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Beer firm, former brewpub
Original site: William IV, 816A High Road E10 6AE First sold beer: November 2000 (as Sweet William), 20 August 2008 (as Brodie’s) Ceased brewing: July 2016
The story of this major early contributor to the revival of London brewing in the early 21st century begins at the Brodie family’s Leyton pub the King William IV in November 2000. An 8 hl kit designed by Pitfield’s and Dark Star founder Rob Jones started producing beer under the name Sweet William in a former stable building at the back. Although the Brodies owned the kit, the brewery was operated by a separate business, which failed in 2005. The brewhouse was mothballed, only to be restored and relaunched under the family name in August 2008 by siblings James and Lizzie Brodie, originally as a point of interest to attract more customers to this very large pub.
The initiative turned out to be one of the earliest shoots of a vigorous crop of London craft brewers, and Brodie’s became the true maverick of the new community, creating many hundreds of unusual and innovative beers in cask, keg and bottle in a vast range of styles, sometimes with over 50 different beers on sale at the William’s annual Bunny Basher easter beer festivals. The beers found their way into the family’s two central London pubs, the Old Coffee House in Soho and the Crosse Keys in Covent Garden, as well as other pubs and bars in the UK and abroad, and the brewery collaborated with such luminaries as Mikkeler and Three Floyds. By 2015 there were plans to expand to a new production brewery on a separate site and even talk of opening a bar in Cardiff.
In the restless creativity of the brewery’s heyday, the beers varied from the sublime to the ill-advised, but at their best they were exceptional. Brodie’s was instrumental in popularising light single hop pale ales in the capital, became an early adopter of New Zealand hops, experimented with sour Flemish reds, helped revive the brewing of big porters, including some using smoked malt, and gamely priced 10%+ Imperial stouts at the Bunny Basher events at the same level as session ales.
Unfortunately Brodie’s faced a difficult year in 2016, due to technical problems at the brewery as well as personal and financial issues. The brewhouse was closed, initially for refurbishment, with brewing transferred outside London, but by October 2016 the brewing business had been wound up completely. The William was sold in 2017 and reopened in January 2018 under new ownership.
Since then, Brodie’s beers in cask and keg have been on sale intermittently in the central London pubs, cuckoo-brewed at various locations including Wobbly in Hereford; Rhymney in Blaenavon, Torfaen, Wales; and most recently at Battersea, where former Brodie’s head brewer Tom Barlow now works. Tom currently owns the brand and recipes, and although production has dwindled due to time and capacity constraints, he’s keen to revive them should the opportunity arise. Let’s hope it does, as London deserves to continue enjoying these “fabulous beers”.
Breweries Brockley site: 31 Harcourt Road SE4 2AJ (Lewisham) Hither Green site: 28 Chiltonian Industrial Estate SE12 0TX (Lewisham) brockleybrewery.co.uk First sold beer: 22 March 2013 (at Brockley site)
Brockley was founded at the initiative of Andy Rowland and five neighbours in response to a demand for quality local beer. They installed an 8 hl kit from ABUK in a small industrial building in a back street close to Brockley station, previously home to a builder’s workshop, and soon established a following in a neighbourhood with a strong sense of community. Initially, the brewery was open to the public only for takeaway sales, but this evolved into a regular taproom.
In November 2019, the brewery launched a second, larger facility on an industrial estate between Hither Green and Lee, using a 30 hl brewhouse formerly at Fourpure (and originally at Purity in Warwickshire). Following a succession of open days, a regular taproom opened here in 2021.
Andy Rowland at Brockley Brewery, Hither Green.
The brewery’s original home remains active, used for specials, additional capacity and various events and activities. There have been several head brewers including Craig Vernon, formerly at Camden Town. In August 2023, Gianluca d’Andrea, formerly at Southwark, was appointed head brewer.
Andy retired in March 2024 and the company was taken over by four of the existing staff, including Gianluca. They aim to maximise community ties and secure the future of the business through a ‘Support your local brewery’ campaign, inviting local investment and using the brewery’s spaces for community activities.
