“Monsieur le ministre, they are selling a drink on the boulevards of Paris called Coca-Cola … This is not simply an economic question, nor is it even simply a question of public health - it’s also a political question. We want to know if, for political reasons, you're going to permit them to poison Frenchmen and Frenchwomen.”

We’re all poisoned now. American cultural influence, and the response to it, has been Europe’s defining cultural theme of the years since the fifties, eliciting responses running the gamut from perpetual, sometimes petulant resistance to craven, New York Yankees-cap-wearing submission. 

And while Coca-Cola is the inevitable star-spangled standard bearer for this era (Germans loved it, while French consumers remain less keen than most) there are many other examples - including, of course, craft beer.

Last year, through a combination of luck, obligation and planning, I managed to visit a random selection of bars and breweries in some of Western Europe’s major and major-ish cities (Copenhagen, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, and Glasgow). In and of themselves, they’re not particularly interesting; as a set, they arguably illustrate some different ways in which craft beer has landed in related but different cultures. Judge for yourself:  

Copenhagen, ABEN

Copenhagen might be famous for ‘New Nordic Cuisine’, whatever that means, but on the street global street-food dominates. Even the city’s famous hotdogs are descended from American and Bavarian antecedents. There's a lot of variety here in food/drink options, and quality is reasonably high. Copenhageners like nice things.

American things, too. At ABEN, the city’s newest brewery-cum-bar, there are numerous IPAs, most of them hewing very close to the American originals. Danes appear keen on American craft beer as it is, unadulterated, authentic - perhaps more so than other Europeans, excepting their fellow Scandinavians. Where Danish flavour comes through at ABEN is in the architecture: it’s a converted slaughterhouse that feels more like a nightclub - albeit one with an open kitchen at the back. It’s clean, bright, very Danish; a nice place for a drink, particularly if you like IPAs.

Paris, Bofinger 

Bofinger is the classic tourist trap, a beautiful monument to a city that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s Paris as it looks in Disney films. It’s also the sort of place where you have to spend ten minutes engaged in tense negotiations to move yourself off the worst table, and where a simple request for a beer results in being sneakily upsold - from an industrial Pils, quite appealing on a ludicrously humid Paris day, to the same brewery’s attempt at a New England IPA (€7.50 for 33cl). 

But! The beer was very cold, and actually quite interesting. It was Tigre Bock IPA, made by Kronenbourg, described simply as “Premium” on the menu and as cloudy as IPAs are these days. It was bitter, hopped with Strisselspalt, the Alsace classic, with its Earl Gray spiciness. American but also Alsatian, and served in a winningly dumpy little glass mug.    

Sitges, La Sitgetana

In August, I melted in Sitges. For reasons known only to myself, I decided to go for a long walk along the unshaded beachfront and into town on a blazing hot day. When I arrived at La Sitgetana, a brewery based on a trading estate some distance from the beach, I had become half-man, half-puddle. “Why didn’t you take the bus?” asked the lady behind the bar. “It’s free.”

If La Sitgetana borrows from American beer culture, it’s from an earlier era, when variety was the mantra. A more confident era. Here there’s pale ale, IPA and lager, yes, but also porter, brown ale and weissbier.  

I chose Vinyet, a 6.2 percent ABV Porter. The server took a lot of time over the beer - I was the only customer, so not an issue, but also very thirsty, so an issue - to ensure the perfect ratio of head to beer, and that the sides of the glass were wiped clean of foam. Maybe it was the combination of anticipation and thirst, but the beer was marvellous: dry, roasty, perfect for the heat. This level of quality reflects Spanish - or Catalan - norms: people expect stuff to be good, and the people making it care about it being good, so it is good. 

Berlin, Brewdog

Stone’s arrival and then retreat from Berlin is symbolic of how American craft breweries have fared in Europe. What is equally significant is how Brewdog has jumped straight into their shoes, buying the bar as part of a continent-wide expansion. For many European consumers, Brewdog is the key player in craft beer.

What that means in Berlin is a bar that reeks of America - or a certain idea of America, from the Duckpin bowling (€12.50 an hour) to the food, which takes in everything from the Patriot Burger to what are optimistically described as ‘World Famous Wings’. This is America as seen from Ellon. The beers reflect that, although unlike Stone, Brewdog are making plenty of pale lagers here to cater to local taste. They’re nothing if not business-savvy. Capitalists not fundamentalists, whatever the rhetoric.

Glasgow, Koelschip Yard

Glasgow likes to think of itself as a city apart, a place of robust working-class norms, and to some extent that’s true. Like Dublin, it has an iconic local brand, Tennent’s, which attracts some of the same fetishisation that surrounds Guinness, but which arguably tells us more about the city. It’s simple, unpretentious, it’s lager, it’s 100 percent Scottish. 

This archetypal City of Empire frequently defines itself against southern England, an attitude that has often embraced quirky Americophilia. But craft beer was slow to take off here - a reaction to Brewdog, perhaps, a company which could have been designed to get up Glaswegian noses - and it’s the beers of continental Europe that appear to have more traction. At Koelschip Yard, a Southside pub which - despite the name - is classically Glasgow (cosy, but you can’t see in), I had Czech Yerself, made by Glasgow’s Overtone, served - so the menu says- on a sidepull tap. 

In the corner, an American was chatting to his Scottish pal about Alsace.

Brussels, À La Mort Subite

One of life’s great joys is strong beer at lunchtime, and the best place to experience it is Belgium. I’m sure À La Mort Subite - a magnet for tourists, if not quite in the Bofinger class - is regarded with disdain by some, but I love the long, slim interior, especially the wooden seating, which stretches along the entirety of one side of the room, and the somewhat disdainful service.

At À La Mort Subite, the only notion that modern America exists is in the accents of some of the drinkers and the Duvel Tripel Hop on the bottle menu. It’s pre-craft - and more than likely post-craft, too, given the quality of the Rochefort 10 I had. The best beer I’d had all year, I remember telling myself on the way out - but strong beer at lunchtime will do that to you.

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Perfect Pubs

When it comes to pubs, the news is invariably bad. They’ve been fighting a forlorn rearguard action for decades, battered by governmental indifference - at best - and preyed upon by opportunistic developers. Dozens have closed: a 2017 report by Lewisham Council, for example, discovered that half of the borough’s pubs were no more, most of them having given up the ghost in the previous 20 years. 

I can easily compile a list of pubs that live on only in memory. The Kentish backstreet boozer decorated with pictures of dogs playing pool, and with just three beers on the bar, all multinational lagers; the barn-like Birmingham student pub where a friend once indignantly protested his ejection for dancing on the table with the words, “You can’t bar me, I’m already barred” (he’d been kicked out two weeks earlier for the same infraction); the South London hole-in-the-wall where I drank Brooklyn Lager, at the time - about 20 years’ ago - a tantalising taste of the beer-world to come. 

Given the current economic pressures, it’s worse now than ever. But pubs closing is not a phenomenon just of the last 20 years; they’ve been shutting since the Victorian era, as Mark Girouard pointed out in his superb 1975 book Victorian Pubs. “London is full of dead pubs,” he wrote back then; “In Oxford Street between St Giles Circus and Marble Arch there were 19 pubs in 1890; today there is only one.” (That pub, then the Tottenham and now The Flying Horse, is still there, btw: it’s worth a visit for its classic 1890s interior).

You cannot discuss the decline of pubs without acknowledging the huge changes in society that have taken place, and the new and varied options open to ordinary people that didn’t exist in 1890 or even 1980 (the pre-cheeky Nando’s era, if you like). So much of the hand-wringing over pubs is really disgruntlement at how society has changed - which is all very well, depending on your perspective, but it doesn’t get us very far.

But amid this gloom something interesting has happened: I think London’s best pubs are as good as I’ve ever seen them. Covid-19 has done a lot of funny things to London hospitality - not least Heineken’s increasingly iron free-trade grip, a grip currently manifesting itself in a mini-Murphy’s revival - but one is the impact it’s had on our attitude to pubs. We missed them, and, as a recent Evening Standard list demonstrates, we’re keener than ever to celebrate the best ones - where hospitality, warmth, a sense of historical continuity and an unfussy approach to good drinks are the norm. After Covid, drinkers understand better this is what makes a good pub.

Even service, that persistent bane of the London pub-goer, appears to have improved in our best pubs. Martin Taylor, pub-goer extraordinaire, wrote in December that “Pubbing in London is brilliant, and I can honestly say both the beer quality and the friendliness have got better since Covid.” 

I was intrigued so I asked him to elaborate. “Historically, I’d always said that beer quality in most of London - the West, particularly - was often below Good Beer Guide standards,” he told me. “The service was always rushed. 

“Covid saw City pubs re-open with less midweek trade but a lot more time to chat to a lone drinker, and that cheeriness has continued even as trade has crept back; [you] rarely get a surly or disinterested young staff member anywhere. The Sutton Arms in Clerkenwell, the Ship in Tower Hill and of course the Shirker's Rest [in New Cross] [have been] particularly cheery.”

