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Brewpub 7 International Square, Westfield Stratford City E20 1EE (Newham) tapeast.co.uk First sold beer: 10 November 2011
When Westfield opened its massive Stratford City shopping mall adjoining the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in September 2011, it invited the team at Utobeer to create a brewpub for the Great Eastern Market, the requisite ghetto of specialist independents nestling amid the globalised brands. Despite being created at very short notice, it’s become one of London’s most notable beer venues, with a glass-fronted 4 hl copper brewhouse at the side.
The original head brewer was Eddie Baines who had long worked for Utobeer and was previously a brewer in Firkin pubs. In March 2012 he was replaced by former Brentwood brewer Jim Wilson, who reshaped the brewery’s output and diversified the styles. He was succeeded by Jonny Park, then Josh Walker, formerly of Camden Town and Brewhouse & Kitchen. More recently, former assitant brewer Terry Kinsella has been promoted to head brewer.
Beers, sold in house and at sister pub the Rake in Borough Market, are in cask and keg, with occasional hand bottlings.
Brewery 46 Druid Street SE1 2EZ (Southwark) southwarkbrewing.co.uk First sold beer: October 2014
Unusually for the owner of a new London brewery, Southwark co-founder Peter Jackson is an industry veteran, with many years at Whitbread and Marston’s on his CV, including as marketing director at the latter. He created this brewery, the fifth in Bermondsey and the closest to central London, with the help of another long-serving industry figure, Rooster’s founder Sean Franklin, a key early UK champion of New World hops.
The biggest range of cask on the Bermondsey ‘mile’: Southwark brewery.
It’s rather smaller than Peter’s former employers, with a 13.5 hl brewhouse in a single arch, just behind a lively taproom which holds the welcome distinction of offering the widest choice of house-brewed cask beer on the ‘beer mile’.
Beers in cask and keg are sold relatively widely outside the brewery including in various chain pubs. They are also hand-bottled and packaged in minikeg and can, for sale mainly from the brewery itself. The names usually have a local connection.
Previously the brand Big Bear was used for some of the keg beers but this has since been dropped.
Brewery Original production site: 25 Leyton Business Centre, Etloe Road E10 7BT (Waltham Forest) Current site: 15 Uplands Business Park, Blackhorse Lane E17 5QJ (Waltham Forest) signaturebrew.co.uk First sold beer: January 2014 (at Leyton site)
Beer and music lovers Tom Bott and Sam McGregor, the latter also a musician, originally conceived Signature as a way of challenging the hegemony of industrial beer on the music scene by bringing together performers and brewers to create special edition brews. At first, they developed beers at a pilot brewery in Hackney (45 Hackney Downs Studios, Amhurst Road E8 2BT), which were then brewed commercially at Titanic in Stoke-on-Trent, owned by Tom’s father and uncle, Dave and Keith Bott. Their first beer, the General, created with the Rifles, was launched in September 2011.
The brewery gained its own production site in Leyton late in 2013 and added a core range, some of it commercially brewed on the pilot kit, though with larger runs made at various host breweries. Brewing moved in house following a major upgrade in 2015 to a 16 hl brewhouse previously used by Five Points. By 2018, the business had taken on two neighbouring units, with much-expanded fermentation capacity, but was again struggling with space
A further crowdfunded expansion to the current address in the growing brewing hub of Walthamstow’s Blackhorse Lane in 2019 has involved the installation of a new 32 hl brewhouse from SSB, with water filtering, a facility for lager-style step mashing and new kegging and canning lines. The ambition is to grow production to 20,000 hl a year. The site incorporates a taproom known as the Brewer’s Bar, which joins an existing remote taproom in Haggerston, opened in September 2018, and a burger bar, the Collab, in partnership with We Serve Humans, opened in central Walthamstow in March 2019.
Signature was named Brewery of the Year by trade organisation SIBA in 2021.
