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Brewery moved outside London, planned brewpub Unit 9, 35 White Hart Avenue SE28 0GU (Greenwich) First sold beer: August 2018 (as Hop Stuff) October 2018 (SALT Beer Factory at Shipley, West Yorkshire) Brewing suspended: April 2019 Brewing restarted: December 2019 Brewing suspended: March 2020 Brewing restarted: December 2021 (as SALT London) Ceased brewing in London: May 2023
Hop Stuff Brewery Original site: 7 Gunnery Terrace SE18 6SW (Greenwich) First sold beer: November 2013 (at original site)
London regained one of its larger craft brewers in December 2021 when West Yorkshire brewer SALT Beer Factory bought the former Hop Stuff brewery in Thamesmead and its associated bars in Woolwich and Deptford from multinational Molson Coors. By early December the bars had already been rebranded and test brews and flavour matching had commenced, with commercial brewing restarted by March 2022.
SALT is a contemporary craft-slanted offshoot of Ossett Brewery. This began behind a pub in Ossett, West Yorkshire, in 1998 before expanding to a much more substantial facility in a nearby industrial unit in June 2005. The original SALT Beer Factory opened in 2018 as a ‘craft’-focused brewpub in one of the historic buildings on the World Heritage Site at Saltaire near Bradford, and quickly established a good reputation. It was looking to expand its business in London and the south of England, so the Hop Stuff deal seemed a good fit.
SALT continued to brew on its original site but planned to transfer production of its biggest-selling core brands, notably Jute Session IPA and Huckabuck NEIPA, to London. The five-vessel 70 hl brewhouse was designed to be steam-heated: the steam plant was never commissioned under Hop Stuff or Coors, with a temporary generator used instead, but was finally commissioned under SALT’s ownership.
The revival proved short-lived, as following a failure to agree a new lease on the property, brewing ceased in May 2023, with production once again concentrated in Yorkshire. SALT continues to operate the former Hop Stuff bars and there are long-term plans to revive London brewing on a small scale by converting one of them into a brewpub.
Brewhouse at SALT London.
Hop Stuff Brewery
Hop Stuff was created by ex-City worker James Yeomans, who learned to brew at Grainstore in Rutland, with his wife Emma. It grew largely through crowdfunding, with 71 investors securing the first facility, a 16 hl kit from Oban Ales, in a listed former warehouse on what was then the newly redeveloped Woolwich Arsenal complex.
An ad-hoc taproom at the brewery was succeeded in late 2015 by a bar on another part of the Arsenal site. Further crowdfunding in 2017 financed an ambitious upgrade to a much bigger site on former arsenal land near Belmarsh prison in West Thamesmead, increasing capacity to a potential 15,000 hl a year. Two more bars were added, in Deptford in December 2017 and outside London in Ashford, Kent in May 2018, with still more crowdfunding.
The business began to unravel in 2019, with production abruptly halted in April when staff were locked out by the landlord following problems with duty and rent payments. In July, James announced a pre-pack administration deal selling the business to US-Canadian group Molson Coors, owner of Carling and Sharp’s, which became the last of the major multinationals active in the UK to buy into a new London brewery – unfortunately with the loss of over £1.5 million to around 1,000 crowdfunding investors. James oversaw the transition but left before production restarted in December.
In the event, Coors managed 25 brews before the Covid-19 lockdowns struck in March 2020 and the brewery was mothballed. It was put on the market in August 2021 and subsequently bought by SALT as explained above. Coors retained the Hop Stuff brands with the possibility they could be brewed elsewhere, but they seem to have been quietly forgotten.
Brewery 8 Roman Way Industrial Estate, 149 Roman Way N7 8XH (Islington) hammertonbrewery.co.uk First sold beer: 30 April 2014
Former IT business analyst Lee Hammerton had already made plans to fill an obvious gap in the market by starting a brewery near his home in Islington when he discovered he was distantly related to a defunct London brewing dynasty which once owned a Hammerton brewery in Stockwell (below). The new Hammerton, which has doubled capacity since opening, occupies several units alongside rather than underneath the Overground at Caledonian Road and Barnsbury station, with a 25 hl brewhouse including components from Malrex and SSV.