It’s telling that perhaps the biggest opening of this winter was a pub, The Devonshire in Soho (alright, there’s a restaurant upstairs, but it’s still essentially a pub). When was the last time a pub outshone London’s diverse and diverting restaurant scene like this? 1898, probably - which may also be the last time a pub approached the business of promotion and delivery with the sort of swagger that has characterised The Devonshire since it opened its doors in November.

Landlord Oisin Rogers, perhaps unsurprisingly, is positive about the future of London pubs. “I’ve lived my life in pubs - I’ve worked in them since I was 18 and I’m 56 now,” he says. “While I might be seen as a dinosaur in some ways, I feel that the future of great pubs is really bright, and will continue to be. Those of us that innovate and do things really well, and make sure that our guests feel safe, happy, well looked-after, excited, positive, [and] they feel like the money they’ve spent has led to more than just a great beer [will succeed]. Pubs are magic.”

Of course, there are issues. Issues will always be with us! Cask-ale choice is dropping overall, and the city has far too many bland chain pubs. But even there things are improving: Shepherd Neame, for example, is investing hugely in its London stable, for example, so even if you don’t like the beer (Bishops Finger is delicious, though), you’ll enjoy the experience.

London’s best pubs are now cleaner, friendlier, and with beer in better condition than at any point during the 20 years I’ve lived in London. You can debate the causes - Covid-19, better general understanding about how beer should taste/look (Shit London Guinness has definitely helped), the quality of modern landlords/managers, the pressure pubs are currently under (‘Pressure makes diamonds’, as one London brewery owner once put it to me) - but something has shifted. 

Lewisham, land of dead pubs, is a great example of how things have improved. There are marvellous old-school pubs, like the Blythe Hill Tavern and the Dacre Arms. There are beautiful new pubs, such as The Shirker’s and Joyce. There are good pubs for students, good pubs for food, good pubs for families, and pubs where everyone rubs along very nicely. (There are shit pubs, too, some of them annoyingly close to my house, but they’re increasingly in a minority.) 

It’s easy to be negative, and yes, there are loads of reasons why now is particularly hard. But sometimes there’s good news too. 

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Time At The Bar

Thanks to my daughter’s new gymnastics class I now spend about 45 minutes a week in the nearby Crown and Greyhound, Dulwich. Early evening, Thursday night; I drink one pint of Harvey’s (£6) and soak up the atmosphere of this very attractive, very posh late Victorian boozer. 

It’s a genuine delight - and a great opportunity to see how a pub’s custom ebbs and flows (or doesn’t) depending on the time of year/weather/other variables. Here are my v important findings:

26 October Absolutely perfect Harveys - it tastes like it’s the first glass out of the cask. It’s got that bright English hop character that Harvey’s loses as it gets old. There are too many people in the pub -  I’m forced to sit on the high seats, the most loathsome of pub seating options.

2 November Perhaps 20 people in the pub. Three old timers at the bar are chatting about Gran Canaria. Harvey’s a bit tired, it took a while to pull through. Gets worse the further down the glass I get.

9 November Place is buzzing! Harvey’s excellent. Group of toffs are guzzling Neck Oil and Hells. Loads of families, plus a plummy fellow drinking red wine, wandering about like he owns the place. Another man in a Fleetwood Mac t-shirt is talking loudly about the Garrick Club. 

16 November Mulleted young barman asks me how my day has been. ‘Beautiful!’ he says when I ask for Harvey’s … I reward his excellent service by ordering a packet of crisps. Beer is absolutely singing. It’s a horrible cold, dark, wet evening, and there are reserved signs all over my favourite bit of the pub, ‘The Crown Room’, (on the right as you come in).

30 November The Xmas Tree is being decorated as I enter. This is a great time of year for Victorian pubs, they really suit Christmas. My Harvey’s looks flat, but it drinks reasonably well … a group of besuited men are greeting each other with enthusiastic hugs. I have to sit in the Billiard Room as the Crown Room is full! Two posh gals with pints of Guinness are enjoying James Brown on the piped music system.

7 December My pint is a touch murky and appley towards the bottom. Not great. A mum drinks Camden Hells as her son & dog (a black lab) play on the floor under the table. The dog woofs when their food comes. “You’ve already had your dinner, you can’t have somebody else's!” Sign on my table saying it’s reserved at 7.15pm.

14 December It’s very busy. Shrieking coming from a work party. My pint is a touch short but what the hell, it’s Christmas. It’s pristine. Am greeted on entry. Man with lustrous flowing locks orders Doom Bar; I both envy and pity him. My favourite table is set for diners so I’m back in the Billiards Room. Pudgy man in Xmas jumper is drinking red wine like there’s no tomorrow.

4 January It’s surprisingly busy - not only is it January, but it’s absolutely chucking it down outside. I’m drenched all down the back of my legs. There’s no Harveys! But the Pride is very good. There’s a sign on my table saying it’s booked from 7pm - when the nervous young barman comes over to ask me to move at 6.40, I point out it’s a bit early. No bother: the family who’ve booked it sit at the adjacent table. They order food. Calamari, scallops, padron peppers, sourdough, picpoul, Neck Oil.

Chin-stroking conclusion: There was less variation than I might have expected in terms of business, but the atmosphere changed quite a bit - from somnolent to excitable. The beer fluctuated, too, although largely within acceptable guidelines. It’s worth remembering that the Crown & Greyhound doesn’t have any nearby rivals - it’s the only pub in Dulwich Village and the nearest pub is a decent walk away, up on Lordship Lane - so it’s unlikely to be particularly representative

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Lion’s Away

Back in 2018, when Kirin-owned Aussie conglomerate Lion bought Fourpure, it looked like a really significant new player had arrived on the London scene. With the addition of a Little Creatures taproom in King’s Cross, the purchase of Huddersfield’s Magic Rock and regular if small-ish distribution of Stone & Wood  - one of Australia’s best small breweries, bought in 2021 - the Japanese-owned company looked set fair in the UK.

All of which assumed that they knew what they were doing, which - as it turns out - they really didn’t. Fourpure and Magic Rock have now been sold on, the Little Creatures taproom has become Babel Beerhouse, and the company decided earlier this year to stop distributing Stone & Wood in the UK. A meek Lion indeed.

But that’s not the end of the story. When Stone & Wood decided to pull out of the UK, their representatives here - two Aussies called Cale Watts and Ryan Meade - made a pitch to acquire the production and distribution licence for the beer in the UK and Ireland. Now they've got it. Pacific Ale - at its best, a superb beer - is being brewed at Thornbridge, and the company’s name is Froth Distribution.

There’s more Aussie beer to come. “Our plan is to take on a few extra brands and build a small portfolio of beers that we love, providing feet on the ground in London for those who don’t necessarily have it,” says Watts. 

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Devoted to the Coors

How hard is it for small breweries at the moment? Here’s one story. Boxpark - the food and events venue operator - signed a new five-year deal with Molson Coors in December. If you’re planning to visit one of their sites in Shoreditch, Croydon and Wembley, best develop a taste for Madri first. 

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Two Pubs, One City

Club Soda Tasting Room, WC2 and The Lucky Saint, W1

Can you enjoy a true pub experience without booze? It seems far-fetched, but whoever put together The Lucky Saint’s drinks list clearly thinks so. “At Lucky Saint, we believe the greatest reward of drinking is the social connection, not the alcohol,” it reads, nose slightly aloft. “Whether you’re drinking or not, you should be able to enjoy a proper pint with friends in the pub.”

Big words - but are they true? On a very cold but also beautifully clear Tuesday morning earlier this week, I went to London’s two most notable booze-free venues to find out.

First port of call was the Club Soda Tasting Room in Drury Lane, right slap bang in the heart of London’s swinging Covent Garden. It’s an interesting spot, yards from the imposing/ugly Art-Deco Freemasons’ Hall and two doors down from The Lowlander, one of London’s trademark slightly lacklustre Belgian-focused beer bars. In this company, Club Soda is an appealing prospect, its white-paint exterior glowing as if with virtue in the bright January sunlight.

Inside there are three or four customers perusing shelves laden with non-alcoholic booty: beer, wine, spirits, the other ones. A fridge contains a number of the better-known non-alcoholic beers, alongside wine and cider. I’ve been looking at it for no more than 10 seconds when a young employee asks if I need help. Yes, I reply earnestly. Is there any draught beer?

There is. A Lindr Dispenser - like the ones you get at craft-beer festivals - is pouring Lucky Saint and Big Drop’s Paradiso. I go for a half of the latter (£3.80, ooft) and take one of the three slightly-too low seats at the bar (there are two more at an adjacent table). This, it turns out, is a classic non-alcoholic pale ale of the ‘lazy yeast’ variety: decent hop character (citrussy), thin, easy-going, an odd bitterness on the finish. It’s served very cold.

Two old geezers are buying a wide variety of non-alcoholic beers. “Why do the beers all have a citrus flavour to them?” one asks, not unreasonably. Hops, he’s told. Meanwhile his pal is filling a box with beer. “We’re going to get plastered!” he tells the barman, who doesn't laugh. “Guinness is very good isn’t it?” There’s agreement. “Have you got any red wine that’s not completely gutless?” They try some and agree it’s not up to much. “In five years, you won’t be able to tell the difference,” the shop assistant insists, unconvincingly. “Five years? I’m 82, I might not have that long!”

