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Brewpub, brewing currently suspended Original site: 395 Mentmore Terrace E8 3PH (Hackney) Current site: E5 Poplar Bakehouse, 2 Cotall Street E14 6TL (Tower Hamlets) e5bakehouse.com First sold beer: December 2017 (at original site) Brewing suspended: March 2020
This specialist bakery is noted for making its own kvass, a low alcohol beer popular in eastern Europe. Master baker Simone began brewing at the firm’s site near London Fields in 2017, working in 50-60 l batches using leftover rye and spelt bread, sugar or honey and a sourdough starter.
Brewing was suspended during the Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 and the equipment moved in 2021 to another, bigger, site, at the foot of a new residential block overlooking the Limehouse Cut canal. The London Fields site still operates as a bakery and café.
The intention was to revive brewing in 2022 but while this didn’t happen, since December 2022 the bakery has been collaborating with the Kernel on several kvass beers made in Bermondsey from waste bread supplied by E5.
Beer is sold at both sites subject to availability. Besides bottles, some has been produced in keg or dispensed direct from the fermenter.
Closed brewery Catford SE6 (Lewisham) oldkentrdbrewery.co.uk First sold beer: December 2019 Brewing ceased: January 2022
Will O’Neale and David Clack’s beers inspired by the history of the Old Kent Road first appeared early in 2016, cuckoo brewed at UBREW and, later, various other facilities. They then moved to working from their own 50 l installation at a private address some way south of the like-named road, outsourcing the occaional longer run. All brewing took place outside, so this is likely London’s only weather-dependent brewery.
The model proved difficult to sustain and at the end of January 2022 the business marked the end of brewing with a farewell part at Beer Shop London in Nunhead.
Beers were in keg and can, with some bottle conditioned specials in 750 ml.
Brewery 16A Rosebery Industrial Park N17 9SR (Haringey) orabeer.com First sold beer: May 2017 (as Brewheadz); May 2019 (as ORA)
An alluring fusion of northern Italian and London craft beer culture, ORA was founded in October 2016 in Modena, Emilio-Romagna, where two of its owners still live, but has mainly operated in London under the auspices of director Daniele Zaccarelli. It began as a cuckoo, one of the highest-achieving teams working at Bermondsey’s UBREW.
Meanwhile in April 2017, four other expatriate Italian homebrewing friends went professional under the name Brewheadz on a Tottenham industrial estate using a 14 hl Dave Porter kit. This project ran into difficulties when one of its key partners had to return to Italy for family reasons, so ORA took over in May 2019, gaining a much-needed brewing kit which it now plans to expand.
The original head brewer here was Simone Cristiano, previously at Barnet Brewery and Brewhouse and Kitchen, though he returned to Italy in 2020. His replacement is Julia Huber, who was born and trained in Germany and once ran a brewery in Greenland.
The brewery boasts a taproom with a location right by the Lea Valley Park and conveniently midway between a cluster of breweries including Redemption to the north and Beavertown and Pressure Drop to the south.
Simone Cristiano, former ORA head brewer.
Beers are kegged and occasionally sold in cask, as well as hand-bottled with live yeast, and often contain added flavourings. There are numerous specials and collaborations with both UK and Italian brewers.
Brewery Horsenden Farm, Horsenden Lane North, Greenford UB6 7PQ (Ealing) perivale.beer First sold beer: December 2018
Nestling under Horsenden Hill, a rural oasis managed as a public green space amid deep west London suburbia, Perivale is London’s only farm brewery. It operates from the curtailage of a Victorian farmhouse in an idyllic setting complete with a verdant herb garden draped with hops.
Lead brewer Mike Siddell, who founded it with two friends, is a homebrewer, former London Fields team member and violinist with rock band the Leisure Society. Living on a boat at Southall, a little way east along the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal, he was alerted to a vacant space at the farm by a volunteer with the local park Friends group.
The brewery’s original home was a pair of tiny units, little bigger than cupboards, that had previously been occupied by a woodworker. Mike installed the initial 1.2 hl kit from Italian supplier Polsinelli himself. During summer 2021, operations exapnded to a larger shed on another side of the farmyard, equipped with a 4.5 hl kit.
The brewery is open at least monthly for ‘tap days’ and other events at the site.
Beers are filled into keykeg and hand-bottled, and usually only available at the brewery.
Perivale’s original petite Italian-built brewhouse.
Brewery 2 Ravenswood Industrial Estate, Shernhall Street E17 9HQ (Waltham Forest) pillarsbrewery.com First sold beer: October 2016
One of several welcome recent initiatives dedicated to brewing decent lager in London, Pillars (originally Four Pillars, though shortened just before the beer launched) was founded by brothers Eamonn, Samie and Omar Razaq with their friend Gavin Litton, who perfected the recipes over two years of test batches homebrewed in a garden shed belonging to the brothers’ parents.