Beers tend towards the more traditional, with cask still a major part of the business, though with significant amounts of keg and bottled beers, bag-in-box and occasional canning on a mobile line.
Breweries Brixton site: 547 Brixton Station Road (taproom at 548) SW9 8PF (Lambeth) Herne Hill site: 1 Dylan Road SE24 0HL (Lambeth) brixtonbrewery.com First sold beer: October 2013 (at Brixton site)
Conceived as early as 2011 by homebrewing neighbours Jez Galaun and Mike Ross, Brixton eventually opened two years with a 10 hl brewhouse from Oban Ales in a railway arch a little east of Brixton station at 547 Station Road. Soon establishing a keen local following, the operation later expanded into the next arch east, 548.
The new Brixton brewery is duly branded in August 2018.
Many in the industry were surprised when this small outfit became the fourth new London brewery to attract funding from a multinational group Heineken bought a 49% stake in November 2017, with the strong brand and association with an iconic neighbourhood was doubtless part of the attraction.
Though the founders retained control, the Dutch brewer’s resources enabled a major expansion to a much larger industrial unit in Herne Hill, under a kilometre from the brewery’s birthplace. Operations began here in June 2018 on a 50 hl automated brewhouse from UK supplier Gravity Systems and a new canning line installed on a hi-tech floor, with a potential capacity of 30,000 hl a year.
The Brixton arches have been retained: 547 houses the brewhouse, which is still in regular use, while 548 has been converted into a regular taproom.
Heineken acquired full ownership in Feburary 2021, though the existing management remains in place.
Brixton makes beer in keg and can, with some bottling and occasional cask. The Herne Hill site accounts for the bulk of production, but the Brixton site still makes core brands, as well as specials and shorter runs for bottle and cask. Beers are nearly always named with local references.
An unrelated earlier Brixton Brewery operated as a Conway brewpub in the 1980s.
Brewery moved outside London Original site: 209 Blenheim Grove SE15 4QL (Southwark) Final site in London: 13 Deptford Industrial Estate, Blackhorse Road SE8 5HY (Lewisham) brickbrewery.co.uk First sold beer: November 2013 (at original site) Brewing ceased in London: November 2023
Former head brewer Pete Vick (left) and founder Ian Stewart of Brick.
Like countless others on the contemporary brewing scene, the epiphany for York-born Ian Stewart was a bottle from the Kernel. He began developing his own beers in a Peckham shed, and, working alongside his wife Sally, opened commercially in an arch under Peckham Rye station while still holding down his marketing job.
Starting with a Chinese-built 9 hl brewhouse, Brick extended fermentation capacity several times and expanded into a neighbouring arch in 2015, with the brewery becoming a full-time concern, but still struggled with space. By the end of 2017, production had moved to a much bigger site in two units on a Deptford industrial estate beside the route of the old Grand Surrey Canal.
Head brewer Pete Vick moved on in 2020 and was replaced by Tom Dixon, formerly at Stewart Brewing in Edinburgh. He and his team worked on a 32 hl brewhouse from Willis European, also Chinese-built, with plenty of fermenters, a souring tank, barrel ageing facilities, keg filler and canning line. The Deptford site was only occasionally open to the public for special events; the regular taproom remained in the original Peckham arch.
In the face of rising rents and energy costs, the cost-of-living crisis and other challenges, the company went into administration on 2 June 2023. Its brands and assets were subsequently bought out by private equity company the BREAL group, which a few weeks previously had acquired the equally troubled (and rather older established) Black Sheep brewery in Masham, North Yorkshire. BREAL subsequently acquired another London brewery, BBNo.