Brewpub, no longer brewing 68 Wandsworth High Street SW18 4LB (Wandsworth) theraminnsw18.co.uk First sold beer: October 2019 (as SlyBeast, see also Ram Brewery under Sambrook’s) Brewing suspended: May 2022 Brewing resumed: Autumn 2022 (by Coalition) Brewing ceased: January 2024
Commercial brewing returned to the historic Ram brewery in central Wandsworth in October 2019 with the reopening of the landmark Ram Inn as a brewpub, joined in 2021 by Sambrook’s in some of the historic buildings around the corner.
The pub, on the northwest corner of Ram Street and Wandsworth High Street, is on the site of the original Ram Inn where brewing is thought to have taken place as far back as the 16th century. As the Ram developed into a substantial commercial brewery, its footprint gradually spread west and north towards the river Wandle, but the pub was retained a a brewery tap. The current Grade II-listed building dates from 1883, and was remodelled in the 1930s when it was renamed the Brewery Tap.
The pub, renamed the Brewery Tap in 1974, was closed and boarded up when Young’s closed the brewery in 2006, but though most of the site was then sold for redevelopment, the successor pub company retained the pub itself. With redevelopment nearing completion, it was leased to Keris and Lee De Villiers, who already leased two other popular local Young’s pubs. They refurbished it, installed a brewery and reopened it in October 2019 under its original name the Ram Inn.
Head brewer Alex Leclere presided over a 10 hl brewhouse from PBC behind glass in one corner, working under the SlyBeast brand. This was named after two dogs belonging to Keris’s sister: their stylised profiles appeared on the logo.
Beers were in keg and cask, sold in the pub and in some other outlets.
In July 2021, Young’s sold the pub, along with almost all the rest of its leased estate, to major pub owner Punch. On 15 December, Punch was bought in turn by US-based investment company Fortress. Sadly, Punch decided not to renew the lease and to run the Ram Inn under new management in May 2022. Brewing ceased, but Keris and Lee hope to resume elsewhere.
The kit remained in place, and in autumn 2022 Charlotte Cook of cuckoo brewer Coalition, which had long been looking for its own site in London, began using it on a cuckoo basis. The arrangement continued when the pub was refurbished and rebranded in January 2023 as one of Punch’s Laine pubs (which have some brewing tradition of their own), with beer available in the pub. But it ended at short notice in January 2024.
Laine have since confirmed they have no intention to revive production and are in the process of remvoing the kit and converting the space to other uses. All house brand beers are now brewed at Laine’s main brewery in West Sussex.
For more on the long story of brewing on the Ram site, as well as notes on the heritage still visible today, see Young’s.
Includes information for Ram Brewery during the redevelopment of the Ram site. For the current brewery on the site, see Sambrook’s. See also Ram Inn.
Closed/private brewery, beer firm 68 Wandsworth High Street SW18 4LB youngs.co.uk, youngsbeers.co.uk First sold beer: by 1533 (as the Ram Inn) Ceased brewing commercially: September 2006 (as Young & Co’s Brewery, beers still brewed elsewhere) Continued brewing privately as the Ram Brewery 2007-20 Brewing resumed on site as Sambrook’s 2021
The Ram brewery in Wandsworth is likely the oldest continuous documented brewing site in Britain, with records of an inn, the Ram, undoubtedly with its own brewhouse, in 1533. Wandsworth was then a separate Surrey market town, located at the point where the Portsmouth Road, linking London and the important naval port of Portsmouth, crossed Thames tributary the river Wandle just a little south of its confluence. The Ram stood right beside this road just before the bridge, as does the present Ram Inn on the west corner of the junction of High Street and Ram Street.
In 1581, the Ram was occupied by a known brewer, Humphrey Langridge, and by 1675 it was a significant commercial brewery owned by the Draper family and had already expanded into adjacent buildings. By the time it was bought by the Tritton family, who also brewed in Ashford, Kent, in 1763, it was known as a porter brewery.
The Ram’s most famous owners, the Youngs, were prominent manufacturers of brewing vessels based in Southwark: it was a Young’s porter tun that triggered the Great Beer Flood of 1814. Charles Allen Young bought the Ram in 1831, initially in partnership with Anthony Bainbridge. The partnership was dissolved abruptly in 1883 when Anthony’s son Herbert was discovered pursuing an adulterous affair in Paris with the wife of Charles’s son, Charles Florance.
