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Brewpub not currently brewing 17 Albany Road, Brentford TW8 0NF (Hounslow) blackdogbeerhouse.co.uk First sold beer: 18 January 2020 Brewing suspended: by June 2023
After many years setting up and operating beer-friendly pubs for other companies, Ash Zobell and brothers Pete and James Brew refurbished and reopened this pub in a Brentford backstreet conservation area in October 2018. The intention was always to operate as a brewpub, and a small brewery with a 1.6 hl kit finally went into production in an shed in the back garden early in 2020.
Opened in 1868 and originally known as the Albany Arms, the pub was rebuilt by Brentford’s now-closed Royal Brewery in 1901. Following a recent troubled history, it was closed for over two years before its current award-winning rejuvenation. Pete was previously involved in setting up Big Smoke, since moved outside London.
Pete Brew in Fearless Nomad’s petite brewhouse.
Brewing was suspended by summer 2023 with no decision yet on its long-term future. The pub meanwhile remains fully open.
Beers in keg and cask were exclusively sold in the pub.
Brewpub 302 Creek Road SE10 9SW (Greenwich) up-the-creek.com First sold beer: 31 October 2018
Perhaps not the most obvious place you’d expect to find an in-house brewery, Greenwich institution Up the Creek is a comedy club in a former church hall founded by the late comedian Malcolm Hardee in 1991. But the owner is a keen beer fan, and a neat 4 hl brewhouse, clearly visible from the street, was installed in October 2018. Originally branded Greenwich Brewery, the beers have simply carried the name of the venue since 2020.
There have been some lapses in production, when brewers moved on in 2019 and during the Covid-19 lockdowns, but the brewhouse has been active during 2021.
Beers are nearly all in cask, with small scale hand-bottling, and sold exclusively in house except for the occasional festival. Note that the bar may only be open to event ticket holders.
Brewery Original site: 142 Tilbury Road E10 6RE (Waltham Forest) Current production site: 1 Compass West Estate, 33 West Road N17 0XL (Haringey) gravitywellbrewing.co.uk First sold beer: September 2018 (at original site)
Founder Ben Duck had already given up his career as a financial lawyer before deciding to turn the appealing mix of science and creativity he found in his homebrewing hobby into a day job. He spent a year perfecting recipes before moving into an arch below the Overground Gospel Oak to Barking line by Leyton Midland Road station.
Ben did most of the conversion and installation work himself, including designing and commissioning a miniature 2 hl brewhouse, soon upgraded to 6 hl, and, unusually for a brewery this size, a reverse osmosis filter to purify mains water. An informal taproom added in the same arch in April 2019 expanded to its own arch across the main road (155 Midland Road E10 6JT) during 2020.
Ben Duck of Gravity Well.
In March 2023, production relocated to a new site in Tottenham, expanding at the same time. The new home is on the same industrial estate as Bohem and Redemption, next door to the unit formerly occupied by OMEBEER. The Leyton taproom has been retained.
The original Tilbury Road arch was taken over by Libertalia Brewing Co later in 2023, with plans to resume brewing.
Beers are mainly in keg, with occasional hand-bottling.
Former brewpub 221 Shoreditch High Street E1 6PJ (Hackney) queensheadshoreditch.com First sold beer: 21 November 2018 Ceased brewing: September 2022, brewhouse removed by November 2023
Chicago brewery Goose Island, founded in 1988 and part of AB InBev since 2011, established its first London home, the Vintage Ale House, in Balham in 2016. It closed this less than two years later to focus on its first brewpub in Europe, opened in November 2018 in a former restaurant and cocktail bar on busy Shoreditch High Street.
The brewhouse behind glass at the back was a high-spec German-style 5 hl installation supplied by ProBrew in Wisconsin. It even had a water filtration system and a grist mill, rare in a London brewery this size.
Following the trend for multinationals to reduce their involvement in UK craft-style brewing, AB InBev sold the site to pub chain Urban Pubs and Bars in September 2022. It’s since been renamed the Queen’s Head. Brewing was suspended and the brewers made redundant.
The kit remained in place for a while with the possibility of leasing it to a third party or parties as the cost of removal was high. But the brewhouse and most of the other equipment had been removed by November 2023.
In Goose Island days, beers were only sold in the pub in tank, keg and with one barrel-aged line dispensed direct from the wooden barrels using a Rack Aeriale nitrogen-based system developed by Dogfish Head brewery in Delaware, the only one in the UK.