There’s a slightly odd vibe here, accentuated by the fact it’s a Tuesday in January, the shittest month. An award behind the bar tells me Club Soda was Drinks Business’s Independent Retailer of the Year 2023, and I can see why. It’s a smart and appealingly bland shop space, the sort of place that works better in theory than practice. It’s not much use as a bar, tbh. 

It’s a half-hour walk between Club Soda and The Lucky Saint, a pub run by the same people who make the beer. London is quiet, a touch disconsolate in the aftermath of Christmas, a little 28 Days Later. By the time I get to Marylebone, I’m freezing, and very glad to see The Lucky Saint on the corner of Devonshire and Hallam Streets.

It’s got a traditional line-up, with alcoholic beers - including cask - sold alongside Lucky Saint, of which I order a pint (£6.50). There’s only three people in, and I think the other two are working here: one’s behind the bar, the other working on a laptop in the corner. I pick a different corner, eager to avoid chat. 

Lucky Saint is, I think, one of the better non-alcoholic beers, but a whole pint exemplifies one of its less impressive qualities: wortiness (the flavour of unfermented beer, a bit like Shreddies). But it’s rich and texturally satisfying. 

A man enters in full running gear. He’s full of energy. “Have you got the new Lucky Saint beer?” They do, a hazy IPA. He engages the barman in a long chat about the beer, and whether it might be on tap soon. The barman doesn’t know. He gets a can and sits down to drink. There are now three single men in the pub, spread out at equidistant tables.

The interior of the Lucky Saint (formerly the Masons Arms) is traditional, although the wood is a touch lighter than canon and there are some softening touches here and there: padded bench seating, Farrow-and-Ball paint, a variety of 18th-century-adjacent shit on the walls, delightful floral tiling on what looks like an original late Victorian fireplace in the back corner. Apparently there are lots of flowers on the exterior in the summer, an idea inherited from the previous pub, which must look lovely. It’s a nice pub. 

But can you, as its drinks list suggests, really enjoy the pub without at least a little alcohol? The jury is resolutely out. Maybe it’s different if you’re with a group of pals on a night out (as opposed to a nerdy middle-aged man on his own on a dour Tuesday afternoon), but it doesn’t work for me. 

On the way out - just before I almost bump into top Irish actress Jessie Buckley, who’s ambling along the pavement next to a tall man on a small bike - I pass two lads ordering drinks at the bar, laughing and joshing with the barman. They’re being served shots! I can’t help feeling they’ve got the right idea. 

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A London Education

London is a huge generator of brewing talent. Hundreds of enthusiastic young people have come to the city over the past dozen years to find work at one of the city’s 100+ breweries - and, London being London, lots have then left, taking what they’ve learned. They’ve then set up their own breweries, or have become very senior in the breweries they work for.

The result of that is that London has a sizable, largely unacknowledged influence on the world of modern brewing. I wanted to find out more (What does that influence look like? What impact has London had on these brewers?), so I contacted five ex-Londoners who are thriving elsewhere, and asked them a handful of questions. They are:

Chris Tuominen (formerly Beavertown, Camden Town and Two Tribes), Brewery Supervisor for Indie Alehouse in Toronto 

Emma McIntosh (The Kernel), co-owner of Newbarns in Edinburgh

James Rylance (The Kernel, Beavertown and Redchurch), co-owner of Ideal Day Family Brewery in Cornwall

Renn Blackman (Camden Town), owner of Blackman’s Brewery in Torquay, Victoria, Australia

Tiago Falcone (Beavertown), in charge of Lambic and Gueuze production at Brussels Beer Project 

(Answers have been edited for brevity, but I have made every effort to retain the original meaning)

What was it like brewing in London when you came here?

EM: (pictured below) Oh my gosh it was fun! Coming from where I lived in Scotland, at the time where Brewdog was really the only exciting thing going on, London was wild. With The Kernel, I was lucky enough to work somewhere really familial: we’d cycle to Hop Burns and Black for Augustiners on a Wednesday after work, followed by pizza and a long cycle home to Hackney.

RB: I worked at Camden between 2010 and 2012. The London brewing scene was amazing: when I first arrived new-age cask beer was popular … I worked with a great mix of brewers from everywhere: London brewers, Irish, Americans and other Aussies.

TF: In 2013 the scene was just about to start booming. It felt like a grassroots movement, [there were] new breweries popping up everywhere, there was a sense of community and cooperation.

CT: When I joined the London brewing scene it was 2014 and Beavertown had just moved to Tottenham Hale. It was the Wild West, a lot of the beers made in the city were quite extreme and out there. Everyone knew everyone and there was a sense that “we're all in this together”.

JR: (above) I spent all of my twenties in London and it was brilliant, especially at the start. Everything was new and exciting, we were all young and working it out as we went along - especially that original crew at Beavertown. Everyone’s gone onto brilliant things. We were in the right place at the right time and [we] rode the chaos of it all. 

How do you think London influenced you as a brewer? What did you learn here?

JR: The brewers in East London were a tight bunch. There was zero competition, everyone was super open to sharing ideas and excitement about beers. Friday after work in the Cock Tavern you couldn't move for brewers! I still brew like those early days at the Kernel: I make quite different styles now, but they are made in the same spirit.

EM: Evin’s way of running a business has stayed with me. It’s hard to put into words, but if you’ve met him and been to the brewery then you’ll know what I mean. The people are what makes a business successful, so my main priority is to make sure our staff have what they need to feel safe and happy.

CT: (above) London influenced me immensely. When I came I was fresh out of the fine-dining scene in Finland, an eager homebrewer who was desperate to turn pro. I gained my IBD in London, I became a certified beer judge, I got to brew with some of the best brewers in the world and I got to express my creative side. I learned everything I know about brewing in London. I owe my brewing career to the city and for that I'm grateful.

EM: I learned that it’s pretty easy to make beer but to make really good beer then you need to seriously care about what you’re doing. To make new beers all the time is a safe route, but to continuously brew the same beers over and over and focus on how to improve them each time, that’s when you end up nailing it. That’s something I learned from our dearest pal Dominic Driscoll at Thornbridge in Bakewell.  

TF: (above) I was working with people from so many nationalities and with so many talents. From some I learned the technical aspects; others inspired me with their creativity; some helped me face the challenges of working in a company that needed to grow fast.

RB: (below) It definitely influenced me. Drinking cask ale in proper English pubs - The Southampton Arms was my favourite - the flavours and experiences, that was so amazing! 

I learnt a lot about beer freshness and its importance. I learnt how to make lots of quality beer at Camden, that place was sooo busy! It really made you an efficient brewer that could do many jobs at once. [Being involved at Camden] was inspirational for me to go on and start my own brand. 

TF: I can't forget to mention the importance of collaboration brews: the exchange and sharing of knowledge, ideas, advice, mistakes, is what makes us grow as a community. At Beavertown I was lucky to host and be hosted by brewers from all over the world.

Why did you come to London - and why did you leave? Is there anything you miss/don’t miss? 

RB: I came to London, like many Aussies, for travel and work. I’d been a brewer for years in Australia so I wanted to hone my skills and travel at the same time: London made a lot of sense with its esteemed brewing heritage. I left when my working holiday visa was up.

CT: I came to London for the adventure and to become a professional brewer. I left to further my career - and, because of what happened with Brexit and Covid, London wasn't the same. It became increasingly unsustainable with rents on the rise and wages stagnant. I also saw a lot of my fellow expat friends move and I felt that after 8 years I needed a change too, and Toronto was the perfect destination. 

EM: In 2012 my other half, Gordon (both pictured above), and I moved to London as he was starting a PhD, and I really didn’t know what to do with myself. I was into beer, so I got a job at Craft Beer Co. After wanting to get out of bar work, I got in touch with Toby and Evin at The Kernel to see if there were any opportunities. I still remember getting the call from Evin to say that I’d got the job and that even though I had zero experience, if I cared enough and put in the effort then I’d be fine. Oh but I had to like cheese and coffee ... thankfully I was very much able to tick those boxes!

TF: (below, during the first brew of Beavertown Bloody 'Ell in 2014) I was living in Rome and was thirsty for brewing again. London seemed like the right place for brewing opportunities at the time. I already had 2 years experience brewing back home in Brazil, but the intermezzo in Italy was a moment to rethink what I wanted in life. So I left Rome on a bicycle and crossed Europe, visiting breweries, ending up under Big Ben.

The trip left me with a taste for more cycling adventures and I tried to combine my brewing career with that. That's how I decided it was time to leave the city: on the bicycle again, to cycle around the world working in breweries. I also felt that my "cycle" in London was coming to an end: in 4 years, Beavertown Brewery had grown a lot and I did too. There was so much more to see out there in the world.

JR: I grew up on a farm in rural Shropshire, so London was always a shining, mess of buzzing life: I'd get off the train at Euston as a teenager and feel the whole place fizzing with life. As soon as school was over I headed for art school in London; a couple of years in, I met Evin at the Kernel and my life's path was set. It was a great place to do your 20s, at the start it was just about affordable. But after over a decade we were looking to the future, to settling down, having kids. We'd done our time and were finding less joy in city life. I'm a country boy at heart.