Now simply known as Young & Co, the brewery had successfully shifted its focus from porter towards the lighter, more sparkling beers for which the Young’s name would become famous. The site, which gradually expanded west to the Wandle and some way north to occupy almost 2 ha, was rebuilt several times: much of what’s visible today was erected in the years following a major fire in 1882.
The beer consumer movement of the 1970s and 1980s knew Young’s as a fiercely independent fortress of brewing tradition, which stuck resolutely to cask beer at a time the industry was pushing towards keg. Steam engines remained in use as late as 1976, wooden casks were retained long after almost everyone else had converted to steel, a live ram was kept on the site as a mascot and local deliveries were made with horse-drawn drays into the 21st century. The brewery remained in close family ownership and management, with the board chaired by John Young, great-great-grandson of Charles Allen Young, between 1964 and 2006.
Young’s cask range in the early 1970s encompassed a dark mild, Best Malt Ale (around 3%); Bitter (around 3.8%), known locally as ‘Ordinary’ though John Young famously objected to the term and upbraided brewery staff heard using it; a stronger parti-gyled variant of bitter, Special Bitter, at around 5%, the strongest beer sampled in a milestone Sunday Mirror investigation into declining beer strengths in 1971; and a dark, sweetish winter seasonal, Burton Ale (around 5.6%), a rare surviving example of a style associated with Burton upon Trent before it became known for its pale ales, renamed Winter Warmer in 1971.
The bitter was also available in keg, as was one concession to the changing times, Saxon Lager (3.2%). Introduced in 1969, this was really a hybrid Kölsch-style beer, fermented by the Young’s house ale yeast rather than a lager yeast but then lagered at cold temperatures for 10 weeks.
Besides standard bottled brown and pale ales, Young’s offered several noted bottled beers. Ram Rod Pale Ale was another stronger parti-gyled variant of bitter at around 5.6%, popular among customers for blending with cask Special as a ‘Ram and Spesh’. An even stronger variant was Old Nick Barley Wine (likely then at over 8% but ending up at 7.2%). Strong Export Bitter (around 6.5%) was a bottled pale partly inspired by Worthington White Shield, developed in the late 1950s for the Belgian market where Young’s was hoping to grow its business, and at times brewed under license there.
Though London Lager replaced Saxon in 1981 and the mild was dropped in 1983, all the others remained in the portfolio into the 21st century, albeit often with slightly reduced strengths. Strong Export Bitter, originally brewery conditioned like the other Young’s bottled beers, was relaunched in 1996 in bottle-conditioned form under the name Special London Ale. Another successful 1990s launch was bottled (and occasionally draught) Double Chocolate Stout (5.3%), so-named as it contained real chocolate as well as chocolate malt.
Sticking with tradition helped grow Young’s from a relatively small, if much-loved, largely local brewery with an estate of around 140 pubs largely concentrated in its southwest London heartland, to a major cask name by the early 2000s. Facilities were expanded to cope with increased demand, with several large modern conical fermenters added in 1976, and £5 million spent on a new brewhouse in 1982.
Given Young’s history, it was something of a shock when in 2006, John Young admitted he’d let his head rule his heart as he announced Young’s was partnering with Charles Wells and relocating all production to the latter’s big 1970s Eagle brewery plant in Bedford. He died aged 85 the very week his company brewed its last beer at the Ram.
Where are they now?: Brewing at the Ram
John Hatch at work on his Ram nanobrewery.
Following an intervention by two Young’s staff, John Hatch and ex-Truman brewer Derek Prentice, Wandsworth council resolved to make provision of a microbrewery one of the conditions of planning permission for future redevelopment. John, a former homebrewer who had joined Young’s in 1988 as a biochemist before becoming brewhouse manager and health and safety supervisor, became site manager, and persuaded the new owner and Young’s to allow him to preserve the site’s brewing heritage using a nanobrewery, but only on condition the beer wasn’t sold.
