt Travel Guides).
I’m particularly delighted to have been involved in this project as Tim’s book is part of a family that I like to think includes my own London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars. Our common spiritual ancestor is Tim Webb’s benchmark Good Beer Guide Belgium, first published in 1992 and now co-compiled with Joe Stange, which I regard as an exemplary work and was the model for my book. The Belgian guide began by covering the Netherlands too, but as the beer scene in both countries grew beyond the confines of a single volume, Tim W concentrated on Belgium, while Tim S, who had contributed to Tim W’s guide, developed a new work covering the northern neighbour.
You can buy copies of the latest Beer in the Netherlands at Beer Inn-Print.
Closed brewery Nine Elms SW8 (Wandsworth) First sold beer: 1998 Ceased brewing: by end 2005
Tim Haggard left his job as City accountant in 1997 with plans to set up a brewery with his brother Andrew, but the opportunity soon arose to take over and refurbish a Fulham pub, the Imperial Arms at 577 Kings Road SW6 2EH. The Haggards added a brewery in 1998, with an 8 hl kit overseen by Andrew, but although the intention was to brew mainly for the pub, the facility was on a separate site across the river in Battersea. It made a single cask beer, Haggards Horny Ale.
The pub had considerable success selling vodka jelly shots, originally from a third party supplier, but when this went out of business, the Haggards began making the product themselves at the brewery under the name Bad Jelly. Despite controversy about the jellies’ alleged appeal to children and the involvement of the Portman Group, this side of the business grew and eclipsed the brewing activities.
The pub was sold in 2005 and the brewery closed. The pub has had several changes of ownership since and is currently closed.
Closed brewery Lakeside Drive, Park Royal NW10 7HQ (Ealing) guinness.com First sold beer: 1936 (at this site) Ceased brewing: 2005 (at this site, still brewing outside London)
Guinness is of course an Irish brewery but its early history was strongly shaped by London brewing at a time when Britain ruled Ireland. Arthur Guinness had a share in a brewery in Leixlip/Léim an Bhradáin, County Kildare, from around 1755, and in 1759 set up his own brewery in the Irish capital, Dublin/Baile Átha Cliath, famously taking out a 9,000 year lease on a site at St James’s Gate where the brewery still operates today.
Originally the simple ale styles of the day were brewed, but in 1778, Guinness began producing porter in direct competition with imported London beers which were gaining in popularity in Dublin. It was likely not the first Irish brewery to do so but ultimately the most successful.
By the mid-19th century Guinness was one of the biggest brewers in the British Isles, successfully transforming porter and stout (the latter originally simply a stronger porter), into something characteristically Irish. The fame of Irish stout, and of Guinness in particular, spread across the world with the Irish diaspora, making it one of the first global brands, and by 1914 St James’s Gate was producing an astonishing 4.34 million hl a year.
By the 1930s, with Dublin now the capital of an independent state and English porter heading inexorably towards extinction, mainland Britain was one of Guinness’s most important export markets. While customers in the northwest and Scotland were easily reached by ship from Dublin, the south of England was less accessible, so, having considered and rejected a Manchester site, Guinness added a satellite brewery in London.
The location chosen was Park Royal in Willesden, a former Royal Agricultural Society showground in the western suburbs on the A40 trunk road which was then being redeveloped as an industrial zone. Guinness built a massive state-of-the-art facility with a capacity of more than 715,000 hl a year, designed in art deco style by George Gilbert Scott, noted for Bankside Power Station (now the Tate Modern) among other buildings, and Alexander Gibb. Centered on three interconnected 30 m-high blocks, and with extensive private railway sidings, it won praise from renowned architecture critic Nikolaus Pevsner as an antidote to ‘the exuberance of contemporary bypass Art Deco’.
For a while after it opened in 1936, it restored to London the long-lost distinction of being home to the biggest brewery in the world. It turned out to be last new brewery in the capital before the arrival of modern microbrewing in the late 1970s.
Originally Park Royal brewed only Guinness Extra Stout, then at around 5.5%, in draught and bottle-conditioned form. Following various flavour matching and blending trials with Dublin-brewed Guinness, the company ceased shipping the latter to London, with southeast England entirely supplied from Park Royal from 1938. The draught stout was pasteurised and pressurised by the 1950s, but bottled Guinness remained a live product until 1994.
