Promoting an international beer culture that recognises and celebrates beers of quality, distinctiveness and local character, brewed with care and passion.
Best beer and travel writing award 2015, 2011 -- British Guild of Beer Writers Awards
Accredited Beer Sommelier
Writer of "Probably the best book about beer in London" - Londonist
"A necessity if you're a beer geek travelling to London town" - Beer Advocate
"A joy to read" - Roger Protz
"Very authoritative" - Tim Webb.
"One of the top beer writers in the UK" - Mark Dredge.
"A beer guru" - Popbitch.
By the end of 2002, there were 16 commercial breweries operating in London, including seven brewpubs. 2 were part of multinational groups (M). These breweries were:
Anheuser-Busch UK (Stag, Anheuser-Busch M) SW14, Richmond upon Thames
By the end of 2003, there were 14 commercial breweries operating in London, including five brewpubs. 2 were part of multinational groups (M). These breweries were:
Anheuser-Busch UK (Stag, Anheuser-Busch M) SW14, Richmond upon Thames
Closed brewpub 27 Endell Street WC2H 9BA (Camden) First sold beer: December 2001 Ceased brewing: May 2003
Referred to in some sources as Brasserie Française, this was one of several early 21st century restaurant-brewpub concepts in London. It was based around a French revolutionary theme: the sans-culottes (literally ‘without breeches’, referencing the silk knee breeches favoured by the rich) were the lower class people of France in the late 18th century, many of whom became the most militant supporters of the revolution.
Despite the suspect theme, the owners took some care over the authenticity of the food and drink. Two French brewers, Gilles Petit and Frédéric Cesmé, previously at a Cherbourg brewpub, used a 6 hl kit sourced from Brazil to make unfiltered lagers and ales inspired by traditional northern and eastern French brewing, served alongside Alsatian-style food like flammekueche.
The iniative was not a success and closed after 18 months, with the kit sold to White Horse brewery in Oxfordshire. The unit has subsequently housed numerous different bar and restaurant ventures, most recently Circus.
Brewery moved from London, since closed 8 Pitfield Street N1 6HA (Hackney, original site) 4 Hoxton Square N1 6NU (Hackney, second site) Mill Race Lane, Stourbridge Industrial Estate, Stourbridge DY8 1JN (Dudley, outside London, third site) 14 Pitfield Street N1 6EY (Hackney, fourth site) The Nurseries, Nayland Road, Great Horkesley, Colchester CO4 5HA (Essex, outside London, fifth site) Unit Z New House Farm, Little Laver Road, Moreton, Ongar CM5 0JE (Essex, outside London, final site) First sold beer: 1981 (as Pitfield Brewery) Ceased brewing in London: December 1989 Ceased brewing: 1991 (as Pitfield’s Premier Brewing Co in Stourbridge) Brewing revived in London: August 1996 (as Pitfield’s Brewery, Pitfield’s Organic Brewery from 2000) Ceased brewing in London again: January 2006 Ceased brewing again: by August 2018 (as Dominion Brewery Co in Ongar)
Pitfield was one of the most important and influential London breweries of the modern era. Although not the first London microbrewery, it was one of the first to enjoy sustained success, with a history covering 37 years, albeit with a few lapses and relocations. It was the first microbrewery to win Champion Beer of Britain, seeded numerous other breweries including one of the most significant precursors of the current ‘craft’ scene and became the UK’s first certified organic brewery.
Southeast Londoner Rob Jones, a former clerk at the Greater London Council, began full mash homebrewing in the late 1970s when such pursuits were much rarer and less accessible than today. Some of his supplies were from the Two Brewers, a pioneering homebrew and specialist beer shop run by Brian and Liz Brett in Forest Hill (97 Dartmouth Road SE23 3HT, now a convenience store). In 1979, Brian and Liz opened a second branch at 8 Pitfield Street in Hoxton, then a neighbourhood still very much part of the old working class East End and decades away from hipster gentrification. Rob successfully applied for the post of manager, and a couple of years later persuaded the Bretts, who were impressed with the quality of his homebrew, to add an additional point of interest by financing a small brewhouse in the cellar.
This was the original Pitfield Brewery, with beers from a 6.5 hl kit made in Burton upon Trent initially sold mainly through the shop in polypins and the occasional bottle. Some accounts suggest that brewing also took place in Forest Hill initially, but Rob says this is mistaken as the only brewing facilities were in Hoxton. There were only 14 other breweries in London at the time, including a small handful of micros and brewpubs, though some of these, in contrast to Pitfield, brewed with malt extract rather than grains. The first brew was Pitfield Bitter (3.7%), followed by a stronger bitter called Hoxton Heavy (4.8%), and the local names helped build a small trade with the then-handful of London free houses and for events.