One final gyle from the old brewhouse was used to fill bottles with a year’s supply of wort, keeping fermentation going while John cobbled together a tiny 50 l kit from bits and pieces found around the site. The cold liquor tank was a cloakroom water tank, the hot liquor tanks immersion heaters from mess rooms and the mash tun a waste receptacle from the bottling line, adapted with some of the insulation from the main mash tun. In place of a sparge arm, John ingeniously rigged up a device that sprayed hot liquor onto a tiny electrically powered plastic propeller. A tea urn was repurposed as a copper and two filtration tanks were turned upside down and fitted with cooling coils to serve as fermentation vessels.
John served the beer from this in cask to visitors touring the site, film and TV crews working there and, later, to audience members at a series of popular comedy nights, with an honesty box to fund further brewing supplies. Lacking a lab, he simply continued to repitch the Young’s house yeast, which over many hundreds of repitches began to develop a character of its own.
The arrangement was originally supposed to cover only a few years until space for a commercial brewpub became available on the site, but in the event lasted for 15 years. The council rejected the first plan for the site, triggering a lengthy public inquiry, and construction work didn’t start until 2014 when the original developer Minerva sold the Ram to a Chinese firm, Greenland. The nanobrewery moved from the 1980s brewhouse, which was soon demolished, to the stable block which, as a listed building, was due to be retained.
The first new flats were occupied in 2018, and in 2019 Sambrook’s brewery confirmed it would be relocating to the Ram to honour the obligation of reviving commercial brewing on the site, as well as managing the visitor centre and museum. It was an appropriate choice: Sambrook’s was founded in 2008 in nearby Battersea partly out of frustration with what was then a dearth of brewing in London exacerbated by the closure of Young’s. Its two best-known cask beers, Wandle and Junction, while certainly not clones of Bitter and Special, filled a similar market niche and were already on sale in some Young’s pubs where customers preferred a London-brewed product.
Following further unexpected delays, including the Covid-19 lockdowns, during which John distributed free beer in polypins to local residents, it wasn’t until April 2021 that Sambrook’s brewed on the site, occupying part of the range of 1883 Grade II*-listed brewery buildings along Ram Street, including an extensive taproom as well as the visitor centre. At this point, John joined the Sambrook’s team, relocating his nanobrewery inside the Sambrook’s brewhouse, with beers made on it now on sale commercially in the taproom, almost entirely from cask. For more on current activities, see Sambrook’s.
Separately, in October 2019 the Ram Inn, which remained under Young’s ownership but was leased to a local pub operator, reopened as a brewpub. Brewing under the name SlyBeast, it pre-empted the official restoration of brewing on the site. Young’s later sold the lease, the pub changed hands and brewing finally ceased early in 2024. See the Ram Inn page for more.
Where are they now?: Young’s beers
Young’s, no longer brewed in London despite the claim.
Young’s remained as a pub company following the brewery closure and set up a joint venture with Charles Wells’ Eagle brewery in Bedford to continue to brew the brands. Known as Wells & Young’s, this was 40% owned by the latter. The Young’s beers were flavour-matched at Bedford and fermented using the Young’s yeast.
Young’s sold its shares in Wells & Young’s, including the Young’s beer brand, to Wells in 2011, effectively withdrawing from brewing entirely. Wells continued to supply Young’s brands brewed at the Eagle to Young’s pubs on a rolling contract, and to market them elsewhere.
Then in 2017, Wells too opted to restructure and to concentrate on its pubs. It sold the Eagle brewery and its own core brands as well as its interest in the Young’s brands to national brewer Marston’s and set up a new company, Wells & Co, to run its pubs. For a while it continued to source beer from the Eagle, but in 2020 opened a new brewpub and microbrewery, Brewpoint, elsewhere in Bedford. This new company has no link to Young’s.
Following the Wells move, Marston’s continued to produced Young’s beers at the Eagle, rebranding them in 2019 with London in their names and marketing them, disingenuously in my view, with the slogan ‘London will always be Young’s’.
In May 2020, Marston’s also split off its pubs from its brewing activities, with the latter taken over by Carlsberg UK in 2020 to create Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company (CMBC). Young’s beers were still brewed at the Eagle until late 2022, when CMBC sold the brewery to the Estrella Damm brewery of Barcelona, Catalunya, whose brands it had long produced and distributed under license. The new owner converted it entirely to lager production.