EM: Gordon and I left London in September 2019 to move back up to Scotland to open Newbarns. It had always been something we wanted to do, but we never really felt the pressure of when to do it. That was until Gordon found our brew kit online in 2018, snapped it up and stored it until we found a space. In 2019 we found our site in Leith. The viewing was done via Facetime as we were still in London, and as soon as we saw it we knew we had to go for it.

If he hadn’t found that brew kit, who knows? We’d probably still be living in London, working in Bermondsey at The Kernel. We loved it there. It was my home away from home. And we loved London a lot more than we thought we would. I found it so hard to leave. I have friends for life who live in London and they’re what I miss the most. 

JR: I miss the food so, so much! We used to live in Walthamstow and you could walk and get three different provincial styles of Chinese food. Not fancy reinterpretation, just people from that place cooking food they grew up with to earn a living. We get all the standard stuff here: great coffee, sourdough bread, posh cheese. It's the diversity and the squeezing together that gives London a buzz - that fizz I first felt getting off at Euston as a teenager when my heart opened.

TF: I miss the pubs. Pubs are London at its best: I loved the atmosphere, the cosiness, it's where you know you'll meet people again. I don't miss the busy life though! Living in Ghent now, father of twins, I'm in a different situation than when I was in my late twenties. Slower is better now!

CT: (below) I do miss London. I miss Tufnell Park, I miss the friends that are still there, I miss the Southampton Arms, I miss cask beer and I miss going to watch Tottenham or Clapton CFC on the weekends. I don't miss the insane pace of the city and the long working hours, I don't miss the extortionate rent and I don't miss the wet winter weather! But London will always be a special place for me.

When I left London 2 years ago, the brewing scene was still vibrant, creative and exciting. There really is no place like London when it comes to brewing.

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Taproom Tip

Do you spend a lot of time in London brewery taprooms? Then Beer Passport could be for you. The 2024 edition has just been launched, offering discounts (e.g. buy one get one free) at more than 70 taprooms from Blackheath to Windsor. It costs £29.95.

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Theatre of The Pour

What do actors on stage or screen drink when they’re pretending it’s alcohol? The answer - for those actors in the Choir of Man, currently at the Arts Theatre in Covent Garden - is alcohol-free beer, supplied by Big Drop since the start of this month. 

“The Choir of Man is not all about the alcohol - in fact, if anything, we spend more time talking and singing than we do drinking,” says Choir of Man co-creator and director Nic Doodson. “It’s nice to have a beer in your hand when you’re talking to a mate - but it doesn’t have to mean you get drunk … you’re more often your best self when you’re fully in the room.” 

The play, set in a pub called The Jungle, features (so the press release says) “nine guys combining beautiful harmonies and foot-stomping singalongs with first-rate tap dance and poetic meditations on the power of community”.  There are plans to offer audience members a chance to drink alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer at the on-stage bar during the pre-show, and at the Arts Theatre bar, in the New Year.  

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All Shook Up

This week, I wrote about Grace Land and their new brewery, Saint Monday, for Pellicle. You can read it here.

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Park Life

Kingston’s Park Brewery is opening a new venue, Park Brewery & Kitchen, in the spring next year. Described by brewery co-owner Frankie Kearns as “café by day, small plates, top wines and great local beer in the evening,” it'll be at 157 Park Road, handy for Richmond Park.

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Two Pubs, One City

Churchill Arms, W8; Dog & Bell, SE8

The Churchill Arms, West London’s most well-dressed pub, has long had the Christmas pub title sewn up. “The Most Christmassy Pub In London Has Switched On Their Iconic Light Display,” gushed secretldn earlier this month. “London’s most festive pub is switching on its Christmas Lights”, Time Out observed in 2020. For The Guardian, The Churchill is “Christmas, basically: silly but worth it. The pub looks glorious, a box of simple shining joy.” The pub’s own website calls it “London’s most Christmassy pub”. 

But I’m a fearless investigative reporter, and this sort of fluff isn’t good enough. Is it really London’s most Christmassy pub? On an awful dreich day earlier this week, I went to find out. 

Walking the short stretch from Notting Hill Gate station to the pub is a dispiriting experience. This is a posh, tourist-heavy bit of West London and so it has more than its fair share of amblers, drifting slowly along without, apparently, a care in the world - even though it’s raining. As I approach the pub, I break into a jog to circumnavigate a group of elderly baseball-capped Americans, who are looking for The Churchill Arms. 

“There it is!” one exclaims as the pub’s exterior comes into view.

And what an exterior it is. It’s absolutely covered with Christmas trees, each of them festooned with hundreds of Xmas lights - and that’s not all. There are Christmas flags, an illuminated HO HO HO sign (my favourite bit), a small post-box for ‘Letters to Santa’, wreaths aplenty, an illuminated Merry Christmas sign, and lots more. I bet it looks remarkable in the dark, as opposed to through a thin mist of rain on a grey, grey day. 

(The only way it could be more festive would be if Churchill on the pub sign were donning an Xmas hat. Something to consider for next year, Fuller’s folk).

Inside is just as delightful - although four young Italian women are blocking the way, looking baffled, apparently unaware of the conventions that govern seating in pubs. “It’s all self-seating,” says the woman behind the bar flatly, the first of half-a-dozen times in the next half an hour.

There’s an old English geezer at the bar, asking for a pint of Abbot, a beer made by Greene King and therefore not sold here. I suggest ESB might be a decent replacement, but his pals want London Pride (£5.75; he’s on the lime and soda). A controversial but good choice. It’s excellent in all the key ways: flavour, condition, appearance. The sort of beer that can disappear very quickly.  

It’s just after 3pm, and most seats are taken. I lean on the bar. Lots of London Pride is being served: more than Guinness, I note with a wryly raised eyebrow (Diageo won’t like it, but as I said - fearless). A lot of the tourists, surely, have come here to try cask ale, and they won’t be disappointed, which is no certainty in our fair city. One of the Italian girls comes to the bar (“Guinness, large one”) followed by a young German, who asks for Helles and Jameson and gets Amstel and Bushmills. 

I notice an empty bench by the main door, and occupy it for a better view of the decoration. There’s all sorts of bollocks hanging from the ceiling, plus Churchill paraphernalia, generic Irish and British stuff, and Guinness marketing. On top, there are lots of Christmas decorations. It all adds up to an atmosphere of extreme exuberance.

In terms of tourist pubs, you could do a lot worse. The beer is good, the atmosphere is great, and everything smells nice courtesy of the Thai restaurant at the back. A gentle hubbub, the sound of contentment, reigns. Everyone is happy, in fact, apart from a middle-aged couple directly in front of me. They’ve got their arms crossed, they’re not talking, they’re leaning back in their seats, they’re purse-lipped. I’m not a body language expert, but it doesn’t look good! 

Then, all of a sudden, the froideur breaks as a small dog wearing a snazzy jacket is led past their table. The grumpy couple can’t help but react: the woman, in one of the few bits I can hear, observes that “Dogs are such social animals,” in the most delightful American Southern drawl.

She’s right. Dogs are social creatures, and none is more social than The Dog and Bell (‘Dog’, locally) in Deptford. It’s a long way from Notting Hill - an hour by public transport, including 15 minutes waiting for a train at London’s most delightful but also cold station, Blackfriars. 

By the time I get to the Dog I’m keen to be inside, but for journalistic reasons I must inspect the Xmas decorations in the street outside. There’s a huge Christmas tree, a massive Santa in his massive sleigh, and hundreds of lights spelling out “Merry Christmas” on the wall opposite, plus plenty besides. It’s a bravura effort; Churchillian, even. 

I was planning to have another Pride here, but Iron Pier’s delightful Cast Iron Stout is available (£4.90) so I have that instead (it’s a touch over-vented, a recurrent problem at the Dog; perhaps the only one in a pub that otherwise touches perfection). The best seat in the house - inside the door on the left, dark-green banquettes and a great view of the bar - is untaken. It’s not as busy as at The Churchill, and the voices are all English or Irish, but it shares that key quality: a sense of carefree happiness, of reality postponed. 

Across the way is a family - grandparents, daughter and two kids (“Tell grandad what colour the loos are … Millwall blue aren’t they?”) - while the regulars are seated at the bar in the new bit of the pub, chiselled out of the next-door building a few years back. There are hops above the bar, alongside copious Christmas decorations - sliced oranges, pine cones, pine leaves - hanging thick and lustrous from the walls and ceilings. 

It’s no coincidence, I think, that the landlord here, Seamus O’Neill, is Irish, as was the man who made The Churchill Arms such an icon (Gerry O’Brien). Both pubs blend the Irish capacity for hospitality with the best of the English pub in a very satisfying, harmonious way.

That’s all very well, I hear you chunter, but which is the best Christmas pub? Let’s look at the scorecard. Both have magnificently festive exteriors, and both are a cosy delight to be in. The cask ale is better at The Churchill, but The Dog and Bell boasts a special Xmas menu containing Pigs in Blankets, Breaded Brie and an Xmas Dinner - so, although it loses points for using cranberry sauce, it’s just ahead, by a (Dog’s) nose. Ring out the Bells.