A year later, the Bretts decided to sell the shop, so Rob teamed with an old schoolfriend and fellow beer lover, Martin Kemp, and another friend, journalist Roy Dallison, raising £25,000 to buy it out and renaming it the Pitfield Beer Shop. Both shop and brewery flourished, and in 1986 the latter moved to a bigger site in a workshop behind Silverman’s Timber Yard, around the corner in Hoxton Square. The neighbourhood was once a centre of furniture making and timber yards were common locally, but this particular unit was previously used by a fetish clothing maker and needed extensive cleaning and refurbishment.
Much of the 20 hl brewhouse was recycled from the defunct Swannell’s brewery in Kings Langley, where the late Oliver Hughes, who became a major figure in Irish craft brewing as the founder of the Porterhouse, once worked as an assistant brewer. But it was customised to the team’s own designs, including an unusual fermentation system of enclosed stacked tanks, with yeast rising up from the lower tanks into the upper ones. “We think it’s unique,” Martin told Brian Glover in a contemporary issue of What’s Brewing, “a cross between the Burton Union system and Yorkshire Squares”. Yeast was sourced from Charles Wells in Bedford and, as there were no propogation facilities, it had to be renewed every few weeks, fetched by train in sterilised buckets. Staff numbers expanded with the recruitment of Andy Skene, an expatriate Canadian homebrewer and regular cusomter of the shop who remained involved throughout subsequent decades.
Hoxton Square was where Rob and Martin created an unusual 5% dark beer originally known as Pitfield Winter Special but soon renamed Dark Star after a song by the Grateful Dead. In 1986, this beer earned Pitfield CAMRA’s Best New Brewery award and in 1987 it was named supreme champion in the annual Champion Beer of Britain competition, the first winner from a microbrewery rather than an established family independent. Demand rocketed, with Pitfield beers shipped across the country. The facilities were also in demand from what we’d now call ‘cuckoo’ brewers, including the Flag cooperative led by beer educator Keith Thomas, soon to set up Brewlab at the University of Sunderland. The brewery briefly ran the Hop Pole pub, a former Truman’s pub with a distinctive tiled facade a few doors away.
As often with small and underresourced breweries, success was a double-edged sword, overstretching capacity and forcing Rob and Martin to contract out some production, with mixed results. Quality was also compromised by persistent Lactobacillus infections. In 1987, some brewing took place at historic West Midlands brewpub the Old Swan (Ma Pardoe’s) at Netherton, Dudley due to problems in London. In 1989, the brewery was given notice to vacate its Hoxton Square site due to redevelopment. At this point, a West Midlands microbrewery, Premier Ales, approached Pitfield with the suggestion of a merger, and Rob and Martin were divided on how to respond. The argument broke the partnership, with Rob taking the brewing business out of London, and Martin taking exclusive ownership of the Pitfield Beer Shop.
Premier Midland Ales was founded in 1988 by brothers Eddie and Graeme Perks, who also owned a chain of pubs and a wholesale drinks business. It was reconfigured in 1990 as Pitfield’s Premier Brewing Co, producing both Pitfield’s and Premier brands in Stourbridge with the help of Rob, who moved to the area. Martin’s doubts about the arrangement proved well-founded as in 1991 the company went into liquidation, leaving Rob without a job or a brewery. Premier was bought out by India’s United Breweries, of Kingfisher fame (since bought out by Heineken), which was dabbling in UK microbrewing at the time. It was closed in 1994.
Rob returned to Brighton, where he’d lived before the merger, and in 1994 co-founded a brewery in the cellar of the Evening Star pub with licensee Peter Skinner. Originally this was known as Skinner’s but was soon renamed to Dark Star, a brand Rob still owned. Dark Star grew from a bespoke 2.5 hl kit at the pub, designed by Rob with vessels that fitted inside each other to make best use of the space, first to a standalone facility at Ansty, West Sussex, in 2001, then to a 72 hl brewhouse at Partridge Green. It continued to brew a version of the original Dark Star beer, now known as Original, but became best known for Hophead (3.8%), a cask pale ale robustly hopped with US Cascade which influenced many contemporary UK craft brewers.
