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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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.
Pillars of Walthamstow society.
Following the closure of Wild Card, Pillars too over its original brewing site and taproom at neighbouring Unit 7, reopening it in April 2025 as a bar and community space called the Malthaus.
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.
Beers were initially mainly bottled and are now mainly canned, brewed in small batches and rapidly sold through the brewery website.
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.
The brewery has since added more retail outlets. Pretty Decent and Friends opened upstairs in the 17&Central shopping mall in central Walthamstow (E17 7JR) in April 2024, though this closed in July 2025. In November 2024, the brewery reopened the former East London Liquor Company taproom at Bow Wharf beside the Regents Canal near Victoria Park (E3 5SN) as Pretty Decent Victoria Park: the outlet remains open.
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.
Brewpub 21 Great Tower Street EC3R 5AR (City of London) brewdog.com First sold beer: 12 May 2018
Brewdog Waterloo
Brewpub Unit G Waterloo Station, 1 The Sidings SE1 7BH (Lambeth) brewdog.com First sold beer: November 2022
When it opened, Tower Hill was London’s biggest BrewDog bar and the chain’s only brewpub in the capital. It occupies a whole block on the ground floor of the neo-Gothic Minster building, with the brewhouse at one end.
Beers are sold from keg in the pub and occasionally at other brewdog sites.
In August 2022 Tower Hill was beaten to the title of the UK’s biggest BrewDog bar by an even bigger venue in the Sidings, a new mall in the former international terminal below Platforms 20-24 at London Waterloo station.
A 5 hl brewhouse and four 10 hl fermenting vessels were online three months later, located alongside the main bar on the lower level. Ex-Gipsy Hill brewer A J Robieson is given a free hand to innovate with specials alongside a regular exclusive house pale ale.
The pale ale and at least one special are usually on sale, sold on keg and highlighted with a fermenting vessel icon in the lists displayed above the bars: note that both upstairs and downstairs bars often have slightly different beers on offer. Some beers also venture to other venues in the chain, in London and elsewhere.
Brewery, brewing currently suspended Original site: 22A Cudworth Street E1 5QU (Tower Hamlets) mechanicbrewery.co.uk First sold beer: 29 January 2019 Brewing suspended: November 2020
Originally located in a run of railway arches around Bethnal Green Overground station apparently otherwise dedicated to fixing black taxis, this is the London brewing project of Olga Zubrzycka, who began working at the ill-starred UBREW in 2017, giving brewing courses as well as making her own beer.
Olga opened her own place early in 2019, using a second-hand Oban Ales 8 hl brewhouse, a homebrew-sized pilot kit and basic taproom.
She made a wide range of beer, in cask as well as keg, including more traditional English and German styles, with some hand bottling and small-scale canning using a mobile line.
Olga Zubrzycka of Mechanic Brewing Co
A combination of Covid-related issues and spiralling rents forced Olga to give up the site early in 2021. During the summer she worked on a brewery farm project in Poland but intends to return to London and revive Mechanic at a new site, perhaps as a brewpub.
Closed brewery Original site: 221 Ponsford Street E9 6JU (Hackney) Second site: 1 Birkbeck Street E2 6JY (Tower Hamlets) boxcarbrewery.co.uk First sold beer: November 2017 (at original site) Ceased brewing: 23 Feburary 2023 (at second site)
Boxcar began on a modest scale when head brewer Sam Dickison, formerly of Moncada, Hammerton and Laine, teamed up with the founder of Vagabond Wines, Stephen Finch, to work on a 200 l kit in an arch with no public facilities in Homerton. It quickly established a reputation as one of London’s most exciting new breweries, combining a modern approach with a fondness for traditional styles like mild ale.
In August 2019 the brewery expanded significantly to a well-equipped railway arch at Bethnal Green, under the London Overground line from Liverpool Street, with a 20 hl SSV kit equipped for automatic mashing and even a reverse osmosis filter. A taproom was opened in the second arch.
Sadly, operations ceased in 2023 ‘due to an unworkable situation with our landlords, partly due to the pandemic and overhanging debt’. The company was placed into administration but Sam was able to retain ownership of the brands. He soon revived production as a cuckoo at partners including Fierce in Aberdeen and Drop Project, hoping eventually to open another physical site. But by June 2024 this activity had ceased and Sam is now working for another brewery outside London.
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London’s Best Beer
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