The first head brewer was Sam Dickison, who went on to found Boxcar. He was succeeded by ex-Paulaner employee Daniel Fluess and, most recently, Charlotte Cook, formerly of Truman’s. As well as a taproom at the brewery, since April 2017 Hammerton has had its own pub closer to central Islington at Highbury, known as the House of Hammerton.
The bar at Hammerton’s taproom.
Beers are brewed for keg and can, with some in cask.
The Stockwell Brewery was founded in 1730, close to local springs (16 Stockwell Green SW9 9JF, Lambeth). It was run by Lee’s ancestor Charles Hammerton in the late 19th century and in 1938 became likely the first brewery in the world to put real oysters into stout. Watney bought it out in 1951, primarily for its lucrative off license chain rather than its pubs, which were sold on to Charrington. Brewing ceased, although the site remained in use as a bottling plant for a while before being redeveloped as housing. The brands eventually passed to Heineken, and Lee has now had the Dutch group’s claim to the trademark revoked on the grounds of non-use.
Brewery Original site: 358 Laburnum Street E2 8BB (Hackney) Current site: 10 Lockwood Way E17 5RB (Waltham Forest) hackneybrewery.co.uk First sold beer: June 2012 (at original site)
Former homebrewers Peter Hills and Jon Swain both worked at Islington pub the Charles Lamb when they decided to join the growing ranks of East London brewers in 2011. They began with a small 8 hl kit which they ended up using twice a day to fill the growing number of fermenters squeezed into their railway arch under the Kingsland viaduct.
In 2015 the brewery expanded into a neighbouring arch and in 2016 was reconfigured following advice from consultants, with a new 20 hl brewhouse fabricated to the bespoke designs of Jon and head brewer Darren Walker. Further tanks were added to raise production to 5,000 hl a year.
With no space to increase production further nor for a taproom, the brewery began looking for a new site. In November 2020, the business moved into an industrial unit in the rapidly growing brewing hotspot of Blackhorse Lane, Walthamstow, immediately opposite Wild Card. A well-appointed taproom, known as the High Hill Taproom, opened here following the end of the lockdowns in May 2021. With much redevelopment in the area, the council is keen to turn the street into a ‘destination’ over the next few years.
Jon Swain pictured at Hackney’s original site.
Nearly all Hackney beers are sold in keg and can. Regular cask beers were discontinued early in 2018 though a small amount is still sold to selected pubs and bars.
Brewery Unit 11, 160 Hamilton Road SE27 9SF (Lambeth) gipsyhillbrewing.com First sold beer: July 2014
One of London’s biggest independent breweries, Gipsy Hill has a target to grow output to 24,000 hl in the next few years. Its footprint on the industrial estate in the like-named neighbourhood it calls home has grown from one to six units.
The credit lies with the three characters shown on the logo: founders Charlie Shaw (ex-Five Points), former City worker Sam McMeekin and head brewer Simon Wood, recruited from Dorset’s Piddle brewery. The first kit was a relatively generous 25 hl Malrex and the company was soon adding extra fermenters and warehousing.
Charlie Shaw (left) and Sam McMeekin of Gipsy Hill.
Disaster struck in 2016 when the brewing floor began to collapse, but this proved a turning point with investment in a new high-quality floor and an upgrade the following year to a 60 hl brewhouse with a pilot kit and a canning line. A dedicated taproom opened in 2018 across the yard from the brewery itself. The brewery’s pub the Douglas Fir, on the other side of Crystal Palace Park, opened as a popup in a former shop in 2016 but soon became permanent.
In April 2021, Gipsy Hill became London’s first employee-owned brewery.
Beers are in keg and can, with some hand bottling for barrel-aged specials and occasional one-off casks.
Formerly Fuller, Smith & Turner. Includes information for the original Lamb Brewery
Brewery Chiswick Lane South W4 2QB (Hounslow) fullersbrewery.co.uk First sold beer: 1701 (as Mawson’s)
Shockwaves ran through the London brewing scene on 25 January 2019 when Fuller, Smith & Turner, London’s biggest brewery and its oldest by far, announced it was following in the footsteps of former fellow London brewer Young’s and many other old-established UK family breweries by ditching brewing to concentrate on pubs.