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London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. Feel free to contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you like what you’ve read, please share it with your friends; if you’ve been forwarded this email and enjoyed it, you can sign up here. Unsubscribe here.  Support LBC here. Thanks for reading! 

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Eko Park

Anthony Adedipe is worried about the weather. It’s a Thursday afternoon in early November and rain is rattling down on the roof at Unit 2A-2, Copeland Park, Peckham, Eko Brewery’s new home and bar. Anthony says he’s been chatting to other traders on the estate, and afternoon rain, they tell him, is very bad for evening trade. “I hope it stops,” he says, more in hope than expectation. 

Luckily for Anthony and wife Helena, who run Eko together, there are compelling reasons to visit, rain or no rain. Opened last month, this brewery/taproom, the result of five years of hard work, is something new and exciting in a London beer market where an increase in quality has gone hand in hand with a growing saminess. 

Eko bucks the trend by drawing on African drinking culture and brewing techniques and recipes, plus ingredients such as palm sugar, cassava, yam and hops grown in South Africa. “The main focus is to incorporate African ingredients in the beer,” says Anthony, “but the first beer we made [in 2018] didn’t have any African ingredients - but it was low bitterness, low carbonation, to ensure it went well with food, which is the way beer is enjoyed in Africa.”

Anthony grew up in Peckham and his family comes from Nigeria (Eko is the Yoruba name for Lagos), while Helena’s are from Congo. That’s had a big impact on her approach to beer. “In Congo, women drink a lot of beer,” she says. “My mum, my aunties drank beer when I was growing up. A lot of the women in my family drank beer more than the men.”

The road to Eko began in earnest in Philadelphia, in 2013. Anthony, an engineer, spent a year working there and Helena visited frequently. He’d first caught the beer bug whilst travelling in Japan, but it was the then buoyant US craft-beer scene that really got them hooked: a craft-beer bar on every corner, as Anthony puts it, beer gardens full of people from all walks of life, a huge variety of flavours and styles. They started home-brewing when Anthony came back, serving it to family and friends, visiting festivals, getting gradually drawn further into the world of craft beer.

In 2018 Eko was launched, growing gradually on the back of two beers: Black, a smoked porter, and Gold, a lager made with palm sugar. They were ready for the next step, but then Covid-19 intervened in early 2020. “We’d just signed a contract for a really large batch of two different beers,” says Helena. “We were looking to be in bottle shops and bars, and some of our biggest customers were restaurants, which had to close. It was a big blow.”

It was touch and go as to whether the brewery would survive, but they fought on, growing their online presence (this is how I tried Eko for the first time: a deliciously crisp Pils, also made with palm sugar). The next challenge was finding a home. “We had people coming from all over wanting to try our beers, but we weren’t always in all of the bottle shops [due to the sporadic nature of] contract brewing,” says Helena. “To grow our customer base we knew we needed to have a permanent home.”

And so here they are, in an energetic corner of an energetic neighbourhood in sunny South London. Modern Peckham has two reputations: ‘little Lagos’ or hipster central, which may seem like different worlds but which come together, after a fashion, here in Copeland Park. 

“Finding a site in Peckham is like coming home for me, even though I left when I was a teenager,” says Anthony, who’s 41. “It’s very different from when I used to live here, but it’s still Peckham, right? We feel at home here.”

Eko’s approach stretches beyond beer, taking in music (expect to hear Afrobeat and African jazz at the taproom), art (the walls are currently covered with work by Nigerian-born, London-based artist Caroline Chinakwe) and food with African roots, served from the cabin opposite the taproom. “The idea is, as with the beer, to try to infuse as much of our culture as possible,” says Helena. “In Africa, when you go drinking, it’s a whole experience [in terms of beer and food], you eat a meal. It’s almost unheard of not to eat. There’s always a dish.”

When we spoke, it was Eko’s second week on their new site. Had they yet gleaned any insight into their potential customer base, and whether it might be different from the craft-beer standard?

“It’s mixed, but the majority is, as you say, middle-aged white men,” says Helena [Note: I used that term in the question]. “The craft-beer scene says that it wants to be diverse and open, but often when we used to go to festivals we were the only black people there - and as a woman, I was in a minority too. 

“We’re hoping to attract people who aren’t typical craft beer drinkers. When I was a student, I used to go to the Knights Templar, but I didn’t go to many other pubs, not because I didn’t think I would be welcome, but because I didn’t think I would have anything in common with anybody else there. We find a lot of people who don’t fit the craft-beer stereotype are a bit surprised they like it - ‘oh, I didn’t think this would be for me.”

With a new venue and a young family, Anthony and Helena have plenty on their plate - including installing their brewkit, which is not yet onsite. First things first. “We want to get really well established here, to get embedded in the community here,” says Anthony. “We’ll develop a strong local base and go from there.” 

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Do Brewers Dream of Electric Lager?

Jack Hobday, half of the team behind London Black sensations Anspach and Hobday, let slip that he dreams about lager when I interviewed him on the phone recently. “In the dream, I was waiting for a batch to be ready,” he told me.

Intriguing. Want to find out more? You can ask the man himself at the brewery’s Bermondsey stronghold, the Arch House, before their Christmas Carol concert on Friday 1 December. Doors open at 3pm, carols begin at 7. The brewery’s annual Christmas beer - Pfeffernüsse Stout - and a new, festive-spiced Pale Ale (A Christmas Pale) will be offer alongside the rest of the A&H range.  

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Crafty Comic

Many of us, I suspect, have felt inspired by Budvar at some point - even if that only extended to the desire for another glass of southern Bohemia’s smoothest Světlý. 

Brockley-based stand-up James Dowdeswell, though, is cut from different, more comic cloth. When he witnessed Budvar man Radim Zvanovec cracking wise during a beer-and-cheese talk a few years’ back, he thought - I can do that. And so he did.

Now it’s your chance to find out if it was all worth it. Next Thursday, Dowdeswell brings his ‘Beers of a Clown’ show to the Enid Street Tavern in Bermondsey, having already reduced a full house to helpless mirth at Brew York in, yes, York. If Dowdeswell can bring a crowd of Tykes to a tittering frenzy, south London should be no problem whatsoever. 

“You do not need to be into craft beer to enjoy it,” the 49-year-old insisted when I met him recently at SE4’s Joyce. “It’s a subject that I’m passionate about, and I think that comes across in the show. When I first started planning it, it was jokes about beer, but now it’s about my journey in beer, from growing up in a pub in the West Country to the adventure of learning to brew.”

That process of learning led to a beer called Lazy Eye-PA, an English IPA, which is currently in its second iteration, with Olicana - Blighty’s answer to the passionfruit- and mango-heavy hops of America’s Pacific Northwest - playing the starring role. I had a can last week and it tasted great.

The pub he grew up in was The Anchor Inn in Oldbury-on-Severn, not far from Bristol. It serves draught Bass, still a local favourite and Dowdeswell’s first beer at the age of 18. Dad Mike, landlord of the Anchor and a drinks legend in his own right, is, says James, his “drinking partner”. James has been doing stand-up for 25 years, appearing on everything from Extras - check out his turn as Count Fuckula here - to Russell Howard’s Good News.

What next for the man they’re calling “The UK’s leading craft beer comedian”? He admits that his sights are set on a tour of Britain’s village halls, with Lazy Eye-PA served to thirsty punters whilst they lap up his ale-related repartee. After that, his ambition is for Lazy Eye-PA to be the official beer supplier for his beloved Aston Villa - and, once he’s achieved that, he fancies a tour of outer Space. He’s heading for the Stars! Better Czech him out while you still can.  

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‘Full Czech Soak’

Speaking of Czechs … amongst other things, they are very good at ensuring their glasses are in perfect condition for serving beer. Next year you’ll be able to see just how good, courtesy of the new London Bridge Tap. Feast your eyes on it here.  

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IP Wahey

40ft’s IPA was last week named the best cask beer in London and the South East at SIBA’s independent beer awards. Windsor & Eton’s Father Thames was second.

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New Brews

Did you know that the London Brewers Alliance records new beer releases by London breweries? It does, although some of them (London Pride?!) are not so new. See here.

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Twenty’s Plenty

Parched, the South London pub group, will be celebrating its 20th birthday this month with a series of events across its six-pub estate. Starting with the Roebuck in Borough in November 2003, the four-man team (Isaac Tooby, Michael Robinson, Neil Watson and Shane Ranasinghe, pictured below) has taken on a series of boozers, many of them on the brink of closure. The most recent was The Earl of Derby in New Cross, following The White Horse in Peckham, The Railway in Streatham, Grove House Tavern in Camberwell, The Montpelier in Peckham and The Roebuck.

Their pubs tend to be elegantly decorated, welcoming places with gastro-quality grub; in terms of beer they’ve gradually improved over the years. For more information on events to celebrate their birthday, check out each pub’s social media: here’s what’s happening at the White Horse.  

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Devon Knows How They Make It So Creamy

This year’s most hotly anticipated new/revived pub has opened in Soho. The Devonshire is the brainchild of former Guinea Grill head man Oisin Rogers and Charlie Carroll, the founder of Flat Iron. By the looks of the pub’s Instagram account, it has the potential to be a real game-changer in Soho, with the onus on quality - and that should apply to beer as much as anything else. (Look, for example, at this Guinness font).