Most Young’s brands were then transferred to another CMBC subsidiary, Wychwood, in Witney, Oxfordshire, with seasonal Winter Warmer made at Marston’s Albion Brewery in Burton upon Trent (which had once belonged to London brewer Mann’s). But Wychwood was closed in November 2023, so it appears all Young’s beers are now produced in Burton.
In July 2021, Young’s sold off almost all of its leasehold pubs, including the Ram Inn as mentioned above, to major pubco Punch, which in December 2021 was sold to US-based investment group Fortress. Young’s retains its managed pubs which still sell Young’s beers brewed by CMBC under the rolling contract. The portfolio now includes cask London Original (the rebranded Bitter, 3.7%), London Special (rebranded Special, 4.5%) and seasonal Winter Warmer (5%), plus keg London Stout (5.3%), added since the brewery closed, and Double Chocolate Stout (5.2%) in keg, can and bottle. Some bottled beers like Light Ale and Ram Rod (now 5%) remain available but aren’t widely promoted.
Young’s has also become a brewer of sorts again through its ownership of brewpubs. The Ram Inn, as mentioned above, brewed under ultimate Young’s ownership between 2019 and 2021. Then in November 2023, Young’s acquired the City Pubs chain, which included several brewpubs, including the Temple Brew House in London.
The other obvious Young’s legacy is John Hatch’s initially non-commercial continuation of the Ram Brewery recounted above, which now operates commercially under the Sambrook’s banner. Ram beers still use a descendant of the Young’s house yeast, and, though its regular beers are new recipes, the brewery retains the old brewing books, intermittently reviving recipes for heritage brands.
Things to see
Sambrook’s taproom in former boilerhouses at the Ram brewery site.
Now known as the Ram Quarter, the site covers 3.2 ha bounded by Armoury Way (A205), Ram Street, Wandsworth High Street and the river Wandle. Numerous heritage buildings have been retained and restored in what so far has been a relatively sympathetic redevelopment, with extensive public space. The demolition of more recent brewery buildings from the 1970s and 1980s has arguably created a better impression of how the Ram might have looked in Victorian times. All the heritage buildings, except for the pub, Brewery House and stable block, are Grade II*-listed.
The Ram Inn on the corner of Ram Street and the High Street (68 High Street SW18 4LB) is on the site of the original inn where brewing likely commenced in the 16th century, though the current Grade II-listed building dates from 1883, with 1930s remodelling. It has a carriage entrance round the corner on Ram Street, attractive plaques promoting Young’s at ground level and a terracotta relief of a ram on the rounded section at the corner, above the door. It long functioned as a brewery tap and indeed was named the Brewery Tap between 1974 and its closure for redevelopment of the site in 2008. As mentioned above, it was a brewpub again between 2019 and 2024. It’s no longer owned by Young’s but is part of Punch’s Laine chain and not especially notable for beer.
Diagonally opposite, and strictly speaking offsite but still of related interest, is the Grade II-listed Spread Eagle Hotel (79 High Street SW18 2PT), rebuilt by Young’s in 1898 on the site of an existing pub as a landmark large pub and hotel. Externally, it’s in elaborate Flemish Renaissance style with a striking glazed canopy. Inside, many of the lavish 1890s fittings and decorations have been preserved in a three-star heritage interior, subdivided into several rooms with much etched glass, wooden screens and imposing bar furniture. Still owned by Young’s, it was carefully refurbished in 2020: the upper storeys now house the pub company’s offices as well as newly reopened hotel rooms.
Next door to the Ram Inn on the left, the building with three tall partially weatherboarded windows, now a bowling alley (no 74), was originally a fermentation room, built in 1883-84. The red brick house next to this, set a little back from the road behind a wall and gateposts, is the oldest on the site. Known as the Brewery House (no 77), it was built as a private home for the owners by bricklayer John Porter in the early 18th century and later used as brewery offices. Blocks of flats dating from the 2010s redevelopment stand between this and the river Wandle.