Unlike other historic industrial British brewers, Guinness never pursued a policy of acquiring a pub estate, instead relying on the distinctiveness of its beer and the strength of its brand to ensure it became a ‘must-stock’ in pubs owned by other brewers. For decades it often strengthened its partnerships with potential competitors by selling its beer in bulk for other brewers to bottle for sale in their own outlets.
Park Royal’s output peaked at 3.3 million hl a year in 1972, but it continued to produce substantial quantities for many more decades. In 1978 a new lager plant opened, primarily to brew Harp Lager (around 3.5%), a brand it launched in Ireland in 1960, brewed at the Great Northern Brewery in Dundalk, and began marketing in the UK in partnership with Courage and Scottish & Newcastle the following year. Harp was first brewed at Park Royal in the early 1960s, while a dedicated brewery intended for it was under construction at Courage’s Alton site. In the 1980s the Park Royal lager facility also brewed a licensed version of Alsatian lager Kronenbourg 1664, early low alcohol lager Kaliber (0.5%) and a long-forgotten Guinness Bitter. In 1998 most lager production was contracted to Camerons in Hartlepool and the plant closed the next year.
Where are they now?
In 1997, Guinness merged with hotel, catering and spirits group Grand Metropolitan, which had sold off its own brewing interests in Watney (see Stag Brewery) six years previously, to form Diageo, one of the biggest drinks companies in the world. In 2005, with improvements at St James’s Gate, the London plant was deemed surplus to capacity and worth more as development land. It was summarily closed, with Guinness production for the UK market centralised in Dublin.
Draught, canned and bottled Guinness, now known as Guinness Original (4.2%), are of course still brewed in Dublin. Harp has disappeared from the mainland UK but is still available in Northern Ireland, also brewed in Dublin, as is Kaliber.
Despite its importance, the Park Royal brewery buildings were entirely demolished, among some controversy, in 2006. Following an application from the 20th Century Society, English Heritage (now succeeded by Historic England) recommended the building for listing, but this was overruled by the government.
Diageo retained its global headquarters in a more recent office block on the site at 1 Lakeside Drive NW10 7HQ until 2021, but has since relocated to a central London address.
Meanwhile, Guinness is set to return to brewing in London on a much smaller scale by the end of 2024 with the opening of Guinness at Old Brewers Yard in Covent Garden.
Things to see
This must be one of the most thoroughly effaced large breweries in London, entirely replaced by homes, business parks and green space. The original layout has been completely lost and it’s now very hard to work out the footprint, though the long, narrow lake that functions as a centrepiece of the new development more-or-less marks the western boundary. There aren’t even any street or business names to recall the earlier use.
Includes information for Bünker, Soho Brewing Co and Zebrano.
Brewery no longer in London Original site: The Coachworks, 80 Parsons Green Lane SW6 4HU (Hammersmith & Fulham) freedombrewery.com First sold beer: 1995 Ceased brewing: 2001 (at this site)
Freedom Covent Garden 41 Earlham Street WC2H 9LX (Camden) First sold beer: 1998 (as Soho Brewing Co) Ceased brewing: by end 2005 (as Bünker)
Freedom Soho 22 Ganton Street W1F 7BY (Westminster) First sold beer: 1999 Ceased brewing: 2003 (as Zebrano)
Freedom was not, as is sometimes claimed, the first dedicated lager brewery in the UK or even the only dedicated lager brewery of its time. But it was certainly the first major UK brewing initiative of modern times to focus on brewing quality lager, a daring step in the context of a UK beer scene where ‘lager’ was considered by many a poor quality industrial product. The gamble paid off as Freedom has survived into the changed circumstances of today, though is now some way from its west London birthplace.
The history of Freedom is linked to Weihenstephan-trained Alastair Hook, a longstanding advocate of good lager. Alastair had already created a lager brewery in a pioneering brewpub, the Packhorse, in Ashford, Kent, which operated between 1991 and 1994. Soon after it closed, he was invited by property developer Ewan Eastham to help set up what became Freedom in a former dairy building at Parsons Green. In 1996, Alastair left to set up Mash & Air for Oliver Peyton (see Mash) and, later, his own brewery, Meantime.