The beer business, including the historic Griffin brewery, was sold for £250 million to Asahi of Japan, becoming its second brewery in London after Meantime, while Fuller’s shifted focus to its pub estate, where 87% of its profit had been generated. Asahi has undertaken to continue brewing at the Griffin, which is now London’s only historic brewery in continuous commercial production: all the others were founded or revived in the 21st century.
The famous Wisteria on the brewer’s house at Fuller’s.
Brewing on this riverside site on Chiswick Mall can be traced back to the 1650s domestic brewery attached to stately home Bedford House on Chiswick Mall. Thomas Mawson founded the Griffin brewery as a commercial operation in 1701, and the Fuller family became involved in 1829. The currently quoted founding date of 1845 is when a new partnership took over, involving John Bird Fuller, Henry Smith (formerly of Ind & Smith in Romford, later Ind Coope), and John Turner.
Fuller Smith & Turner became a limited company in 1929. Descendants of the original partners remained involved until the recent sale and retain their position in the successor pub company.
As one of only two independent breweries left in London as the beer consumer movement gathered pace in the 1970s, Fuller’s was persuaded not to convert to keg production and to revive traditional cask conditioning and handpump dispense. It grew substantially from an output of around 100,000 hl and an estate of 100 pubs to 550,000 hl and 400 pubs just before the Asahi deal.
Chiswick’s other brewery, the Lamb, once a Fuller’s store.
In 2005, Fuller’s bought another old-established family brewer, Gales in Horndeam, Hampshire, and closed it the following year, retaining some of the brands. In February 2018, the brewery bought Dark Star, based in Partridge Green near Horsham, West Sussex, with the intention of retaining it as a working brewery, though its flagship Hophead was soon shifted to Chiswick. Both these assets were included in the Asahi deal.
Dark Star’s roots go back to London in 1982 when Pitfield’s Brewery was founded by microbrewing pioneers Rob Jones and Martin Kemp in Pitfield Street, Hoxton. Their best-known beer was a porter called Dark Star which became the first microbrew to win Champion Beer of Britain in 1987, and when in 1994 Rob collaborated with the landlord of the Evening Star pub in Brighton to set up a microbrewery in the cellar, he revived the name.
Dark Star played a major role in popularising the use of New World hops in the UK and expanded twice before the Fuller’s acquisition, though Rob left in 2016. Sadly, Asahi opted to close Dark Star in December 2022. Originally, its brands other than Hophead transferred to Meantime, though that brewery is also due to close in 2024, with all production centred at Chiswick.
Fuller’s brewhouse was renewed in the mid-1990s with a modern twin mash tun system which brews in 520 hl batches, and nearly all fermentation is now in cylindro-conical closed fermenters. In July 2018 a new 16 hl pilot brewery was installed as part of a major refurbishment of the visitor centre. Drink-in facilities here were added in 2021, replacing longstanding brewery tap the Mawson Arms around the corner. World-renowned brewing director John Keeling retired in October 2018 though still acts as a brewery ambassador.
Under the new arrangement, the Griffin still supplies beers to Fuller’s pubs, while Asahi is free to use Fuller’s trademarks to market the beer elsewhere. The Japanese company has said it respects the brands and their heritage and is particularly keen to increase international sales. But the deal has inevitably raised worries about the future of the site, which given its location could be extremely valuable if redeveloped.
Beers are in cask, keg, can, bottle conditioned and in filtered bottles, with some minicasks. Several of the core brands are related through the technique of ‘parti-gyling’, taking multiple runnings at different gravities from the same basic mash and tweaking the hop additions. All Fuller’s-branded beers are fermented using a longstanding house yeast, while Gale’s and Dark Star beers use different yeasts.
Things to see
As London’s only remaining working historic brewery and on an attractive riverside site in the Old Chiswick Conservation Area, Fuller’s is particularly worth a visit. It’s possible to view some of the historic buildings from the street or the non-gated section of the brewery yard. The site with its prominent branding provides a landmark on the busy Great West Road (A4) on the approach to the Hogarth Roundabout, so called because artist and illustrator William Hogarth (1697-1794), well-known to brewing historians for his satirical diptych of Gin Lane and Beer Street, lived in a house nearby, now open as a visitor attraction.