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Oh Pig Ale 

Pig’s Ear, the CAMRA festival run by the East London and City branch, returns for its 39th year between Tuesday 28th November and Saturday 3rd December, at the Round Chapel, 1d Glenarm Road, E5 0LY. This year’s iteration is called Dark Side of the Pig (not sure why). 

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Hill to Climb

Gipsy Hill has launched a crowdfunder to help it become carbon negative. They aim to do this by mid-2025, by “decarbonising our production, re-using waste materials, switching raw materials to regeneratively grown products, and electrifying everything else.” More information can be found here.

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Bulls High

Rained a lot recently, hasn’t it? This was the Bull’s Head in Chiswick at the end of October.

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Two Pubs, One City

Black Lion, Kilburn & Spread Eagle, Wandsworth

There are cities - Florence, Buenos Aires, Swanley - where just one visit can change the course of a life. Something about the ambiance of these places is so deeply affecting that it makes you reassess what you once felt obvious, and helps define how you see the world from that moment on.

This is how I feel about Arras, a town in northern France. Fans of the First World War will know it as the site of a battle in 1917 (Vimy Ridge, where a towering tribute to the noble Canucks who fought there looms over the countryside, is nearby), but my initial impressions of Arras came courtesy of a journalistic jolly while I was in the employ of the Kentish Times, more than 20 years ago.

It was a trip defined by gluttony (Lucullus de Valenciennes), art (Watteau, his passion for napes) and WW1, but for me the key aspect was Arras’s marvellous Grand’ Place. It’s huge and solemn, with 155 elegant Flemish-Baroque townhouses around its edge - breathtaking, sans doute, but what really impressed was the fact that it had been rebuilt exactly as it had been after being largely destroyed during World War One.

I didn’t, at that time, know that you could do that. I sort of assumed that architectural progress was inevitable, if often disappointing (I grew up near Ashford, where most structures are a blight on the landscape). The idea that you could just rebuild everything as it was before seemed so refreshing, and so healthy. I don’t dislike all modern architecture - by no means! - but in most instances I can see the value of restoration over revolution.

This fogeyish notion has stuck with me, particularly when it comes to pubs. They thrive on continuity, a sense of inherited conviviality, helping to create that most crucial element, atmosphere - but they’re been subjected to perpetual change over the last half-century. In most instances, they would have been much better served staying as they were. 

Which brings me to CAMRA. It does many things these days - too many? - but one that I really like are its Pub Design Awards, and in particular the Historic England Conservation Award, which - as the name suggests - rewards those places which have been kept much as they originally were, but polished up. This year the winner and runner-up were both London pubs, which seemed to me as good an excuse as any to visit them.

Which is how I found myself at The Spread Eagle in Wandsworth on a Friday afternoon, suddenly aware that I’d been here before, after an event at the former Young's (now Sambrook’s) Brewery across the road. As pubs go, this remnant of the great Gin Palace era, built in 1898, is hard to forget. There’s an iron and glass canopy outside the entrance, spelling out ‘Spread Eagle’ and ‘Young’s’. Inside it’s a glistening festival of glass, much of it etched: the panels behind the bar, the magnificent partitions that divine the pub’s huge floor area into three, multitudinous light shades.

What isn’t glass is dark wood, or burgundy-painted wall covered with Victoriana, from a poster depicting a leering beardy chap guzzling beer while riding a fearsome whale - the three elements making up the shape of Great Britain - to ‘Master Bung, The Brewer’s Son’, who looks very sorry for himself. A Victorian poverty map of Wandsworth is a bit close to the bone.

I settle in the far corner with a pint of (over-chilled) Winter Warmer (£6). It’s about 2pm on a Friday afternoon and it isn’t very busy, but the pub still has atmosphere to spare. At the bar two old-timers are nursing pints of Young’s, while a young Geordie is involved in a competition with the barlady to see who can be nicest. “I’ll just pop these here, shall I?” he asks, waving paper menus towards a wooden menu holder. “Yes please darling, thanks ever so”, “Happy to help”, and so on. 

Not everything is quite right - there are too many sofas (the sinking kind that leave you reaching up for your pint from the table), the music is bland, lots of tables are set for dining - but it’s definitely worth a detour, as they say.

The Black Lion in Kilburn, 45 minutes’ north by bus and ginger line, has only one major drawback: it doesn’t open until 4pm in the week, even on Friday. Consequently I’m there right on time - well, a bit early. Even then, a pair of young women beat me through the curtained main door to the bar. They dither when they arrive, though, and I’m able to order the first drink (#pubsmarts).

It’s a pint of Five Points Best and, for the first time in my life, I’m asked if I’m a CAMRA member. Now I actually am (don’t scoff, the magazine is excellent, you should read it) but I haven’t got my card. “I’ll trust you,” the barman says, knocking a budget-busting 10 percent off the price, dropping it to just £4.50.

The interior of this place has to be seen to be believed. Also dating back to 1898 - what a year! - it boasts four copper relief panels depicting 18th-century characters at leisure (smoking, bowls, that sort of thing), a long panelled bar, an intricate burgundy and gold (plaster?) ceiling, and much more besides. The overall impact is intoxicating. 

Later, I hear a group chatting, and one of them says “It deserves to be somewhere nicer than Kilburn”, which while unfair gives you an idea of what a delight the pub is. I stay for two pints.

By the time I leave, just after 5pm, it’s filling up with a genuinely diverse crowd, well over 50 percent of them women. There are presumably a lot of factors involved in that but it’s worth noting, particularly, perhaps, for anyone planning to update a pub. Want a clientele beyond just white blokes? Be like Arras. Don’t try and improve on perfection.  

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Brew Dogs

“Warning,” a printed note on the door of Travis Mooney-Evans’s West Hampstead office reads. “Dogs Running Free.”

It’s no joke. As soon as Travis opens the door, two Collie crosses - Viola, 13, and Isabella, one - bound towards me. Of the two, Isabella is by some distance the more persistent, rewarding each faint flicker of interest with leaps and licks and an insistence that we play a fetching game with her ball. Viola gives me a regulation sniff and heads off for a nap.

Travis clearly likes collies. He also loves beer, which explains why he once ran a small brewery called Hoppy Collie, one of dozens to open in London in the years between 2010 and 2015. Hoppy Collie, which existed for just over a year from the end of 2012, wasn’t ever a big name, but it was fairly typical in an era when opening a small brewery without significant financial backing (or easy route to market) seemed like a good idea in London.

In fact, Travis’s story weaves together a lot of what made that moment interesting: the do-it-yourself ethos, the American influence (Travis is from California), the preponderance of men in their thirties, the pervasive enthusiasm/naivety. “So many of my contemporaries, they were all good people, they were all super enthusiastic,” Travis, now 48, says. “But they weren’t hard-headed - the ones who were are the ones who have … well, they’ve mostly sold out by now.”

The Hoppy Collie website, still online, exhibits some of the sort of rhetoric that adorned the rise of London craft beer. Hoppy Collie’s beer was “iconoclastic and daring”, for example, and there is the assertion that “some beers are better suited to keg than cask”. It was a time when the only IPAs were West Coast and people (not Travis) described Best Bitter as ‘tasting like twigs’. 

Travis was smart enough to realise things weren’t going to go how he had dreamt fairly early, before he sunk too much cash into the project. Having taken a course at Brewlab in Sunderland, he established a two-hectolitre brewery in a basement under Simposio, an Italian restaurant on the Fulham Palace Road. “I thought that it would be like having my own place, because I could sell the beer at the pizza place,” he says. “But it didn’t work because Simposio didn’t sell any pizza, let alone any beer.”

There were moments of success. The Cock on Mare Street took all the beer he could make - about 180 litres a week, on average, brewed at the weekend - and Des De Moor, indefatigable chronicler of London beer, gave his California Common a good write-up. “I had a good time,” he says. “It was all decent quality, it was good stuff.”

The line-up included American Pale Ale, Bitter, Coffee Stout and Blonde, plus that California Common, and a rotating range of specials. This combination of variety and approachability reflected his Californian background and passion for breweries like Bear Republic, Sierra Nevada and Anchor, whose taps adorn the outside of the beer fridge in his office (when he heard Anchor was closing he bought all the bottles of Steam Beer he could lay his hands on, one of which he very kindly gave me).  

Travis, who works as a satellite telecommunications consultant, is a big man, verging on lumberjack-like, with a tidy mop of curly hair and beard to match. He is assured, confident and talkative, Californian to a fault, so it’s no surprise to discover he was part of the Bernie Sanders campaign to be Democratic candidate for US President in 2016 and 2020, helping run the overseas operation, and delivering huge victories on both occasions. “In 2016, we had more people vote for Bernie than had voted in any previous Democrats Abroad election,” he says. 

(A huge ‘Bernie’ banner, which lights up, sits in his office to commemorate those campaigns, ready to be put on the wall as soon as he gets round to it.)

The conversation glides easily from Sanders to James Watt, who Travis once called when he was wandering around Edinburgh looking for a beer. “I went to the Brewdog website on my phone, and his number was on there,” he says. “I called him and said, ‘Where can we find good beer in Edinburgh?’ He said, we just opened a bar there, where are you? He stayed on the phone until we got to the bar, and then he said, ‘Hand the phone to the bartender’, and the bartender speaks to him and then says - your drinks are on the house.”