Rob left Dark Star in 2014, five years before it was bought by Fuller’s, now part of Asahi — as a result of which Hophead is became a London beer, brewed in Chiswick. Sadly Dark Star ceased as a separate brewery in December 2022 when Asahi closed it, relocating production of the remaining brands to London too, but to Meantime.
Throughout his period at Dark Star, Rob designed and installed numerous breweries for others, among them Iceni, Lidstones (now Wensleydale), O’Hanlon’s (formerly a London brewery, now Hanlon’s), Swan on the Green, Sweet William (the predecessor of Brodie’s) and Triple fff. He now owns and operates a former Dark Star pub, the Duke of Wellington in Shoreham.
Back in Hoxton, Martin Kemp moved the Pitfield Beer Shop a few doors to 14 Pitfield Street in 1994, also taking on the neighbouring unit. In 1996, with the brand once again free following the demise of Premier, he decided to revive the Pitfield brewing tradition, and asked Rob to install a bespoke 3 hl kit next door. As well as resurrecting old Pitfield brands, including a version of Dark Star under the name Black Eagle, a nod to the nearby former Truman brewery in Brick Lane, it increasingly experimented with organic ingredients in beers like golden ale Eco Warrior (4.5%). In 2000 it became the UK’s first certified organic brewery, though also brewed some non-organic beers reviving 19th century London recipes, another pioneering and influential practice. In 2002 a new 8 hl brewhouse was installed, with the old kit sold to a South American brewery.
Pitfield’s left London for the second, and it appears final, time in 2006, due to rapidly rising rents in what was now a desirable neighbourhood, ironically just a couple of years before an unexpected brewing revival began to sweep the city. Beers were briefly cuckoo-brewed at Custom Brews in Sussex but the brewery soon resumed its own production, intially at Great Horkseley near Colchester, Essex, before moving in 2007 to a farm in Ongar. In 2012, Martin retired to run a small pub in Newmarket, selling the business to Andy Skene who continued to brew Pitfield’s beers on the site alongside his own Dominion brands. This finally ceased in 2018, though the beers are still sometimes cuckoo-brewed at Red Fox in Coggeshall.
Closed brewpub 1 Bishopsgate EC2N 3AQ (City of London) First sold beer: November 1999 Ceased brewing: by end 2005
One of a smattering of upmarket London venues that experimented with brewing in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this was a substantial pan-Asian restaurant and brewpub in a Grade II-listed former branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland in the heart of the City. Set up with the help of original head brewer Peter Frost, previously at Freedom and later at Meantime, it had a 10 hl plant supplied by Caspary, Germany. At its peak it offered four keg beers, in styles optimised to match the food like pils and wheat beer. The building has since returned to banking use and is now an HSBC.
By the end of 2004, there were 14 commercial breweries operating in London, including four brewpubs. 2 were part of multinational groups (M). These breweries were:
Anheuser-Busch UK (Stag, Anheuser-Busch M) SW14, Richmond upon Thames
The great Mild Ale comeback continues! I’m co-curating the inaugural weekend-long Born To Be Mild London mild ale festival on 27-29 May 2022 at Sambrook’s Brewery Tap on the historic Ram brewery site in Wandsworth.
The festival will feature 18 different milds from London breweries and elsewhere, including Sambrook’s own new mild and a second brew of the London X Ale 1880s-style pale mild I created with London beer icon John Hatch at his legendary Ram nanobrewery for the launch of my updated London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars guidebook.
Other beers will include John’s own dark mild, many of the growing range from other London brewers including Boxcar (who deserve much credit for rejuvenating the style), and several from outside London including the legendary and hard-to-find heritage mild Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby from the Black Country.
Beerblefish Brewing, Blackhorse Lane, Waltham Forest, London
Boxcar Brewery, Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets, London
Gadd’s The Ramsgate Brewery, Ramsgate, Thanet, Kent
Green Duck Beer Co, Stourbridge, Dudley, West Midlands
Harvey’s Brewery, Lewes, East Sussex
Partizan Brewing Bermondsey, Southwark, London
The Ram Brewery at Sambrook’s Brewery, Wandsworth, London
Sambrook’s Brewery, Wandsworth, London
Sarah Hughes Brewery, Sedgley, Dudley, West Midlands
Southwark Brewing, Bermondsey, Southwark, London
Spartan Brewery, Bermondsey, Southwark, London
Tap East, Stratford City, Newham, London
Twickenham Fine Ales, Twickenham, Richmond upon Thames, London
Twisted Barrel Brewery, Coventry, West Midlands
Note that not all beers will be available on every day of the festival. We have limited supplies of most beers and when they’re gone, they’re gone.