The brewery’s current main entrance with its decorative ironwork opens onto Mawson Lane, the sliproad parallel to the main road on its south side, with several late Victorian industrial buildings visible. The corner building to the left forms one end of a terrace of five town houses which continue round the corner along Chiswick Lane South (110-118, W4 2QA), built around 1715 for brewery founder Thomas Mawson and now Grade II* listed. The poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) lived at the corner building between 1716-1719 and is commemorated with a blue plaque. The small two-storey Grade II-listed Garden House, which presents a gable end to Mawson Lane just to the right, may have been built for him, though was much altered in the 19th century.
Around 1897, the corner house was converted to a brewery tap, initially the Fox and Dogs, later the Fox and Hounds. It then acquired a second name, the Mawson Arms, though both names continued in use, perhaps as a legacy of two sections of the pub having separate ale and spirits licenses. On the deal with Asahi, the pub remained with the legacy pub company, who opted not to reopen it following the 2020 lockdowns, though it was advertised as to let in 2024 so may yet reopen under a new operator.
Along Chiswick Lane South you pass the brewery shop and visitor centre, with the pilot brewery visible behind glass at the back. This is the starting point for the highly recommended brewery tours (book in advance, charge payable). Further along is the particularly attractive cobbled yard with a terrace of three 18th century houses (130-134 Mawson Row) wrapped around the corner.
A little further into the yard on the right is the Brewer’s House, actually built as the owner’s house sometime in the 18th century and later used as offices and a boardroom. The wisteria climbing its walls was grown from the earliest cuttings to arrive in Britain from China in 1816: another cutting went to Kew Gardens but died. Opposite is the Hock Cellar, a former wines and spirits store named after the brewery’s mild ale, now used as part of the visitor experience. It’s an atmospheric space with numerous interesting exhibits but is usually only open to guests on brewery tours.
The rest of the site is also only accessible to tour guests. Although today the brewery uses almost entirely modern equipment, numerous pieces of vintage kit have been retained. The oldest vessel is an 1823 domed London copper with calandria, embedded in brick. Other highlights include 1930s grist mills which are still in use, an 1863 mash tun with an unusual segmented copper lid, a smaller Victorian copper once used for melting brewing sugar, and a double drop fermenter with a round wooden vessel arranged over a copper square equipped with a water-based attemperator.
The small buildings by the directors’ car park now used for technical services are some of the earliest on the site, predating commercial brewing: they originated as outbuildings for the houses fronting Chiswick Mall.
Back in the public realm, continuing along Chiswick Lane South towards the river Thames you pass a succession of brewery walls and buildings on the right. Turn right to follow the Thames Path upstream along Chiswick Mall, where numerous grand houses, many of them listed, back onto the brewery’s southern perimeter. Two adjoining imposing Grade II*-listed mansions, Eynham House and Bedford House (W4 2PJ), are set a little back from the street about halfway along to the next junction. Originally a single property occupied this plot, Bedford House, built for the Russell family, earls (later dukes) of Bedford, around 1650. Brewing began in an outbuilding at the rear of this, perhaps one of those still in brewery use for technical services. The house was rebuilt in the early 18th century and split into two. Note that particularly high tides sometimes render Chiswick Mall impassable.
Turning away from the river again at the next corner along Church Street, you pass Grade II*-listed St Nicholas Church on the left. This early 14th century parish church was rebuilt 1882-84 with funds largely donated by brewery partner Henry Smith. Hogarth is buried in the churchyard.
A little further along on the right, set back from Church Street around a narrow yard (W4 2PD), are the remains of a second Chiswick brewery, the Lamb, dating from at least the 1770s and once at least as big as the Griffin. Since at least 1790 it was owned and operated by the Sich family and was later known as Sich & Co. In the 1850s some of the family lived in Bedford House. The tower brewhouse built around 1900 still stands, though hasn’t brewed since 1920 when Sich & Co merged with the Isleworth Brewing Company, later absorbed by Watney.
