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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) Planned 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. Antic was forced to sell off 13 pubs in July 2024 due to financial difficulties, which will likely further delay the completion of the project.
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.
Closed brewery Arches 29-30, 24 Old Jamaica Road SE16 4AW First sold beer: March 2015 Ceased brewing: September 2019
Opened following a crowdfunding campaign by charismatic Canadian Matt Denham with graphic designer Wilf Horsfall in two railway arches behind the old Neckinger Mills in February 2015, this was the seventh of the current generation of Bermondsey breweries, though with a rather different business plan to its neighbours. It was an ‘open brewery’ analogous to the co-working spaces currently popular with urban start-ups and freelancers, and perhaps an echo of the communal brewhouses once found in some areas of central Europe. Would-be brewers could become members as individuals or groups, claiming their own small fermenting vessel and booking space on one of six 50 l or 100 l Braumeister homebrewing kits, with training, individual advice and supplies also offered. As well as homebrewers, the facility was pitched at small scale commercial cuckoos and people testing the water or piloting recipes before graduating to their own kit.
By the end of May, 150 brewing teams and individuals had signed up. A taproom was included from the start, initially selling third party products as at first UBREW lacked its own brewing license, though some of the cuckoos were selling beer brewed here at an early stage under separate licenses. In August 2016, the enterprise added a brewhouse of more professional proportions, an 8 hl kit sourced from Canada and the UK, with some tanks acquired secondhand from Heineken. It used this to brew and sell its own brand bottled and kegged beers for the first time, as well as helping some of its more serious cuckoo members to upscale.
At its peak, UBREW brought together commercial brewers and homebrewers in a uniquely productive atmosphere which spawned several well-regarded standalone breweries, including Beerblefish, Ignition, Mechanic, ORA and Spartan in London and Beatnikz Republic, now in Manchester, as well as continuing notable cuckoos like Mothership and Seven Sisters. It hosted the regular meetings of homebrewing club London Amateur Brewers for several years. But as time went on, there were complaints about matters like hygiene and management failures, increasing as the company stretched resources on developing promised branches in Berlin, Copenhagen and Manchester. The premises closed unannounced on a temporary basis in June 2019, and despite reopening a few weeks later with Matt promising to sort the problems in a lengthy statement, UBREW went into liquidation a few months later, the first casualty of the Bermondsey ‘mile’.
While I’ve heard some colourful stories about the place from former users, the overall consensus is that this was a great idea which failed in the execution. Nobody in London is currently offering anything quite like it — Brew Club in Hackney and London Beer Lab in Brixton have shared homebrewing kits, and the latter also sometimes hosts cuckoo brewers on a bigger production brewhouse, but neither offers similarly open facilities to aspiring professionals. It remains to be seen whether anyone else will have another go at making the model work.
Here’s a (likely incomplete) list of brewers known to have sold beer brewed at UBREW, or at least to have intended to sell it: I’m grateful to John Paul Adams for tracking most of them, and welcome further additions and corrections.
Brewpub no longer brewing 78 Norman Road SW19 1BT hopback.co.uk First sold beer: March 2015 Ceased brewing: November 2015
In a South Wimbledon back street, the well-loved Sultan has been the only London pub owned by Wiltshire’s Hopback brewery since 1995. A small brewhouse was installed in a shed in the garden early in 2015, producing cask beers for sale in the pub. But the brewer left in November 2015 and was never replaced, and the equipment was subsequently removed, leaving this as one of the most short-lived London brewpubs of recent times.
The owning brewery has historical London connections as its founder John Gilbert was one of the first generation microbrewers in the capital in the 1980s, beginning his career in 1983 a brewpub owned by Mike Conway, the Prince of Wales in Battersea, and later brewing at the Warrior in Brixton, part of the same group.
In 1986, John moved to his own pub outside London, the Wyndham Arms in Salisbury, where he began brewing under the name Hopback in 1988. Moving to a standalone site in 1991, Hopback became one of the most successful UK microbreweries, noted for Summer Lightning, the beer that popularised a new style of cask golden ale and laid some of the groundwork for the hoppy pale ales of today. Hopback is still around today, though John himself retired in 2018.
Closed brewery Original site: 6 Émigré Studios, 274 Richmond Road E8 3QW (Hackney) Second and final site: Arch 77, 878 Old Kent Road SE15 1NQ (Lewisham) First sold beer: June 2013 Ceased brewing: January 2015
This very small brewery was originally in an arch near London Fields but soon outgrew the site and in December 2013 crossed the river to another arch on the boundary of New Cross and Peckham. Beers were bottle conditioned in limited quantities. In January 2015, the brewery announced it was suspending production and this eventually became permanent.
