Promoting an international beer culture that recognises and celebrates beers of quality, distinctiveness and local character, brewed with care and passion.
Best beer and travel writing award 2015, 2011 -- British Guild of Beer Writers Awards
Accredited Beer Sommelier
Writer of "Probably the best book about beer in London" - Londonist
"A necessity if you're a beer geek travelling to London town" - Beer Advocate
"A joy to read" - Roger Protz
"Very authoritative" - Tim Webb.
"One of the top beer writers in the UK" - Mark Dredge.
"A beer guru" - Popbitch.
Founded by Hannah Rhodes, formerly at Meantime, Hiver specialises in honey beers, made partly with London honey but brewed at Hepworth in West Sussex. An office and warehouse on the Bermondsey ‘mile’ near the Maltby Street Ropewalk doubles as a weekend bar.
In 2020, the company added a honey-free range under the name Fabal. Building on the popularity of Fabal Lager, in August 2024 it opened a second venue in a Bermondsey arch, the Fabal Beer Hall.
Brewpub, brewing currently suspended 3 Baldwin Street EC1V 9NU (Islington) oldfountain.co.uk First sold beer: July 2016 Brewing suspended: November 2019
This former Whitbread pub has been in the Durrant family since 1964 and has been a free house since 2002. In mid-2017, a small in-house brewery was added: a 50 l Braumeister kit in the cellar, operated by staff member Geoff Saulini.
Brewing had already dwindled before the 2020-21 Covid-19 lockdowns and Geoff has since moved on. The kit remains in place and there’s a long-term aspiration to revive its use, though this is unlikely to happen in the near future.
Beer was nearly all sold on cask through the pub, though with availability varying due to limited quantities.
Brewery 1A Elizabeth Industrial Estate, Juno Way SE14 5RW (Lewisham) forestroadbrewery.com First sold beer: October 2021
The outspoken Pete Brown (not to be confused with the like-named beer writer), originally from Massachusetts, began homebrewing when living in New York City. Moving to the UK, he worked at Siren and Camden Town, and first sold his own beer, brewed at Van Eecke (Leroy) in West Flanders, Belgium, early in 2016. It was named after Forest Road in Hackney where Pete was living at the time.
A London taproom opened the following year at Hackney’s Netil Market, and production shifted to Camerons in Hartlepool.
Pete always had an ambition for his own brewery, although the path to achieving this proved unexpectedly tortuous. Three potential sites fell through, the last when a second-hand brewhouse bought from Russian River in Santa Rosa, California, was already on the ship through the Panama Canal. Lockdown then struck and the build on the current site was beset by flooring and utilities problems and a distributor going into administration.
Thanks in part to investment from a friendly diner owner back home, the 60 hl brewhouse was finally commissioned in September 2021, joined by a kegging line from Austrian brewery Schloss Eggenberg. Head brewer is James Garstang, formerly at Camden Town, Partizan, the Kernel and White Rhino in India.
The building, just off the southern end of the Bermondsey ‘mile’, is part of a complex built in 1901 for the Mazawattee Tea Company, sited to take advantage of the Grand Surrey Canal which until the 1960s flowed along what’s now Surrey Canal Road. Several relics are on display, including the bricks of the back bar which were recycled from masonry found on site.
The Netil Market outlet has been retained alongside a taproom at the brewery itself. A pub in Westbourne Park, the Quiet Night Inn, was added in November 2022.
Pete Brown (left) and James Garstang of Forest Road with a hop cannon once used at Russian River to make the legendary Pliny the Elder.
Beers are in keg, bottle and can, with occasional cask.
Closed brewery 17A Eley Road N18 3BB (Enfield) enefeld.com First sold beer: June 2015 Ceased brewing: February 2022
This Lea Valley outfit was the only contemporary London brewery to source water from its own well. It was founded by Rahul Mulchandani on a site adjacent to his family’s cash and carry warehouse just off the North Circular Road in Edmonton as an ambitious operation with a high-spec 32 hl brewhouse from DME in Canada, a parade of cylindro-conical fermenters and a sophisticated bottling line inside a large warehouse with plenty of spare floorspace.
A 55 m water borehole tapped the same aquifer as the Coca-Cola bottling plant next door. The water was lightly filtered to remove larger chalk particles and treated with ultra-violet light as a precaution against bugs. Its mineral content is tweaked for certain styles, but as you’d expect from chalky London water, it turned out to be perfect for making porter without any further treatment.
The water inlet at Enefeld, currently London’s only brewery using liquor from its own well.
The first head brewer was Stuart Robson, founder of Shongweni, one of South Africa’s first craft breweries. When he left early in 2018, Rahul recruited brewing legend Don Burgess, who founded the Freeminer brewery in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, in 1993. This was one of the most important small breweries of its time and among the first to break into supermarkets, surviving into 2016.