Located in a former car body shop alongside Trap and the Wild Card Barrel Store in the buzzing surroundings of Walthamstow’s Ravenswood Industrial Estate, the brewery boasts a water treatment plant and decoction brewhouse as well as an eye-catching mural on the outer wall.
In June 2019 Pillars added another outlet besides the onsite taproom, the Untraditional Pub at Crate House, a boxpark-style development of recycled shipping containers by St James Street station. During the 2020 lockdowns, the original Ravenswood taproom was extensively refurbished in beer hall style.
The core beers are brewed with only
malt, hops and water in accordance with the Bavarian purity law, fermented
using Czech lager yeasts and properly lagered, then sold unfined, unfiltered
and unpasteurised.
Brewery, no visitors please 2 Jubilee Parade (rear), West End Avenue, Pinner HA5 1BB (Harrow) pinnora.uk First sold beer: 30 March 2019
Taking its name from the first recorded name for Pinner in the 13th century, Pinnora was set up by two local brothers, Gareth and Gawain Cox, who have been involved in commercial brewing for others since 2016, inspired by their late father, a keen real ale fan.
In 2018 they moved into a very small commercial unit near the village centre and a few months later began brewing in their own right on a 2 hl kit. Brewing was briefly suspended during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns but revived in May 2021.
Restrictions on their current space prevent them from welcoming visitors but expansion to additional units is planned.
Brewery Original site: 338 Sheridan Road E7 9EF (Waltham Forest) Current site: 10 Uplands Business Park, Blackhorse Lane E17 5QL (Waltham Forest) prettydecentbeer.co First sold beer: May 2017 (at original site)
When charity worker James Casey joined the swelling ranks of new London brewers, he was determined that his enterprise would be about more than simply brewing good beer, so 15p out of every pint sold goes to Pump Aid, which works to provide reliable access to safe water in sub-Saharan Africa.
Pretty Decent started in an arch under the Gospel Oak to Barking Overground line in Forest Gate with an overgrown homebrew kit but has since upgraded to a 10 hl brewhouse from Oban Ales, presided over by head brewer Chris Pollard.
The brewery took over the neighbouring arch as a dedicated taproom in June 2021. It was also a partner in Tracks café-bar and record shop, opened in 2018 in an arch further along the same line, but this arrangement had ceased by 2021.
Pretty Decent’s original brewhouse.
Production was relocated in December 2022 to a bigger facility among the Blackhorse breweries in eastern Walthamstow, just round the corner from Signature. One of the old Wanstead arches was retained as a bar, with a taproom at the new site too,
Pretty Decent beers are sold in keg or hand-bottled and bottle-conditioned.
Closed brewery 185 Nursery Road E9 6PB (Hackney) First sold beer: 30 January 2018 Ceased brewing: 4 November 2023
This intriguingly named outfit at one end of Hackney’s ‘beer row’ was the second brewery co-founded by US exile Byron Knight, who previously helped set up Beavertown. Byron was the original ‘deviant’ while another founding partner, Rupert Selby, was the ‘dandy’, but day-to-day running later passed to another co-founder, Ben Taub.
At first, beers were cuckoo brewed at Enfield, starting in 2017, with the current railway arch site, equipped with a new 16 hl brewhouse from Oban Ales, launching the following year.
Following the financial challenges of the Covid-19 lockdowns and their aftermath, the brewery closed its doors later in 2023.
Beers were in keg, and in can using a mobile line.
Closed brewery 16 Vector Park, Forest Road, Feltham TW13 7EJ (Hounslow) First sold beer: January 2016 Ceased brewing: August 2020
When former financial specialist Francis Smedley decided to turn his passion for homebrewing into a profession, he settled on Feltham as a location with plenty of local demand but no local brewery. Reunion was up and running by the end of 2015 in a local industrial park between Hanworth Park and the Leisure West complex, using a Moeschle 16 hl brewhouse heated by a gas-fired steam boiler.
Operations expanded into a neighbouring unit in March 2018 with increased fermentation capacity, which includes square fermenters as well as cylindroconical tanks. A pleasant taproom was added on an upstairs mezzanine. By now, production was focused on “modern session beers” in cask, keg and can, the last using a mobile line.
Brewhouse at Reunion Ales.
Sadly, Reunion became the first major brewing casualty of the Covid-19 lockdowns, ceaseing to trade in August 2020.
Brewpub 308 Westwood Lane, Sidcup DA15 9PT (Bexley, brewing offsite nearby) thebrokendrum.co.uk First sold beer: 4 October 2018
Former ICT professional Andy Wheeler opened a micropub in a former nail bar at Blackfen in April 2015, between Welling and Sidcup in the shadow of the A2 Rochester Way flyover.
In 2018, Andy began brewing commercially at home in Belvedere not far away on a small scale using a 2 hl kit, making cask beers almost exclusively for sale in the pub. It’s named after a celebrated drinking house in Ankh-Morpork, the fictional city created by the late fantasy author Terry Pratchett for his Discworld cycle of novels.
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London’s Best Beer
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