The Lamb site was subsequently used by Fuller’s for storage and later by the Standard Yeast Company but is now offices. The pretty 18th century pink stucco and weatherboard building on the left corner here, now known as Burlington Corner, is the former Lamb brewery tap and likely where brewing began on the site. On the opposite corner is a charming 16th-century timber-framed building, The Old Burlington, one of the oldest in the area. This was also once a pub, the Burlington Arms, but both it and the Lamb lost their licenses in 1924 following the brewery closure.
The Lamb name was briefly reused between 2012-13 for a brewpub in central Chiswick: see Brewhouse and Kitchen.
Brewery 25 Bermondsey Trading Estate, Rotherhithe New Road SE16 3LL (Southwark) fourpure.com First sold beer: October 2013
Always one of London’s most ambitious new breweries, Fourpure is now one of the biggest. Founded as the fourth Bermondsey brewery by former City technology firm executive Dan Lowe and his brother Tom, both homebrewers, it rejected the railway arch model in favour of the less restricted space of a conventional industrial unit between the lines at the southeast end of the strip, near Millwall FC’s New Den stadium. The name refers to the four traditional ingredients of beer.
The Lowes recruited John Driebergen, formerly of Meantime, as head brewer and installed a 30 hl kit bought second-hand from Purity in Warwickshire, alongside a 1 hl pilot kit. From the start, the brewery was equipped with a canning line in a nearby unit, one of the first in a new London brewery.
It’s expanded several times since, with additional warehousing, a 2017 enlargement into an adjacent unit to make space for a new 50 hl German-built GEA Craft Star brewhouse and three outdoor silos for base malts and spent grain. The old kit was sold to Brockley Brewery for its expanded site at Hither Green.
In July 2018, Fourpure became the sixth London craft brewer acquired by a multinational, the Japanese group Kirin, as part of its Australian-originated Lion Little World Beverages subsidiary, though with the same management as before. Further expansion into two more adjacent units followed in summer 2019, one of them entirely occupied by an extensive taproom.
In 2022, John Driebergen and his assistant Ollie Parker left to found Great Beyond.
Following the trend of multinational breweries reducing their craft-style interests in the UK, in August 2022 Lion Little World sold all its UK breweries, including Little Creatures Regents Canal in London and Magic Rock in Huddersfield. The new owner is Odyssey Inns, founded by Stephen Cox, a co-founder of Utopian Brewing in Crediton, Devon, who has stepped down from his role there to run the new group. For the moment, production continues as before.
Beers are in keg and can, with much sold through supermarket chains.
Brewery Bootyard, Abbot Street E8 3DP (Hackney) 40ftbrewery.com First sold beer: 5 July 2015
The brainchild of German-born former London Fields and Truman’s head brewer Ben Ott and three homebrewing business partners, brothers Fredrik and Andreas Pettersson and current chief executive Steve Ryan, this outfit was named after its home in a converted 40 foot (12.2 m) shipping container. It’s located in a former car park managed by the Bootstrap economic development charity behind Dalston’s Arcola Theatre, where several other small and lively businesses flourish, including a bakery and restaurant. Other containers have since been added, including two converted into a taproom in 2019, which deservedly won a regional SIBA award in 2020. The site is ultimately due for redevelopment but that’s several years away.
Ben Ott of 40FT with horizontal tanks.
The brewery uses a 10 hl kit from Oban Ales, old-fashioned open fermenters and, unusually for a UK brewery, several horizontal lagering tanks: most beers on sale in the taproom are dispensed direct from these. There’s also a pilot kit for small runs. Unpasteurised and unfiltered beers are brewed for tank and keg, with canning using a mobile line.
Brewery Original site: 3 Institute Place E8 1JE (Hackney, brewing ceased March 2021) Current site: 61 Mare Street E8 4RG (Hackney) fivepointsbrewing.co.uk First sold beer: 22 March 2013 (at original site)
Five Points is one of the claimants to the title of London’s biggest independent brewery, producing around 18,000 hl in 2019 with a staff of around 45. It was founded by pub operator Ed Mason with proceeds from the sale of pioneering craft beer bar Mason & Taylor, which became BrewDog Shoreditch. Head brewer Greg Hobbs was recruited from East London Brewing and a 16 hl brewhouse installed in a railway arch under Hackney Downs station, named after the busy five-way road junction at the crossing of Amhurst Road and Dalston Lane only metres away.