Closed brewery 16 Glenville Mews, Kimber Road SW18 4NJ (Wandsworth) First sold beer: 29 September 2012 Brewing ceased: by December 2017
Rocky Head once claimed to be “possibly the most ramshackle brewery in the UK”, with an 8 hl kit pieced together by wine importer and former Oddbins staffer Steve Daniel and friends from bits and pieces sourced with the help of former Roosters brewer Sean Franklin, including recycled components from the demolished Tetley brewery in Leeds. It produced mainly in bottle and keg.
Despite the quality of its beers, the brewery remained a part-time business operating only at weekends, an arrangement which clearly proved unsustainable as it eventually closed in 2017. There was a suggestion it may re-emerge as a cuckoo brewer but nothing has been seen since.
Brewery moved from London Original site: 275 Poyser Street E2 9RL (Tower Hamlets) redchurch.beer Current site: 15 River Way, Harlow CM20 2SE (Essex) First sold beer: September 2011 Ceased brewing in London: May 2019
Former solicitor Gary Ward and partner Tracey Cleland named this brewery after Redchurch Street, where they lived in Shoreditch, first launching the brand with a homebrewed trial batch at nearby Mason & Taylor (now BrewDog Shoreditch) in August 2011. The first commercial brew from their 13 hl PBC kit in a Bethnal Green railway arch followed shortly afterwards.
By February 2013, the site had expanded into a neighbouring arch and added a taproom. The brewery’s reputation continued to grow, particularly in 2015-16 under head brewer James Rylance, formerly at the Kernel and Beavertown, who began experimenting with wild and mixed fermentation brews and barrel ageing.
Following a major crowdfunding campaign, Redchurch moved its main production facility out of London during 2016 to a much bigger new brewery in Harlow, Essex. The arch at Bethnal Green was retained both as a taproom and a dedicated facility for wild and mixed fermentation under the sub-brand Urban Farmhouse. James led this project until 2018 when he moved to Harbour Brewery in Cornwall to produce similarly creative beers.
The company became the first major casualty of the recent boom in May 2019 when it went into pre-pack administration, with the brands and Harlow site sold on to new owners and almost £900,000 of crowdfunding investment lost. Gary retained the arches which he reopened as a bar called Sundays and there was talk of reviving the production of wild and mixed fermentation beers, but later in the year some of the brewing equipment was for sale on eBay.
In October 2022, Redchurch was bought by Laine, another company with a previous history of brewing in London.
Brewpub no longer brewing 183 High Street W3 9DJ (Ealing) georgeanddragonacton.co.uk First sold beer: May 2014 (as Dragonfly) Ceased brewing: January 2019 (as Portobello at the George)
Now Acton’s oldest building, the George is a coaching inn likely created by knocking two 17th century houses together, and happily escaped the rebuilding mania of late Victorian times. Once a Courage house, in 2006 it was taken on and restored by the beer-friendly Remarkable Restaurants chain. In 2014, a gleaming 8 hl microbrewery with stacked fermenters was installed in the barn-like space at the back which is now the main bar. Conor Donoghue, previously at the Lamb and Botanist brewpubs (see Brewhouse and Kitchen), was the initial head brewer, working under the Dragonfly brand.
Brewhouse at the Dragonfly W3, once one of London’s newest breweries in one of its oldest pubs.
In September 2014, Conor became head brewer at Carlow Brewing Co in Ireland and brewing at the pub gradually became more erratic. It continued on an occasional basis into 2017 through a linkup with Clouded Minds in Warwickshire, which had sometimes cuckoo-brewed here in its early days. In June 2018, Portobello brewery nearby took over operations, with a plan for the pub to become an unofficial brewery tap selling its core brands as well as house-brewed short runs and specials. Following technical problems with the equipment, this arrangement was broken off early in 2019. The brewhouse is still in place but at the last report it hadn’t yet been restored to working order.
Closed brewery Original site: Cock Tavern, 315 Mare Street E8 1EJ (Hackney) Second and last site: 214 Ponsford Street E9 6JU (Hackney) First sold beer: September 2015 (at original site) Ceased brewing: January 2019
After Howling Hops shifted production from its original home in the cellar of Hackney’s Cock Tavern to a much bigger facility at its Hackney Wick tank bar in June 2015, the pub’s assistant manager Ian Morton took over the old brewhouse, still housed in the pub but now run as a separate business. As Ian was first inspired to homebrew while living in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, he named the new project Maregade as a part-Danish translation of Mare Street (Hoppegade might have been even more appropriate).
Following early success, Ian suspended brewing at the Cock in November 2017 and resumed in March 2018 with a bigger kit in a Homerton railway arch, not far from the cluster of arch-based beer venues along Hackney’s Bohemia Place. But planning and licensing problems frustrated attempts to establish a regular taproom, and the brewery ceased trading early in 2019.
Meanwhile, the brewery at the Cock was returned to use by Howling Hops under the name Short Stack.
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