Following Bellwether Lane between the Brewery House and the flats and bearing right takes you into a yard where the main cluster of remaining brewery buildings stands on the right. Parts of these date from the 1800s and 1830s, but there was extensive rebuilding in the 1880s following the fire under the direction of architect Henry Stork.
A 19th century copper at the Ram Brewery.
The building with the distinctive gable and large high window on the right, also visible from the High Street overlooking the Ram Inn, forms an L-shape with a wing now faced in glass fronting onto Ram Street: this is the 1880s brewhouse, which was largely abandoned in the 1980s following the construction of a now-demolished replacement closer to the Wandle. The glazed part is known as the Beam Engine House as it was used for the brewery’s steam engines.
An arched entrance in the Beam Engine House provides public access to Ram Street through a short passageway. Along the passageway is a plaque commemorating the Surrey Iron Railway, operational between 1802-46 as arguably London’s first public railway, though it was horse-drawn and for goods only, predating the steam railway age. It ran from a wharf on the Wandle to the north, likely through part of the brewery site to terminate near today’s West Croydon station.
The beam engine house and adjacent part of the brewhouse now house the Sambrook’s Visitor Centre. Inside are two beam engines dating from 1835 and 1867, and two boiling coppers from 1869 and 1885, as well as an extensive collection of other brewery artifacts, many of them salvaged by John Hatch. On the ground floor, in what’s now the shop, a former brewery well is visible under glass. Currently these interiors are only viewable on booked tours, which are highly recommended. They’re usually led by John Hatch himself and include a visit to the current brewhouse.
To the left of the engine house, the building with four tall arched windows originated as a boiler house in the 1830s but was later converted to a porter tun room. It’s now the Sambrook’s taproom. The block at right angles to this on the left, with its landmark chimney, dates from between 1834 and 1869 and was originally built as coopers’ and carpenters’ shops, though was also used for porter tuns at various stages, and partly converted to a new boilerhouse in 1903 when the chimney was added. The rear part of this, backing onto Ram Street, now houses Sambrook’s modern brewhouse and John’s nanobrewery. Accessible from the taproom, though sometimes used for ticketed events and private functions, is a room where the chimney base is clearly visible.
Continue north along Bellwether Lane through the recently built flats to the north end of the site to find the attractive low-rise Grade II-listed Stable Block with its cupola sporting a clock and weather vane, built in 1896. This formerly housed the famous dray horses and ram. Redevelopment is still incomplete on this part of the site, with a controversial proposal to build a tall tower, although the stable block itself will be conserved and is likely to be converted to a restaurant.
Includes information for current brewery. For more about the history of the current site, and the non-commercial Ram Brewery active 2007-21, see Young & Co’s Brewery (Ram Brewery).
Brewery Original site: 1 Yelverton Road SW11 3QG (Wandsworth) Current site: 1 Bellwether Lane SW18 1UD (Wandsworth) sambrooksbrewery.co.uk First sold beer: November 2008
Disappointed by the lack of locally brewed beer following the closure of Young’s at Wandsworth’s historic Ram brewery, city accountant Duncan Sambrook determined to do something about it. He created Sambrook’s with the help of veteran David Welsh, formerly of Ringwood brewery in Hampshire, becoming an early contributor to the current wave of London breweries. They installed a 33 hl Canadian-built brewhouse in a former photography studio not far from the river Thames in what was then one of the less sought-after areas of Battersea.
The brewery subsequently expanded into neighbouring units, and in 2013 co-founded a packaging facility, South Eastern Bottling (SEB) in Broadstairs, Kent, in partnership with two other breweries, Gadd’s and Westerham.
Sambrook’s owes at least some of its success to filling the niche left by Young’s, so there was a certain poetry to the announcement in 2019 that the business was relocating to the redeveloped Ram brewery site. The move was delayed by the Covid lockdowns among other issues, but Sambrook’s finally began brewing on the site in April 2021, beginning with its flagship Wandle Ale, finally brewed within a few metres of the river after which it’s named.
The brewery now occupies part of the heritage buildings, in a former cooperage which was also once used as a porter tun room. Adjacent in more heritage buildings are an extensive taproom as well as the visitor centre which documents the history of brewing on the site and houses remaining beam engines and coppers.