A new 32 hl brewhouse from OAL was commissioned in 2015, with the old kit sold to Signature Brew. As well as taking on an adjoining arch and installing outdoor fermenters, Five Points added warehousing and offices at a separate site on Mare Street, a little to the south, in 2016. Unusually, it has both a bottling and a canning line, the former from Beavertown, the latter bought new from ABE LinCan.
The former Beavertown bottling line, in action at Five Points’ first site.
Long lacking a taproom because of its restricted accommodation, in 2018 it bought landmark pub the Pembury Tavern, located right on the eponymous junction, from the Milton brewery in Cambridgeshire.
Following a 2018 crowdfunding campaign that raised £1.1 million against a target of £750,000, the brewery began a frustrating search for a more expansive site. Finally in March 2021 it reconfigured its Mare Street warehouse, transferring brewing there and opening a well-appointed taproom in November, with extensive outdoor space, while continuing to operate the Pembury.
The brewery was also the organiser of the London Brewers Market.
Beers still include a substantial amount of cask in both traditional and contemporary styles, as well as kegs, cans and bottles, with tank dispense for popular brands in the taproom, where specials from a pilot kit are also available. Due to capacity limitations, the Pils has been brewed De Brabandere in Harelbeke, West Flanders, Belgium, but production has since been brought back in house.
Brewpub 46 Essex Street WC2R 3JF (Westminster) templebrewhouse.com/brewery First sold beer: 20 December 2014, as Essex Street Brewing Brewing suspended: March 2020 Brewing restarted: May 2022
Pub chain the City Pub Co already had brewpubs in Bath and Cambridge when it added a London branch near the Temple late in 2014. An 8 hl kit was squeezed into a stairwell, with some serious ventilation equipment installed after the lawyers upstairs complained about the smell (their loss). Though the pub was known as the Temple Brew House, the brewery originally traded under the Essex Street brand.
Long claiming to be “London’s most central brewery”, it was a lively participant in the local brewing scene under the guidance of longstanding head brewer Vanesa de Blas.
The pub was closed with brewing suspended during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns. After some uncertainty about its future, it was finally reopened in Feburary 2022 with brewing restored in May.
Vanesa is now based at a sister brewpub the Cambridge Brew House but, as this has a smaller kit, she regularly visits London to brew longer runs. In August 2022, the Essex Street brand was dropped with all beers appearing under the Temple Brew House name.
In November 2023, the pub was sold to the Young’s pub company, along with the other 53 sites in the group. So far, though, brewing continues as normal.
Beers are in keg and cask, many of them gluten-free, sold on-site and at other City Pubs sites. There have been numerous collaborations including with Toast Ale.
Brewery 45 Fairways Business Centre, Lammas Road E10 7QB (Waltham Forest) eastlondonbrewing.com First sold beer: September 2011
Former research and development chemist Stu Lascelles switched career paths in the autumn of 2011 by setting up East London Brewing (sometimes known as ELB) with his wife Claire Ashbridge-Thomlinson. The first in what’s now a developing cluster of beer producers around Lea Bridge station, it began with a 16 hl plant and open fermenters installed by Dave Porter of PBC in a single unit on an industrial estate between the railway and the Lee Valley Park.
Stu Lascelles of East London Brewing Co
It’s since expanded into two other adjacent units. In July 2019, the installation was upgraded to a 40 hl kit with improved fermenters supplied by Johnson Brewing Design. The new head brewer, Adrian Morales-Maillo, is formerly of Naparbier in Barcelona.
Due to the limitations of the site, the brewery is open only for occasional open days and special events but sells beer to take away during normal working hours. An offsite taproom is planned for 2022.
East London initially brewed mainly cask beers and the format still accounts for 60% of its output. Most beers are also available bottled or canned, mainly using an off-site contractor, but some are bottle-conditioned at the brewery. Beers are also packaged as bag-in-box.
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