Initially Brick announced that production would continue as normal under the leadership of Ian and Sally, but brewing ceased by November and the equipment was removed to Black Sheep, with the Deptford site subsequently vacated. Both Brick and BBNo brands were then produced under an ex-Brick brewer at BBNo, but news reports on 12 February 2024 confirmed that BBNo was also slated to close ‘within three weeks’, with both brands moved to a new brewhouse created for them in Masham. In future some brewing may also take place at Purity in Alcester, Warwickshire, which BREAL bought in January 2024.
In late Febuary 2024, BREAL renamed itself the Keystone Brewing Group.
The Peckham taproom remains open for the time being.
Beers were in keg and can, with some cask mainly for local outlets.
Hoxton: 397 Geffrye Street E2 8HZ (Hackney) First sold beer: December 2018
Islington: Torrens Street EC1V 1NG (Islington) First sold beer: October 2014 Brewing suspended: September 2022, unlikely to resume until at least 2024
Entrepreneur Kris Gumbrell’s Convivial pub chain ventured into brewing from 2011 with the Botanist on Kew Green (3 Kew Green, Richmond TW9 3AA, first sold beer September 2011) and later the Lamb in Chiswick (9 Barley Mow Passage W4 4PH, first sold beer September 2012). By December 2013, Convivial had been sold to M&B and brewing ceased at both sites, but inspired by the experience, Kris went on to conceive an entire chain of brewpubs, Brewhouse and Kitchen, in partnership with former Mitchells & Butlers executive Simon Bunn.
The first Brewhouse and Kitchen opened around the corner from Angel station in October 2014, with South African-born Pete Hughes, now the head brewer for the whole group, in charge of the former Botanist 4 hl brewhouse. The facilities here were later upgraded to a new 5 hl copper kit, with the original donated to Ignition brewery.
A second branch, with the 8 hl kit from the Lamb, opened in a former tramshed just off Highbury Corner the following year. After some years, a third London branch opened next door to Hoxton station in July 2018, in a former cocktail bar occupying three arches of the London Overground viaduct, one containing a new 4 hl copper brewhouse which wasn’t active until a few months later.
There are also now around 20 branches in other parts of the UK. All branches brew beer for cask, keg and minicask, mainly sold on their own sites under names with local themes, though there’s some sharing of supplies between sites. The Highbury branch additionally dispenses beer direct from conditioning tanks. The exact recipes vary from site to site, within a common template.
The original Islington branch closed temporarily in September 2022 as its site was to undergo a major refurbishment. Brewing should eventually resume but no reopening date has been announced and, as the building is being almost completely demolished and rebuilt, it’s likely to be at least two years.
Closed brewery Original site: 66 Southwark Bridge Road SE1 0AS (Southwark, since closed) Second site, later pilot brewery: 79 Enid Street SE16 3RA (Southwark, since closed) Barrel Store: 1 Bellenden Business Park SE15 4RF (Southwark, since closed) Production brewery: South Warehouse, Greenwich Beach, Morden Wharf Road SE10 0PA (Greenwich) bbno.co First sold beer (at original site): 12 December 2012 Brewing ceased: Early March 2024
Brew by Numbers, or BBNo as it was later branded, was started on a very small scale by Tom Hutchings and Dave Seymour. They met each other while rock climbing in southeast Asia and became close friends with both the Kernel and Partizan in the early days of those breweries. Homebrewing began in the basement of a house a friend was renovating near Bankside, using a 50 l kit. The duo kept track of their experiments with a numbering system, the origin of the name and the later beer designations. Following positive feedback, in summer 2012, they upgraded the equipment and were selling bottled beer by the end of the year.
BBNo became the third Bermondsey brewery in May 2013 when it moved into an arch at 79 Enid Street, around the corner from the original Kernel site, with an 18 hl kit hand-built from recycled stainless steel vessels. The expansion was partly thanks to investment from BrewDog, which later sold its shares back at cost price.
The brewery then expanded several times, leasing a second arch a few doors northwest, with a new bottling line, cold store, barrel vault and taproom in action by summer 2015. Various improvements including the addition of a canning line increased production to around 5,000 hl a year in 2019, by which time Dave had stepped back from day-to-day involvement, leaving Tom to lead the project.