John Hatch, a former Young’s employee who kept brewing going on the site on a non-commercial basis during the lengthy closure period, now works for Sambrook’s. He continues to brew on his ‘nanobrewery’, now located on a mezzanine above the main brewhouse, and also leads tours of the visitor centre.
Sambrook’s beers are widely distributed in cask, keg, bottle and can, the last two packaged at SEB. Ram Brewery beers are normally in cask, with occasional hand bottling, for sale in the taproom and at special events.
Brewery Original site: 2 Compass West Estate, West Road N17 0XL (Haringey) Current site: 16 Compass West Estate, West Road N17 0XL (Haringey) redemptionbrewing.co.uk First sold beer: February 2010
Redemption was one of the first of the current wave of new London breweries and the first in what’s now the brewing hotbed of Tottenham. It was founded on an industrial estate near the Lea Valley by Glaswegian-born former banker Andy Moffat, who studied brewing at Brewlab in Sunderland after being inspired by Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione’s book Brewing up a Business.
The brewery began with a 20 hl plant originally at Slater’s in Stafford, set up and modified by brewing consultant Dave Smith. Dave also helped design the early beers, which soon gained a following among new craft enthusiasts and traditional cask drinkers alike, as well as loyal local support.
Fermentation capacity was increased several times to cope, and early in 2016 the brewery underwent a long-awaited move to a bigger unit on the same estate, with a new 50 hl brewhouse sourced from Moeschle in Germany, while One Mile End took over the original site.
Redemption is notable among new London brewers in mainly focusing on session-strength cask, which accounts for around 80% of its output, some of it even supplied in big 18-gallon (82 l) kilderkins. The rest is split between keg, and bottles and cans packaged unpasteurised and unfiltered at South East Bottling in Broadstairs. Unusually for a contemporary brewery, Redemption follows the traditional practice of maintaining its own yeast culture, originally from Scottish & Newcastle in Edinburgh but since adapted to local conditions.
Andy Moffat of Redemption, with casks of excellent beer.
There’s now an on-site taproom open on Tottenham Hotspur match days and for other events.
Includes information for Soul Rebel Brew Co and Hale Brewing.
Brewery 2C Uplands Business Park E17 5QJ (Waltham Forest) twitter.com/exalebrewing First sold beer: 12 December 2019 (as Exale Brewing)
Hale Brewing (Five Miles) Brewpub no longer brewing 39B Markfield Road N15 4QA (Haringey) First sold beer: December 2016 (as Affinity), March 2018 (as Hale) Ceased brewing: August 2019
Exale’s brewhouse.
Brewer Daniel Vane worked for London Brewing and Weird Beard before cuckoo brewing in his own right from 2014 under the name Soul Rebel, collaborating with various breweries across the UK. When Affinity Brew Co expanded from its original home in a collection of half-sized shipping containers in the yard of post-industrial Tottenham bar and venue Five Miles late in 2017, the bar’s co-founder Mark Hislop (ex-Brewdog and Redchurch) got together with Daniel to create a successor. The result was Hale Brewing, which took over the little 5 hl kit Affinity left behind, originally bought from Anspach & Hobday.
In 2019, the brewery began implementing plans to expand to a new site with taproom close to several other relocated breweries in Blackhorse Road, Walthamstow, shared with its neighbour at Five Miles, the Victory London Distillery. For complex business reasons, this involved winding up the old company and creating a new one under the present multiply punning name.
Exale, now boasting a 20 hl Elite Stainless brewhouse, also provides apprenticeships and takes care to reduce its environmental impact including turning waste beer into vinegar and soap. Beerblefish moved next door in 2021. Daniel moved on in 2020, with Mark and business partner Andy Solley running the business.
The old container-based kit is now on its fourth owner, Muswell Hillbilly, and has been moved from Five Miles, which has since closed.
In March 2023, the brewery added its first off-site pub, the Three Colts Tavern in Bethnal Green E2, on the site of a historic pub of that name. In January 2024, Mark stepped down with Andy now leading the business. At the same time, the brewery announced that to ensure sustainability it would focus on making beer only for its taproom, pub and a third planned retail site, rather than for third party sales.