The accoutrements of homebrewing sit in the hallway, a sign not only of his passion for brewing but also of a certain frustration with the direction modern beer has taken, particularly in West London where he lives. “There are six pubs within walking distance, and they all have the same beer range,” he says. “Overall, we’ve taken a huge step up in terms of quality [over the past ten years] but it’s very samey.”

It has made him wonder if now might be a good time to get back into brewing, given the lack of variety and the amount of spare brewing capacity in a beer world where demand is contracting. “There’s all sorts of interesting beers you can make,” he says. “My first beer is always an American Pale Ale, but then there’s Gose, or Sahti, or Ethiopian-style beer. There’s lots you could do.” 

Why not? London beer could do with a little of the spirit of 2013. Let the dogs run free.

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Cribb Notes

Kent family brewery Shepherd Neame has spent £800,000 renovating the Tom Cribb, a West End boozer that commemorates England’s greatest bare-knuckle fighter, the Tyson Fury of the early 19th century.

As usual with Sheps, the renovation of this Panton Street pub has been smartly-done, all shiny tiles and padded bench seating, with a ‘gentleman’s club-style’ dining room upstairs. Memorabilia paying tribute to Cribb, who ran the venue when it was called the Union Arms in the 19th century, is on show throughout.

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Booze Views

Artist Lydia Wood is currently engaged on a gargantuan project: to draw all of London’s pubs. Worth supporting, I think you’d agree - and luckily there’s an easy way to do so. You can buy one of Lydia’s recently-released pub calendars, here. 

I recently sent Lydia a few questions to find out more about what she’s doing, and what she’s learnt:   

Why do you draw London pubs?

On the surface my project to draw every pub in London is an artistic documentation of all the pubs that exist in this city during my lifetime. On the other hand, I continue to feel that the drawings are made so much more by the conversations that surround the project. The cultural and historical significance of pubs and the rapid changes that are happening to these places during this time.

I think the foundation that the project was built on is my simple affection for pubs, my attachment to my local, my fondness of old student haunts, the village pub I went to with my parents as a child. I am a pub girl through and through. Finding like-minded pub lovers through sharing this project with strangers online, I find these personal connections to London pubs have opened up the pub project across the globe; and that is what ultimately keeps the momentum of the pub project going.

If you had to describe the archetypal London pub based on the ones you've drawn so far, what would it look like?

A corner pub, slated roof, a couple of chimneys, bricks on the top half, painted bottom half, leaded windows, lantern lights, pub name signage, swinging sign, double doors, hanging flower baskets, a potted plant either side of the entrance, window reflections of the street opposite.

What's your favourite London pub, and why?

I’m very lucky to have a brilliant local, the Blythe Hill Tavern. A few reasons it’s my favourite are (in no particular order):

• It’s close to my house

• Great Guinness

• Live music every week

• Amazing people

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New Flame

One of the great unsung heroes of London beer departed the scene recently. Nick O’Shea founded Ignition Brewery in Sydenham in 2015 and has run it ever since (alongside co-founder Will Evans), all the while assiduously but honestly promoting its purpose: to demonstrate how adults with learning disabilities can contribute in the workplace. 

The new owners are Brighter Horizons, a Lewisham-based charity that provides day services to neurodiverse adults and people with learning disabilities in southeast London. 

“Ignition is such a community asset and occupies a really unique place at the centre of Sydenham,” Brighter Horizons co-director Dave King says. “It’s loved by lots of people and I’m really excited to build on that and see more people get on board with what we’re about and what we’re trying to achieve. We’re planning to bring a modest food offering next year as well as to start bottling more of our beers.”   

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Week as Water

If you’re normal, you may not have noticed that it was Cask Ale Week, an annual ‘event’ run by Cask Marque, recently. This year’s highlight was a feature on GB News, a TV network that has become a byword for incompetence and dimwitted bigotry, and which apparently thinks Tory politicians soft-soaping their colleagues counts as journalism. 

“It is not for Cask Marque as a company to take sides and add comment,” organiser Paul Nunney said in response to widespread criticism. “We are here to promote cask beer to everybody.”

Let’s be honest: Cask Marque, a group whose efficacy I question every time I get a sub-par pint in a pub with one of their plaques on it, couldn’t promote cask beer to ‘everybody’ if their lives depended on it. You might as well ask me to play up front for England. Everything about Cask Marque reeks of a fusty, increasingly outdated approach to beer, in a world where alternative options have never been more numerous or appealing. 

This wouldn’t be a problem, except that the group is fairly representative of so much of the cask-beer world. It’s no wonder sales are through the floor, and pubs that don’t sell it are increasingly common in London (see Two Pubs, One City, below, for a couple of examples). Cask ale in London badly needs fresh blood and fresh ideas, someone who can resuscitate it to the extent that it becomes available in places like Mercato Metropolitano (where gallons of German Kraft beer is sold), in peak condition, and branded in a way that will appeal to a varied, younger crowd. I’m not holding my breath.   

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Becks Off, Whisky Off, Greenalls On 

The Walmer Castle in Notting Hill has had a colourful recent history. It was bought by David Beckham and Guy Ritchie in 2018, but last year they sold it to London nightclub owner and businessman Piers Adam, whose Scottish themed restaurant and whisky bar also failed to take flight.

Enter Jack Greenall, of the Greenall Whitley brewery family, who has bought and is currently in the process of renovating the pub. Greenall, who also owns The Surprise in Chelsea, is reportedly keen to turn it into more of a traditional pub, although presumably along very West London lines. You’ll soon be able to judge for yourselves: The pub opens on 1 November. 

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Keep London Beer City free

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Two Pubs, One City

The Clissold Arms, Muswell Hill; The Cart and Horses, Maryland. 

I don’t know Simon Bird, I’ve never met him, but I really don’t care for him.

Let me explain. I’m at the Clissold Arms in Muswell Hill, which is famous for one thing: its connection to 60s pop sensation The Kinks. The band grew up nearby and Ray and Dave Davies gave their first performance here, in December 1960 (as a CAMRA plaque on the outside attests).

Naturally, the owners of The Clissold Arms are keen to commemorate/profit from this, which is why they have something called The Kinks Room, full of memorabilia and that. It looks good on the Internet - Kinks cushions, dolls, gold discs, that sort of thing - so I’ve come to have a look.

I can’t, though, because on this Friday afternoon Simon Bird had booked it out. Kontroversy! Inwardly cursing him, I take my pint of Meantime Pale Ale (£6; there’s no cask) out into the sizable garden/yard, to sit sullenly amidst an abundance of pot plants and some graeco-roman-ish statues.

It’s not very Kinks-y out here. The original building, which is now The Kinks Room, is little more than an annex, part of an events space masquerading as a pub (there are three bookable rooms), with a vibe more akin to a garden centre than a down-to-earth boozer. 

Today, there’s a lot of customers dressed in black, spilling out of one of those private function rooms onto the patio. Did the Kinks have a big goth following? No, they look too happy. Must be a wake. 

One of them is carrying out a terse conversation on his phone within earshot of my table. “I don’t know what time I’ll be finished here,” he says, finally. Conversation over.

There’s piped music. It’s not The Kinks. It’s Greek. Is it too much to expect them to play The Kinks on rotation? Probably is. I do think they could spread The Kinks love around a bit more, though - instead of letting Simon Bird hog the lot. 

If I had one bit of advice for The Clissold Arms, it’d be to take a trip to the Cart and Horses, 45 minutes’ away by public transport in Maryland (basically Stratford). 

This is Maiden country. The walls are covered with Iron Maiden imagery, the door mat says Iron Maiden, Robinson’s Iron Maiden beers are available, there’s a jukebox that seems to mainly play Iron Maiden - and, should you be left in any doubt, it reads ‘Cart and Horses The Birthplace of Iron Maiden’ above the door. 

Most of the beer on the bar is provided by Heineken, so it’s an appropriately rock-and-roll-adjacent if not very enjoyable Beavertown Bones (£5.80; no cask) for me. This pub is basically one square, reasonably small room - similar, probably, to the Clissold before it got garden centre-d. It’s not at all grungy: in fact, with its bar stools and herringbone floor, it’s quite smart.

And, with perhaps a dozen punters in and the jukebox pumping, it is full of life. Take the three fifty-something women to my left, who  are clearly big Maiden-heads. Two are drinking the Maiden beer (the other’s on J2O) and they’re thrilled when ‘Fear of The Dark’, Maiden at their shrieking/shredding peak, comes on the jukebox. There’s singing along, air guitar, a general sense of ‘let’s fucking rock’. Chat is constant: “Boris Johnson was OK as mayor of London but as prime minister …” one of them offers before trailing off, perhaps bored by her train of thought.

To my right there’s a heavily bearded young man with a guitar case, just sitting there, looking a bit nervous, staring into the middle distance. He’s drinking Heineken 0.0, which is pretty un-rock-and-roll.

This year the cover of CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide featured Iron Maiden-style imagery, which has caused a solid if not unanimous undercurrent of grumbling amongst CAMRA diehards. It actually seemed quite a smart decision to me, a nod to the fact that music and pubs go together almost as neatly as beer and boozers. 

