Promoting an international beer culture that recognises and celebrates beers of quality, distinctiveness and local character, brewed with care and passion.
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Closed brewpub and beer firm 184 New Cross Road SE14 5AA (Lewisham) First sold beer: March 2017 Ceased brewing: around July 2018, active as a cuckoo until 2020.
Paddy and Joseph Ryan began this brewery in 2017 with a 50 l Braumeister kit in the cellar of their pub, the White Hart in New Cross, under the name Paddies with Attitude. It was renamed in April 2018 and soon afterwards switched to cuckoo brewing at Bianca Road to address capacity issues.
The pub was threatened by plans to convert the upper floors to flats in 2019, which the licensees argued would make it unviable. The proposal was defeated following a local campaign but the threat of revived proposals persisted, and the business closed during the 2020 lockdowns. Cuckoo brewing has also ceased as one of the partners has moved from the UK.
Brewery Original site: Mackenzie Road, Beckenham BR3 4RY (Bromley) Second site: 253 Beckenham Road, Beckenham BR3 4RP (Bromley) Current site (only open for special events): 2A Birkbeck Road, Beckenham BR3 4SN br3wery.com First sold beer: February 2019 (at original site)
Cadú Gomes began brewing commercially on a small scale using a home-based kit early in 2019, emphasising local character with the brewery name, which puns on the Beckenham postcode (BR3).
Beer was subsequently cuckoo brewed larger batches at various locations, including Brum Brewery in Birmingham.
During the 2020 lockdowns, Cadú converted a former lawnmower shop by Beckenham Road tram stop into a small brewpub, opening in December 2020 with seating within arm’s reach of an 8.5 hl Hoplex brewhouse.
In November 2023, production was located to a standalone site a short distance away, with the Beckenham Road taproom retained and expanded to create further drinking space. In January 2025, the next-door unit on Beckenham Road became the main taproom, while the original space became a coffee shop also run by the brewery. A second retail outlet opened in central Beckenham (1 Kelsey Park Road BR3 6LH) in April 2025.
Beckenham’s Br3wery at its second site.
Beers are in keg and can, sold almost entirely through the brewery’s own outlets.
Bloomsbury was a brand used for exclusive beers commissioned for the Bloomsbury Leisure Group, which owns the Euston Tap and its sister pubs. The beers originated at a variety of breweries in the UK and elsewhere, including Five Points.
The name was previously used for an unrelated brewery at the Perseverance pub in Bloomsbury.
The beer firm was wound up in mid-2022 but the pub chain remains in operation.
24 openings and revivals, 7 closures and suspensions, net change +17.
By the end of 2018, there were 125 commercial breweries operating in London, including 32 brewpubs. Seven were parts of multinationals (M). These breweries were:
Short Stack (Howling Hops, Cock Tavern) E8, Hackney, brewpub NEW!, reviving brewing on original Howling Hops kit vacated by Maregade which has moved to Hackney.
Dragonfly (George and Dragon), brewpub, management of brewery passed to Portobello and rebranded Portbello at the George.
House Brewery (Prince) brewpub, brewing operations under new management and rebranded The Goodness.
Wild Card Brewery transfers production to expanded site off Blackhorse Lane, inaugurating the ‘Blackhorse Mile’. It retains its Walthamstow Village site as a taproom and barrel vault.
N = part of a national brewing group.
For definitions of a London brewery, see the current London breweries page.
Brewery not currently brewing, no visitors please Kentish Town NW5 1UF (Camden) kentishtownbrewery.com First sold beer: October 2017 Brewing suspended: by October 2019
This small home-based brewery was placed on hold in late 2019 while brewer Mark Drayton made a trip to Australia for family reasons. He expected to return and resume brewing in 2020 but these plans were disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. He’s since brewed in Australia, though still plans to return to the UK and revive the project.
Beers made before brewing was suspended were mainly bottled, with some short runs brewed at home in Kentish Town and bigger batches cuckoo-brewed elsewhere.
Brewpub 17 Albany Road, Brentford TW8 0NF (Hounslow) blackdogbeerhouse.co.uk First sold beer: 18 January 2020 Brewing suspended: by June 2023 Brewing revived: January 2025
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 a possibility that it may cease for good, though the pub remained fully open. Happily, house beers started to flow again early in 2025.
Beers in keg and cask are exclusively sold in the pub.
Brewpub, brewing currently suspended 302 Creek Road SE10 9SW (Greenwich) up-the-creek.com First sold beer: 31 October 2018 Brewing suspended: by December 2024
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. The brewhouse was active during 2021 but was suspended again by December 2025.
Beers have nearly all been 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.
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