Numbers-on-Thames: BBNo’s Morden Wharf site at Greenwich Beach SE10.
A second arch-based site in Peckham opened in January 2019. Known as the Barrel Store, this was primarily a barrel-ageing facility and satellite taproom, though it was equipped later in the year with a small brewhouse used intermittently to make small runs for ageing. The site was closed in autumn 2021.
Following a crowdfunding campaign, BBNo undertook a major expansion in 2021 to a much bigger site beside the river Thames, a former glucose refinery dating from late Victorian times in the redevelopment area of Morden Wharf on the west side of the Greenwich peninsula. This was open to the public from September when it hosted a riverside beer festival, and beer from the 50 hl brewhouse was flowing by November.
BBNo’s Morden Wharf brewhouse, London SE10.
BBNo retained its presence in Bermondsey but vacated Arch 75 in January 2022, continuing with a taproom at Arch 79. This was equipped with a 1.5 hl pilot brewery previously belonging to Josh Mellor (see Mellor’s), and was used to brew specials for the taproom.
Due to licensing problems, brewing at the Bermondsey arch ceased and the kit was removed in March 2023. The arch continued for a short time as a taproom but closed completely in early May 2023, with the brewery announcing it was concentrating activities in Greenwich ‘due to the combined COVID-19 debt burden and the recent cost of living crisis’, while undergoing financial restructuring and seeking new investors.
BBNo entered administration as a going concern in June, originally in the expectation that it would be bought out by a group of friendly investors. But on 24 August private equity company the BREAL group confirmed it had acquired the company, adding a third brewery to its portfolio after its well-publicised acquistion of Black Sheep in Masham, North Yorkshire, and Brick in London. BREAL closed the latter late in 2023, relocating its kit to Masham.
Initially the BBNo taproom remained open and no staff were laid off. But on 5 November the taproom closed at short notice ‘for the winter season’. Following much speculation, a news report on 12 February 2024 confirmed that though brewing continued for a short time under an ex-Brick brewer to build up a stock of both BBNo and Brick beers, the kit was to be moved ‘in three weeks time’ to Masham where a new brewhouse is being created for both brands, with the Greenwich site subsequently vacated. In future some brewing may also take place at Purity in Alcester, Warwickshire, which BREAL bought in January 2024.
In late February 2024, BREAL renamed itself the Keystone Brewing Group.
Beers were almost entirely in keg and can and follow a numbering system: originally there was a two digit number indicating a broad style and another designating a specific recipe, though today only the first number is used. They were in a wide range of styles with varying recipes: by April 2021, BBNo had produced around 400 different beers. It’s unclear which recipes Breal will retain.
Brewpub, no longer brewing 63 Lambs Conduit Street WC1N 3NB First sold beer: August 2014 Ceased brewing: October 2015
Bloomsbury began as a small brewery in the cellar of the Perseverance pub, an ex-Charrington free house at the above address, installed by then-owner Pete Millington. It brewed only occasionally with beers intermittently available in the pub, and despite plans to ramp up production, operations ceased when the business was closed and sold in October 2015. The pub subsequently enjoyed mixed fortunes, reopening and closing again, until it was bought and reopened by Market Taverns, owners of the famous Market Porter in Borough Market and several other London pubs, in July 2018, though brewing hasn’t been restored. A Bloomsbury brand has subsequently appeared on unrelated beers commissioned for the Bloomsbury Leisure/Pivovar group of pubs and bars.
Big Smoke Brew Co, Kingston upon Thames (London) KT6
Brewpub, now brewing outside London 87 Maple Road, Surbiton KT6 4AW (Kingston upon Thames) wbigsmokebrew.co.uk First sold beer: September 2014 Ceased brewing in London: March 2019
Ash Zobell and the aptly named Pete Brew reinvented Twickenham’s Sussex Arms as a top class beer outlet in 2010. Pete and the pub’s assistant manager Nick Blake brewed experimentally on a non-commercial basis in the back garden.