Freedom grew under the leadership of managing director Philip Parker, adding a brewpub in Soho in 1999. Meanwhile, in 1998, an unconnected brewpub opened in Covent Garden, confusingly known as the Soho Brewing Company. In 1999, this was sold to Freedom and rebranded (note there’s no connection with the current Soho Brewing). Brewing in Fulham ceased in 2001, and though the brewpubs continued making beer for a while, they couldn’t meet demand for the bottled products, which were contracted out. According to contemporary newspaper reports, some Freedom beer was brewed at Meantime, though former Meantime employees dispute this.
In the early 2000s, new management at Freedom began planning a move to a production brewery outside London. The brewpubs were eventually sold to new owners. The Soho site became Zebrano in 2002 and continued brewing for another year or so before becoming simply a bar and restaurant which is still trading under that name today. The Covent Garden branch became Bünker in 2003 and remained open under this name until 2009, but brewing had ceased by 2005. The address now houses a Japanese restaurant.
Freedom relocated to what’s now a substantial plant in Abbots Bromley, Staffordshire. It changed hands again in 2013 and is now owned by entrepreneur Tim Massey.
1 opening, 5 closures and suspensions, net change -4.
By the end of 2005, there were 10 commercial breweries operating in London, including three brewpubs. One was part of a multinational group (M). These breweries were:
Anheuser-Busch UK (Stag, Anheuser-Busch M) SW14, Richmond upon Thames
Closed brewpub 19 Great Portland Street W1W 8QB (Westminster) First sold beer: March 1998 Ceased brewing: by end 2006
An upmarket restaurant and brewpub just off Oxford Circus, Mash played a role in the prehistory of the current London craft brewing scene and in the career of one of the capital’s most prominent brewing visionaries, Alastair Hook.
Mash’s origin was outside London in Manchester. In late 1996, London-based restaurateur Oliver Peyton moved north with the opening of Mash & Air in Manchester’s ‘gay village’ on the corner of Canal Street and Chorlton Street. Alastair, who had helped set up London’s Freedom brewery, was brought in to add a house brewery, with a 16 hl Italian-built kit in operation by early 1997. The business deliberately set out to promote beer with food in an environment very different from a traditional pub, dispensing mainly from keg in a retro-futuristic space within a repurposed former mill building.
Mash in London, originally known as Mash 2, was opened as a sister branch in 1998, with a similar upmarket designer feel. It was equipped with another 16 hl Italian-built brewhouse making beer for keg and tank, again with the initial help of Alastair, who soon afterwards began work on his own brewery, Meantime.
Neither venue survived to witness the current resurgence in brewing in both cities. The Manchester brewpub had gone by the end of 2000, its kit sold to Grand Union, while its London sister continued for several years more. On-site brewing fizzled out during 2006 but Mash continued to commission beer from others until it finally closed in 2008. The address is currently occupied by the Italian restaurant chain Vapiano.
By the end of 2006, there were nine commercial breweries operating in London, including three brewpubs. One was part of a multinational group (M). These breweries were:
Anheuser-Busch UK (Stag, Anheuser-Busch M) SW14, Richmond upon Thames
By the end of 2007, there were nine commercial breweries operating in London, including five brewpubs. One was part of a multinational group (M). These breweries were:
Anheuser-Busch UK (Stag, Anheuser-Busch M) SW14, Richmond upon Thames
2 openings and revivals, 1 closure, net change +1.
By the end of 2008, there were 10 commercial breweries operating in London, including five brewpubs. One was part of a multinational group (M). These breweries were:
AB InBev UK (Stag, AB InBev M) SW14, Richmond upon Thames
Cock and Hen SW6, Hammersmith & Fulham, brewpub: see Florence.
Other changes
Anheuser-Busch is taken over by Belgo-Brazilian group InBev to become AB InBev. The Stag brewery is slated for closure but this is subsequently postponed.
After a three-year gap, Sweet William is revived under new ownership as Brodie’s Fabulous Beers.
For definitions of a London brewery, see the current London breweries page.
By the end of 2009, there were 12 commercial breweries operating in London, including five brewpubs. One was part of a multinational group (M). These breweries were:
AB InBev UK (Stag, AB InBev M) SW14, Richmond upon Thames
This pioneering new book explains what makes cask beer so special, and explores its past, present and future. Order now from CAMRA Books. Read more here.
London’s Best Beer
The fully updated 3rd edition of my essential award-winning guide to London’s vibrant beer scene is available now from CAMRA Books. Read more here.