Brewery 5a Clarendon Yard, Coburg Road N22 6TZ (Haringey) thegoodnessbrew.co First sold beer: September 2019 (at own site)
The Goodness emerged out of the amusingly named Wood Green Hopping City, founded in 2016 as one of several community hop collectives in London, groups of locals who grow hops in gardens and allotments and pool the harvest to create an annual special beer. At first the beers were cuckoo-brewed by Damien Legg and Mike Stirling with Zack Ahmed, including at the Prince and Florence brewpubs and in Sheffield, and sold through local markets. Joe Sheasgreen and Oliver Newbery became involved to help build the business.
Production ramped up several notches in August 2019 with the commissioning of a substantial installation with a 15 hl Chinese-built brewhouse and 30 hl fermenters, complete with steam heating plant and water filter. It’s located in a large industrial unit in Clarendon Yards opposite Wood Green’s repurposed Chocolate Factory.
Brewhouse at the Goodness
The cask-drinking founders are committed to the format, but also produce beer in keg and can.
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.
Brewing in the vaults: German Kraft at Mercato Mayfair, London W1.
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.
Brewery, now brewing outside London 149 Hillingdon Street SE17 3JH (Southwark) ganyambrew.co.uk First sold beer: December 2018 Ceased brewing in London: January 2021
This very small brewery began as a cuckoo in 2018 but has also brewed commercially on a 1.5 hl home-based kit. The name means ‘go home’ in Cumbrian dialect and the brewery did exactly that in January 2020, relocating to Kendal, Cumbria.
Brewpub 16 Bohemia Place E8 1DU (Hackney) hackneychurchbrew.co First sold beer: 16 June 2018
This handsome brewpub in two railway arches on Hackney’s ‘brewery row’ was co-founded by head brewer Ryan Robbins, originally from Missouri, who oversees a 20 hl automated brewhouse from German suppliers Braukon, complete with water purifier and grain mill.
The operation was originally known as St John at Hackney after the nearby church but changed its name to avoid confusion with the St John restaurant. Several of the people involved, though, are connected to the church, and the business to provide community benefits through apprenticeships and charitable work around issues like local homelessness.
Ryan Robbins of Hackney Church Brew Co.
Most beers are in keg and can and sold both on site and elsewhere.
Suspended brewery Original site: 58A Railway Arches, North Woolwich Road E16 2AA (Newham) Current site: The Factory Project, Factory Road E16 2HB (Newham, no visitors please) Taproom: 1A Brunel Street Works, 5 Silvertown Way, London E16 1EA huskbrewing.com First sold beer: January 2016 Brewing suspended: February 2023
Despite its original address and against London expectations, this small east London brewery and taproom began not under a railway but a road viaduct, close to the Royal Victoria Docks and Excel exhibition centre.
Founder Christiaan van der Vyver, originally from Pretoria in South Africa, is a former homebrewer and enthusiastic beer and food matcher who once worked for the Hawksmoor restaurant group, and has named the business after the husk, one of the reasons why barley has proved an ideal grain for brewing. He started with a 4 hl brewhouse from veteran microbrewery supplier Dave Porter.
The brewery planned to move and expand in 2023 with a larger 10 hl kit acquired from Three Sods when it closed. The intended site fell through and brewing had to be suspended in February, though the taproom remained open for a time.
Eventually the operation relocated to two new sites. A new taproom opened in July at a more accessible location in a new development close to Canning Town station. Brewing facilities were transferred to a repurposed industrial site in Silvertown with no public facilities. Production still hasn’t resumed, however, due to problems with the power supply, and may be delayed into 2024.
Cask, keg and bottle-conditioned beers
are mainly distributed locally and include several with unusual flavourings.
Closed brewery Richmond TW9 (Richmond upon Thames) jeffersonsbrewery.co.uk First sold beer: 8 July 2017 Ceased brewing: September 2022
One of London’s smaller commercial breweries, Jeffersons derived its name from homebrewing brothers Freddie and George Jefferies, who first sold their beer at the Barnes Fair in July 2017 after two years of planning and preparation. Double and triple brew days were soon common on the custom-built 3 hl kit thanks to rising demand. The site wasn’t suitable for visitors but the brothers originallly planned a local offiste taproom.
Following the challenges of the Covid-19 lockdowns and the subsequent energy crisis, brewing was suspended in September 2022 “until market conditions improve”. In January 2023, however, the company was formally dissolved so the beers are unlikely to reappear.
Beers were in keykeg or bottle conditioned in 330 ml bottles.
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