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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.
Brewpubs, some closed, changed hands or no longer brewing germankraftbeer.com
Mercato Metropolitano Elephant 42 Newington Causeway SE1 6DR (Southwark) First sold beer: 10 March 2018 Ceased brewing: October 2025
Mercato Mayfair 13A North Audley Street W1K 6ZA (Westminster) First sold beer: November 2020 Ceased brewing: by November 2024
Kraft Dalston 130A Kingsland High Road E8 2LQ (Hackney) First sold beer: December 2020 Ceased brewing: December 2024 Brewing expected to revive early 2026 as Squeeze: see 40FT.
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.
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 were also sold at a ground level bar on the high altar, constructed from over 1,000 golden glass bricks made by melting down broken glasses collected at Elephant.
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 operated 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 were almost entirely sold on the sites themselves from tank and keg, with some exchange between them. Most core beers were brewed on the biggest kit at Elephant, with the smaller kits in Dalston and Mayfair used for changing specials and seasonals.
Brewing at the Mayfair site, which had long been intermittent due to the cramped space, ceased entirely in November 2024 when the brewing equipment was removed, though the company retained the bar, selling beers brewed at Elephant.
The next month, the Dalston site closed completely when the host hotel was sold to new owners, though it’s since been reopened as a bar under new management with the involvement of nearby 40FT, with plans to revive brewing in 2026.
The Elephant site has long been earmarked for residential development, and after several unsuccessful planning applications, Southwark council finally granted approval in March 2025. A replacement food court is part of the plans, though with no temporary accommodation for traders in the meantime. German Kraft announced in autumn 2025 it was ‘calling last orders’ on the site following its Octoberfest event in September.
The company also operates brewpubs in Austria and is planning to open one in Berlin in 2026, so it’s conceivable the remaining London venues will be supplied from one of these.
The head brewer for the group is now James Mozolewski.
Beers are unfiltered and unpasteurised. At Elephant they were mainly dispensed from polythene-lined dispense tanks without additional pressure, though some were kegged, including as supplies to other outlets. Mayfair was originally equipped with tanks, though these proved problematic and were never used, with all beers in keg. Dalston was equipped with working tanks, though some beer was kegged.
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, with 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, formerly of Hackney Church Brew Co.
The brewery changed management in 2022 when Ryan moved on and hospitality veteran Hamish Glenn became involved. The beers have won numerous regional SIBA awards.
In the first half of 2026, the brewery plans to expand to a new site on the southern end of Walthamstow’s Blackhorse ‘Mile’. The existing arch will remain open as a bar, with some small batch brewing capacity too.
Most beers are in keg and can and sold both on site and elsewhere.
Closed brewery 58A Railway Arches, North Woolwich Road E16 2AA (Newham) huskbrewing.com First sold beer: January 2016 Brewing ceased: 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 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. The company then found a potential new brewing site at the Factory Project, Factory Road E16 2HB (Newham), but it was unsuitable for a taproom and proved problematic in other ways such as an inadequate power supply.
Chris van der Vyver of Husk Brewing.
Meanwhile an offsite taproom opened in July at a more accessible location in a new development close to Canning Town station (1A Brunel Street Works, 5 Silvertown Way, London E16 1EA), initially selling third party beers.
Plans to resume brewing were eventually abandoned, with the brewing side of the business voluntarily wound up in December 2024. The taproom is owned by a separate company and remains open simply as a bar.
Cask, keg and bottle-conditioned beers were mainly distributed locally and included 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.
Brewery Original site: 11 Print Village, 58 Chadwick Road SE15 4PU (Southwark) Second site: 2A-2 Copeland Park, 133 Copeland Road SE15 3SN (Southwark) Current site (from September 2023): 48 Druid Street SE1 2EZ (Southwark) kanpai.london First sold beer: June 2017
The first sake brewery in the UK and one of only seven in Europe was founded by Tom and Lucy Wilson, who named it with the Japanese word for ‘cheers’. Originally Tom and Lucy worked at a very small scale at Peckham’s Print Village, but expanded in August 2018 to an old industrial building complete with taproom in the heart of Peckham’s ‘cultural quarter’ at Copeland Park.
During September 2023, the brewery and taproom relocated an arch on the Bermondsey ‘beer mile’ next to Southwark Brewing, while the previous location in Peckham was taken on by Eko Brewery.
Sake is technically a beer as it’s a fermented alcoholic drink derived from grains, though the process differs from Western brewing in that there’s no malting and mashing. The polished rice is steamed before undergoing a lengthy and complex fermentation using a mould called koji capable of converting starches into sugars as well as yeast to produce the alcohol.
Tom Wilson of Kanpai with fermenters,
Beers are in keg and bottle: all are high grade junmai sake made entirely from rice and water. Kainpai regularly collaborates with conventional brewers and other producers like Peckham meadery Gosnells.
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 was In Good Company, also known as Odyssey Inns, founded by Stephen Cox, a co-founder of Utopian Brewing in Crediton, Devon, who 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.
Laura Smith inaugural brewer at Little Creatures Regents Canal.
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. Brewing equipment and dispense tanks remain in place, with no current plans to revive production.
Closed brewery Pinner HA5 (Hillingdon) First sold beer: 23 February 2019 Ceased brewing: by March 2023
German-born former marketing specialist Larissa Graeber and her husband Grant, who came to the UK as an officer with the US Navy based in Northwood, originally planned a brewery in central London with a 16 hl kit bought secondhand from Darkwave brewery in Bristol. When this fell through, they decided to convert their garden “summerhouse” in London’s far-flung northwest into a 2.5 hl facility with five fermenters from Elite Stainless Fabrications. Beers in keg and bottle were sold locally.
The bigger kit was placed in storage with plans to use it once a suitable site has been found. Progress was slowed by the 2020-21 Covid-19 lockdowns but two possible brewpub/taproom sites were under consideration in late 2021.
Sadly none of these plans came to fruition and in March 2023 the company submitted a voluntary application to wind itself up.
Brewery, likely no longer brewing in London Hare Wines, 24 Rigg Approach E10 7QN (Waltham Forest) magicspellsbrewery.co.uk First sold beer: June 2017 Brewing ceased in London: by July 2021
This brewing offshoot of Leyton-based drinks wholesaler Hare Wines started when owner Jas Hare noticed both the quality and booming popularity of the London-brewed beers he was selling. Brewing began in 2015 on a small scale in Epping, focusing initially on own-label brews for restaurants and similar businesses, with the Magic Spells brand launched in 2017.
Initial commercial brews were at Red Fox in Coggeshall, but the brewer there, Glenn Ackerman, later joined the Magic Spells team, commissioning a small 5 hl kit in a space adjacent to the wholesale warehouse, also used for events. The kit was mainly used for trial brews, ‘brewer for the day’ events and a summer taproom, while more commercial runs were at Firebrand in Cornwall under Glenn’s supervision.
Following the 2020 lockdowns, Magic Spells gave up its events and brewing space in Leyton and relocated all brewing. I’ve been unable to confirm the current location but it’s likely to be outside London. The wholesale drinks warehouse remains open and now has a retail side too.
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