Beers, many of them unusually flavoured, are mainly kegged as well as canned using a mobile line, with some in cask and bottle.
Updated 26 January 2024.
Daniel Vane in traditional brewer’s wellies at the old Hale brewhouse.
Brewery no longer in London 5 Boston Business Park, Trumpers Way W7 2QA (Ealing) weirdbeardbrewco.com First sold beer: 17 March 2013 Ceased brewing in London: Feburary 2022
Two separate companies founded by award-winning homebrewers and London Amateur Brewers members who met at an IPA tasting launched in 2011 with the aim of sharing a single brewery facility: Weird Beard, founded by Gregg Irwin and Bryan Spooner, and Ellenberg’s, run by Mike Ellenberg. After several delays, a 16 hl kit from Brewery Vessels Ltd was installed in an industrial unit by the Grand Union Canal in Hanwell in January 2013.
In the event Weird Beard was the more successful of the pair, establishing a reputation for high quality, stylish but uncompromising beers with distinctive branding, and early in 2014 bought out Ellenberg’s share. Operations subsequently expanded into two nearby units, with additional fermentation capacity, a bottling line and a barrel vault.
Gregg moved on early in 2017, but Bryan continued to direct brewing operations, as well as retaining facial grooming practices appropriate to the brewery’s name.
The brewery, one of very few in west London, long wrestled with its location, which precluded a regular taproom. Following the challenges of the 2020-21 lockdowns, the business was put up for sale early in 2022, with all production suspended. It was confirmed in March that the brand has been bought by a Doghouse Brewery in Darwen, Lancashire. Bryan will be joining their staff and will continue to brew Weird Beard beers there. So at least the excellent beers have a future, even if outside London.
A health and safety rule unlikely enforced.
Beers were mainly in keg and can, with some cask and occasional bottled specials.
Brewery, beer firm, brewing currently suspended Original site: 35 Neville Road, Croydon CR0 2DS (Croydon) Future site: 72 Malham Road SE23 1AG (Lewisham) volden.co.uk First sold beer: 11 October 2012 (as Clarence & Fredericks), May 2015 (as Volden) Brewing suspended: March 2020
Clarence & Fredericks was founded in 2012 by Victoria Barlow and Duncan Woodhead as the second contemporary brewery in Croydon (after Cronx), with a 16 hl kit from Oban Ales in a small backstreet industrial unit. Three years later, finding themselves unable to commit the time and money needed to expand the business further, Victoria and Duncan decided to sell the physical brewery, though not the brands.
Meanwhile, the Antic pub group had been working on its own plans to produce house beers for its pubs. By 2014 it already had a brewhouse on order, intended for a site in Camberwell, but when this fell through, it bought up the Clarence & Fredericks site as a stopgap, taking it over in April 2015.
Operations were overseen by Antic’s head brewer and trade quality manager Stephen Lawson, a London brewing veteran who worked at the old Pitfield brewery in the 1980s and then at the Firkin chain. He’s likely the only 20th century London microbrewer who is still brewing at micro scale in the 21st, though with a gap when he worked at other jobs before being introduced to Antic at the relaunch event for Truman’s in 2013.
Antic’s founder Anthony Thomas is a fan of vintage vehicles and the brewery name and logo are an homage to the 1950s Vulcan lorry.
Antic still had the original 32 hl brewery ordered for the Camberwell project in storage and planned to upgrade once a suitable site was found. With brewing suspended during the 2020-21 lockdowns, the company found a site in Forest Hill, adjacent to its offices and warehouse, and installed equipment in July 2020, also planning to open a taproom. Meanwhile, Volden beers were contract-brewed at locations including Portobello and Wimbledon to supply the pubs as they reopened.
Commissioning of the new facility has since stalled and no launch date has yet been announced, with the brands still cuckoo-brewed at Wimbledon.
Beers made almost entirely with English ingredients and a house yeast strain were previously in cask only and sold exclusively in the pubs. Distribution may broaden once brewing is revived.
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