We’ll also be holding tutored tastings during Saturday and Sunday, informal meet the brewer sessions, book signings, a Sunday DJ and more.
Timed to coincide with CAMRA’s long-running Mild May promotion, the festival takes place amid growing interest in this much misunderstood historic beer style.
The expansive Sambrook’s tap room on the historic Ram Brewery site in Wandsworth, with its brewing history stretching back to the 1530s, is the perfect venue, with plenty of outdoor space if the weather is fine and gourmet pizzas from Crust Bros available throughout the weekend.
Tickets are £6, bookable in advance, and include a half-pint of Sambrook’s beer plus a half-pint of guest beer. Other beers are available on a pay-as-you-go basis.
I can’t wait to start tasting my way through what will surely be the best lineup of milds ever assembled in London.
London’s brewery count rose from 131 at the end of 2020 to 136 at the end of 2021, with at least three likely to start operations in the early months of 2022. While six breweries closed, suspended production or moved out of London during 2021, another 11 either commenced or resumed selling their own beer.
Those are the headline figures from the just-completed update of my London brewery pages, where I’ve been tracking the numbers in the capital back to 1971.
Following the boom of the 2010s, when London leapt from accommodating 14 commercial breweries in 2010 to over 100 by 2017, the year-on-year figures have been creeping up much more slowly recently: 125 at the end of 2018, 129 by 2019, 131 by 2020 and 136 today. But given the challenges of the past two years, it’s particularly remarkable that they are still increasing.
The resilience of London brewing supports plentiful anecdotal evidence that customers are increasingly favouring local independent producers and suppliers. That trend was already evident before the Covid-19 pandemic and seems to have strengthened further. While researching the latest edition of London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars, numerous brewers and retailers told me how important local custom had become to their business during the lockdowns.
But with recent developments showing the pandemic is far from over, continued erratic leadership from government and the failure of the recently announced support package to include direct support for breweries once again, the situation remains precarious. Breweries are now better prepared to adapt to lockdown conditions if necessary, but many are already in a weakened financial state.
Though a few of the newcomers are working at an ambitious scale, a growing number of start-ups in recent years have been much smaller operations. These are often part-time businesses working from home in very small batches – typically 100 litres but in one case only 25 – and selling through a small number of local outlets. These are all fully licensed and accredited commercial breweries and some of them are producing outstanding beer, but their contribution to total beer volumes in London is minimal.
Given these factors, I’m not going to make any predictions about what the figures might look like this time next year. But one thing is certain – the vibrancy of London’s brewing scene depends on the support of drinkers, so please continue to support your local independent breweries, pubs, bars and bottle shops during these difficult times.
An earlier version of this post was circulated to my Patreon supporters on 22 December. To sign up for advanced news of London brewery changes, updates to London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars, discounts on tours and events and more, visit patreon.com/ldnbestbeer.
12 openings or revivals, 12 suspensions or closures, net change 0.
By the end of December 2021, there were 132 commercial breweries operating in London, including 29 brewpubs. 14 were parts of multinationals (M). Those breweries were:
E5 Poplar Bakehouse E14, Tower Hamlets, brewpub, REVIVED! briefly revived kvass brewing this year, relocating the activity from the Hackney site, but soon suspended it again.
Mellor’s Brewing Co SE8, Lewisham NEW! was also active but moved to cuckoo brewing later before the end of the year.
Closed this year
Barnet Brewery (Black Horse) EN5, Barnet, brewpub no longer brewing
CTZN Brew SW14, Richmond upon Thames, formerly Kew Brewery
Beer firm, brewpub in development 57 Beckenham Road, Beckenham BR3 4PR (Bromley) threehoundsbeerco.com Active since: 2016
Matt Walden, formerly at Brockley, began cuckoo brewing for sale on a market stall in 2016, and continued to offer own-brewed brands at his bottle shop and bar in Clock House, Beckenham, opened in October 2017. He currently uses the facilities at By the Horns and Dogs Grandad, but plans to install his own 1 hl brewhouse, perhaps during 2022.
Beers, also sold through other outlets, are in keg and occasional can, with plans for cask once the brewhouse is up and running.
This pioneering new book explains what makes cask beer so special, and explores its past, present and future. Order now from CAMRA Books. Read more here.
London’s Best Beer
The fully updated 3rd edition of my essential award-winning guide to London’s vibrant beer scene is available now from CAMRA Books. Read more here.