In response to the challenges of the 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns, Enfield switched largely to contract brewing on behalf of others, though it continued to produce small quantities of its own brands. Originally it planned to relaunch these in 2022, but by February brewing had ceased and the equipment was up for sale.
The brewery’s beers were branded Enefeld, using the spelling of the town name as it appeared in the Domesday survey of 1086. Beers were initially bottled but later supplied in cask and ecokeg too. Following Don’s recruitment, the output included revivals of some of the Freeminer brands.
Brewery Original site: 227 Whittington Road N22 8YW (Enfield) Current site: 5 Littleline House, 43 West Road N17 0RE (Haringey) bohembrewery.com First sold beer: June 2016 (at original site)
One of the most unusual and remarkable new breweries in London and indeed the UK, Bohem focuses on serious craft lagers in the Czech tradition, with just enough of a modern twist. Co-founder Petr Skoček, originally from Plzeň, began homebrewing when he moved here from Prague and found the local lagers expensive and disappointing. In 2015 he teamed up with a fellow expat enthusiast, businessman Zdeněk Kudr, to establish Bohem in Bounds Green, working on a small scale with a tiny 160 l kit, which meant brewing four times daily to fill one fermenter. The pair began selling their beers in 2016 and soon found demand outstripping capacity.
Lagering tanks at Bohem
Since April 2018, beers have been produced at the current address in a Tottenham industrial estate close to One Mile End and Redemption, using an ingeniously-designed 10 hl two-vessel brewhouse from Czech supplier Mini Brewery KS. Unlike typical British kits, this is capable of traditional Czech ‘decoction mashing’ which, in conjunction with key ingredients imported from the Czech Republic and Germany, helps achieve a suitably authentic result.
Bohem boasts several other items of equipment rare in a British brewery of this size, including a grist mill, necessary for grinding malt to the optimum size for the mashing system, and 17 750 l and 1,000 l cylindrical lagering tanks where the beer is stored at low temperature for a minimum of five weeks after primary fermentation before it’s packaged and shipped. Assistant brewer Matěj Křížek, formerly at Břevnov monastery brewery in Prague, has strengthened the team since the move.
There’s an offsite taproom close to the original Bounds Green site and the brewery itself offers a simple but welcoming taproom on Tottenham Hotspur match days. Since early 2020, Zdeněk has managed the historic Bohemia House in West Hampstead, formerly the Czechoslovak National House, founded as a club for Czech and Slovak expatriates following World War II: this now stocks Bohem beers alongside familiar Czech brands. In July 2024 the brewery took over a proper pub, the Nicholas Nickleby in Stroud Green.
Beers are packaged unfiltered and unpasteurised in keg only. Some beer formerly went into cans but these have been discontinued following concerns about quality and freshness.
Though a few early brews in 2014 were on a pilot kit under the name Bear Hug, this trio of friends based in Peckham reconciled themselves to hobo brewer status after a fruitless search for sites. The name was changed to Big Hug in May 2015. Beers are from a variety of facilities including Brewhouse & Kitchen, Gadds in Ramsgate and the Great Yorkshire Brewery. It’s a keen supporter of homeless charities.
Beatnikz Republic, previous reported as working at UBREW in 2015 with an ambition to open its own facility in London, instead moved to Manchester, where it’s been located since early 2017. beatnikzrepublic.com
Honest Brew, a London-based online retailer and subscription case service, evolved from a cuckoo brewing project working at Late Knights (see Southey), Signature and outside London in Durham from September 2013. The company continues to commission special beers from its suppliers but I’m no longer counting it as a separate cuckoo brewer. honestbrew.co.uk.
Lost Brewing was a company behind a cluster of bars in southwest London such as the Lost Bar and Powder Keg Diplomacy, commissioning own label beers from breweries in Belgium and the UK since 2011 and brewing. From 2013 it cuckoo-brewed in London at the Florence and Tap East, with an ambition to add its own facility, but this was never realised, with the bars changing hands and becoming less beer-aware by September 2017.
Brewpub 29 Montpelier Vale SE3 0TJ (Lewisham) zerodegrees.co.uk First sold beer: August 2000
Remarkably, this popular local beer and pizza venue is now the capital’s oldest-established independent brewery as well as its longest-serving brewpub. It was one of the first in the UK to draw inspiration from the US craft brewing scene, following a trip across the Atlantic by a member of a family of local restaurateurs.
An automated 10 hl kit was supplied by BTB in Germany and the regular beers were first devised by a head brewer from the US. Several other brewers have presided since, most recently Dario Marcianese. The company went on to open further brewpubs in Bristol, Cardiff and Reading, sharing the same name even though, unlike the original, they’re considerably further from the prime meridian.