In 2014, the trio spearheaded a similar makeover of the Antelope in Surbiton, this time as a brewpub, for the same pub group as the Sussex Arms. The brewery, known as Big Smoke and overseen by Nick and Pete, operated from a converted stable block at the rear of the pub, with an 8 hl brewhouse from Pallet Brew in Horwich, expanding capacity significantly with additional fermenters in May 2016.
A wide range of beers was sold in cask, keg and bottle conditioned, with all production unfiltered, unfined and vegan-friendly. Though the brewery was primarily started to supply the pub and others in the group, the beers increasingly found their way elsewhere.
Pete and Ash left to set up the Black Dog pub in Brentford, opened in 2018 and with its own brewery, Fearless Nomad, from January 2020. Both pub and brewery are completely independent of Big Smoke.
Demand for Big Smoke beers continued to rise, necessitating some contract brewing elsewhere, and in March 2019 the brewery, still with Nick as head brewer, relocated to a much bigger site on an industrial estate in Esher, Surrey, with a new Gravity Systems 33 hl brewhouse and a canning line. Although only 6 km from the original location, this is outside Greater London, so Big Smoke has technically left the Big Smoke and therefore my area of coverage. Its previous home has been converted into an “indoor outdoor” patio for the Antelope, and the beers are still stocked here and in other pubs in the group.
Brewery 18 Manford Industrial Estate, Manor Road, Erith DA8 2AJ (Bexley) bexleybrewery.co.uk First sold beer: 25 September 2014
This operation on an industrial estate beside the river Thames, by Crayford Marshes on the edge of Erith, is the first standalone brewery in Bexley since Reffell’s was closed by Courage in 1956. It’s a family business run by former IT manager Cliff Murphy, his wife Jane, once a teacher, and their son Cameron. The local focus is evident from its mascot, a ring-necked parakeet: there are now feral colonies of these exotic birds all over London but they were first noted in Bexley.
Bexley co-founder Cliff Murphy (left) with brewer Tom.
The 10 hl brewhouse was bought new from Brewing Vessels in Stockport. Fermentation capacity has been increased though there’s room for more: the unit is currently much less cramped than many London breweries, and was the smallest suitable and affordable space the founders could find.
The industrial location isn’t particularly favourable to a taproom, especially as the estate gates close at night, though the brewery has long held occasional open days and in 2021 began opening regularly on Saturday daytimes. The Murphys had always planned a micropub as part of the business and in April 2018 opened one in Barnehurst, the Bird and Barrel (100 Barnehurst Road, Barnehurst DA7 6HG), which stocks a comprehensive range of the beers.
Beers are in cask – still accounting for 80% of sales – with some keg and bottle-conditioned. All bittering hops are from Hukins in Tenterden, Kent, though some aroma hops are imported.
For some years Bexley was host to a fermenter belonging to Brixton brewery Clarkshaws but this arrangement had ceased by 2021.
Brewery 36 Jaggard Way (taproom 44 Jaggard Way) SW12 8SG (Wandsworth) bellevillebrewing.co.uk First sold beer: 30 March 2013
Musician Adrian Thomas was prompted to become a homebrewer when he organised a beer festival as a fundraiser for his son’s school, Belleville Primary. He took things a stage further by getting together with nine other Belleville dads to set up a brewery on a small industrial estate on the other side of the railway from Wandsworth Common station.
Belleville’s taproom.
It began with an 8 hl kit, selling mainly through local outlets. After successfully fighting off a misjudged legal threat from AB InBev in 2013, alleging infringement of its trademark for sweetened lambic Belle Vue, it expanded in the summer of 2016 with a new 24 hl brewhouse from American Beer Equipment in Lincoln, Nebraska, alongside a canning line. A taproom was opened a few doors down in January 2017.
Beers are mainly in keg and can, with a few casks for selected outlets. The US slant is acknowledged in the longstanding strapline “Beers from over there, brewed over here”.
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