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.
Beer is in keg and can, with some cask.
Updated 15 December 2021.
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