Beers rarely travel beyond the premises, which may be one reason they’re often overlooked among London’s current proliferation. They’re served by air pressure from polythene-lined maturation tanks, with some minikegs and very occasional kegs for special events
Brewery 8 College Fields, Prince Georges Road SW19 2PT (Merton) wimbledonbrewery.com First sold beer: 10 July 2015
The original Wimbledon Brewery, and the last in the area for over a century, stood in the High Street between 1832 and 1889, when it burned down: somewhat ironically, a fire station was built on the site which still stands today, though converted to shops and flats.
The brewery’s legacy was reclaimed at the 2015 AFC Wimbledon beer festival when beers bearing the phoenix logo of a new Wimbledon brewery went on sale. This new operation, sizeable by the standards of modern London brewing, was the brainchild of Mark Gordon and Richard Coultart, who wisely appointed veteran London brewer Derek Prentice, formerly of the old Truman’s, Young’s and Fuller’s, to oversee the operation.
Derek devised the initial recipes and specified the new 50 hl brewhouse, supplied by OAL Engineering and installed in a sizeable industrial unit near Merton Abbey Mills, on land that once belonged to the abbey, which like similar institutions maintained its own brewhouse until it was dissolved in 1538.
Since then fermentation capacity has more than doubled, with some space for further growth on the site. Unusually at this scale, the set-up includes a gas-fuelled steam plant, so the vessels are steam-heated as in many much larger breweries. Derek is still involved on a part-time basis, and his son Michael became joint head brewer in 2020.
Two-thirds of production is cask beer, the rest keg and a small number of bottles (filtered and reseeded with conditioning yeast) and cans (unfiltered and unpasteurised), which are packaged off-site. The main malts are supplied by Crisp, and the focus is on well-balanced beers with good drinkability under locally-inspired names. There’s a shop and taproom on site.
Closed brewery Original site: 7 Ravenswood Industrial Estate, Shernhall Street E17 9HQ (Waltham Forest) Final site: 2 Lockwood Way E17 5RB (Waltham Forest) wildcardbrewery.co.uk First sold beer: April 2014 (at original site) Ceased brewing: October 2024
Wild Card was the creation of three university friends, Andrew Birkby, William John Harris and former chemical engineer and current head brewer Jaega Wise, originally from Nottingham. It began in January 2013 with an amber ale, Jack of Clubs, developed on homemade equipment in a garage and cuckoo brewed just outside London at Brentwood brewery.
For a few months from June 2013, the three friends were based in the cellar of Walthamstow’s Warrant Officer pub (formerly the Higham Hill Tavern, 318 Higham Hill Road E17 5RG, Waltham Forest: see Solvay Society), at first intending to install a small brewing facility there. Realising this was impractical, in the autumn of that year they took on a characterful unit on the Ravenswood industrial estate close to Walthamstow Village, already something of a public attraction thanks to neon sign specialist God’s Own Junkyard and Mother’s Ruin, producer of fruit gin. Here, from early in 2014, a modest 10 hl brewhouse from Oban Ales shared space with an increasingly popular taproom.
Following a crowdfunding round, in April 2018 Wild Card expanded to a bigger site on the Lockwood estate, becoming the first of several breweries to establish itself in the swathe of industrial estates along Blackhorse Lane in the west of Walthamstow, adjacent to the Walthamstow Wetlands. At first, the old brewing kit was retained while fermentation capacity was substantially increased, with a small canning line and then a new 20 hl brewhouse, also from Oban, added during 2019.
Wildcard, Lockwood E17
The Ravenswood site became a bar and barrel-ageing facility known as the Barrel Store, with a taproom at Lockwood too. Following the easing of lockdown restrictions in April 2021 the brewery set up a separate company to open its first ‘proper’ pub — appropriately enough, the Warrant Officer, now renamed the Tavern on the HIll.
Jaega, meanwhile, had become something a brewing celebrity, not only for her great beers and extensive brewing knowledge but for her tireless campaigning for diversity in the industry.
Unfortunately, post-Covid trading conditions proved tough for Wild Card, and in early October 2024 its Lockwood site was repossessed by the landlord, Waltham Forest council. A few days later the brewery, which according to its most recently filed accounts was around £500,000 in debt, confirmed it had entered liquidation, citing ‘the pandemic and the extended cost of living crisis’ as insurmountable challenges.
Both the Ravenswood and Lockwood sites were confirmed closed, though the pub, with its different ownership arrangements, remained open.
Beers were in keg and in can, some of which are sold in major supermarkets. Cask was discontinued in 2019 but revived in 2021, primarily to supply the pub.
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London’s Best Beer
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