This is more true in London than anywhere else, at least when it comes to pop and rock: most of the city’s great names, from the Stones to Kate Bush, polished their acts playing in pubs. There was even a 70s genre - pub rock - defined purely by the fact most of the venues were London pubs.

The Cart and Horses retains that spirit, while also succeeding as a pure pub. My personal taste veers much more towards The Kinks than Maiden, but in terms of pubs, it’s no contest. Run To The Hills? Run to the Cart and Horses, more likely!*

*sorry

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Salt Mines

Yorkshire brewery Salt, which took control of Hop Stuff back in 2021, has put in for planning permission to expand the Woolwich brewery’s former taproom into an adjacent premises. You can see the application here.  

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Bock to Bock

Mother Kelly’s has launched a very tasty sounding new festival for the colder months. Bocktober! will take place across their four bars, plus the Queen’s Head in King’s Cross, taking in a variety of dark and strong beers: milds, porters, stouts, old ales, doppelbocks, eisbocks, weizenbocks, and barleywines. It’s on from Thursday 26th October until Sunday 29th.

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Wiesn Season

On the face of it, organising an Oktoberfest event doesn’t seem too complicated. What do you need? Lots of German beer, bratwurst and pretzels, a crowd of thirsty punters willing to dress in lederhosen/dirndls and crash glasses together, and long tables for them to sit at/stand on. Otto’s your uncle. 

Not so fast! There’s another crucial element that’s harder to secure, particularly on this side of the North Sea: an oompah band. 

How many oompah bands are there in London good enough to entertain crowds for hours on end? “There’s so much demand now,” laughs Helen Busch, Beer Sommelier at German Kraft, which operates four venues in London, three of them (Elephant and Castle, Mayfair and Dalston) with breweries attached. She’s understandably cagey about the name of the band booked for German Kraft’s celebration. “At this time of year, the good oompah bands are really popular. But when you have a good one, it [makes the event] really great!”

Oktoberfest has never been bigger in this city. There are dozens of events, including (to name just four) London Oktoberfest, London Bierfest, Camden Oktoberfest, and Between the Bridges Oktoberfest. At a time when guaranteed revenue-drivers are needed more than ever, no bar or brewery can afford to let Oktoberfest go by. 

You could be wearing lederhosen every weekend until November, if you so chose. There is, it appears, a burgeoning appreciation for German beer culture in the UK, driven both by the undeniable appeal of Oktoberfest’s straightforward, guilt-free hedonism, but also by a growing interest in German beer culture, fuelled by the quality of modern British lager and Bavarian imports. 

German Kraft, founded in 2017 at Mercato Metropolitano in Elephant and Castle, has played a role, too. Having drunk their beer intermittently since the beginning, I think it’s improved hugely. In June, for example, I enjoyed a few glasses of the unfiltered pale Zwickl lager alongside famed beer writer Adrian Tierney-Jones (he seemed equally pleased with his Marzen).

Given all this, perhaps it’s no surprise that German Kraft is one of London brewing’s most upwardly mobile companies, expanding in all directions. It’s shortly to open a brewpub in Vienna, as part of the Gleis//Garten development that’s bringing street-food-market culture to the culturally conservative Austrian capital. 

Felix Bollen, whose lank blond locks make him look as much surfer as brewer, has driven this growth alongside father Florian, the project developer for Gleis//Garten. He’s in Austria getting the venue, a former tram shed, ready to open early next month, leaving 29-year-old Busch the public face of German Kraft’s operations in London.

Born and brought up in Erlangen in Franconia, Germany’s brewing heartland, she was a chef until a desire for a different lifestyle led her into the world of pubs - specifically, The Churchill Arms in West Kensington, one of London’s most famous pubs and Fullers’ most profitable. It rekindled a latent interest in beer, she says: “People started asking me, why is this called a white beer? Why do we serve cask ale in this glass? I started researching and realised I really enjoyed it.”

Having done a beer sommelier course at The Institute of Brewing and Distilling, she emailed Felix Bollen, explaining not only what she’d done but also that, as it turned out, they came from the same part of the world. “I said that I would like to do something more customer-focused, talking about the beer, would you need someone like me? And PS, I’m German.”

Amongst other roles, she now leads brewery tours at all the German Kraft sites. What does she think of Londoners’ knowledge of German beer? “It’s not bad!” she says. “I feel that, through Covid, everyone had these beer subscriptions, and people got more interested in different styles. And after I had more people who knew about wheat beer, for example, or Rauchbier, who know about the variety there is.”

That includes Berliner Weisse, available at the Dalston bar, for example. Each of the sites has subtly different offerings, based on the local clientele (Dalston, for eg, has plenty of IPA), but for volume Elephant and Castle can’t be beaten. With a 20-hectolitre brewery, and 12 fermentation tanks (nine 4000-litres, three 6000 litres), it’s a sizable operation, churning out beer for what German Kraft claims is London’s biggest beer garden.

It’ll be full on the 6th and 7th of October, when the Oktoberfest celebrations take place (events at the other venues take place over subsequent weekends), Oompah band and all. The Festbier, Leopold, is an amber lager, brewed with Munich malt, as was once traditional in Munich before most of the big six dropped the dark malt. (Their beers are now amped-up versions of their everyday Helles.)

German Kraft seems to embody the long-term shifts taking place in London drinking. Food markets, not pubs. Lager, not cask ale. Events, not quiet pints.  

The next project, Busch says, is a new bar in Tranmere, Merseyside, catering to fans heading to nearby Prenton Park. German beer is on the up and up in Britain. What more could Busch ask for? “I’d like for people to stop calling Helles [emphasis on the e] a Hells,” she says with a laugh. Isn’t that Camden’s fault? “Yes! They butchered that name. It’s awful.”    

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Crossed Wires

Panic on social media last week when it appeared that legendary King’s Cross pub McGlynns was about to shut permanently. As so often on the socials, that wasn’t quite right: the landlord, Gerry, died recently but the family are looking for someone else to take the pub on, and suggestions that it’s about to be ‘turned into flats’ look to be a bit wide of the mark. Let’s hope the pub reopens soon. 

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Match Makers

The best thing about football is going to the pub beforehand. The game itself may be better than 25 years ago, when I started going regularly (most of the players can now trap and pass the ball, which is a plus) but it’s still often dull and fans are not as loud or funny as they used to be - thanks, I suppose, to high ticket prices and the related fact that people take it much too seriously. 

Some of my most memorable football moments have come in pubs. The White Horse - all roaring open fires and Bunterish bonhomie - on a freezing January afternoon, hoping that afternoon’s game against Blackburn would be called off (it was); being threatened in full central-casting Cockney by a squat West Ham fan outside the Springbok in W12; watching England beat Argentina in The East Dulwich Tavern in 2002, and celebrating afterwards for long enough that I was able to buy the Evening Standard on the way home; and so on, and so on.

What’s all this about? Well, the football season is, you may have noticed, very much upon us. So where should you drink if you’re going to one of London’s Premier League or Football League clubs and you want something decent, and definitely no aggro? Here’s where. 

Arsenal

Bank of Friendship

Arsenal is lucky in that it’s surrounded by pubs, and plenty of them are worth a punt. This is my favourite: small, independent, good beer and other booze, 15 minutes’ walk from the ground.

Brentford

The Express Tavern

This handsome inn overlooking Kew Bridge is basically in Brentford’s new ground. The amount of cask ale they offer worries me - try before you buy - but it’s a lovely spot with plenty of space out the back.

Charlton

Green Goddess

A lot of fans drink in Borough and then get the train out to Charlton, where most of the pubs are focused on home fans. Here’s another option, just under half an hour’s walk from the ground. Opened in 2022, the Green Goddess offers the best of British microbrewing. 

Chelsea

The White Horse

The Sloaney Pony may not be quite the beer mecca it once was, but it’s still head and shoulders above the rest of the pubs close to Stamford Bridge. The Harvey’s is usually excellent here.

Crystal Palace

Gipsy Hill Brewing Co

Sorry, Palace fans, this was a tough one. An admirable club in many ways, it’s a bit short of high-quality drinking options. Cast your net a bit wider, and head to Gipsy Hill’s taproom. There are direct trains from Gipsy Hill Station to Norwood Junction, a short stroll from the ground.

Fulham

The Bricklayers

Fulham supporters can also use the White Horse (Fulham & Chelsea are never at home on the same day) but let’s mix things up. The Bricklayers is over the river in Putney; a vintage Fulham scarf behind the bar demonstrates the pub’s allegiance. Lots of lovely Tim Taylor’s here to get stuck into. 

Leyton Orient

Supporters’ Club Bar

Do you know many Leyton Orient fans? It’s time to meet some, particularly if they’re members here. This club is easily the best place to drink in the environs of Brisbane Road: expect eight cask beers, including a Mild, normally Mighty Oak’s Oscar Wilde.

Millwall

The Kernel Taproom

There are, of course, plenty of places to drink in Bermondsey but this is the best. The current taproom will be closing soon, but don’t worry - it's just moving around the corner into a new unit. Try the Dunkel. 

QPR

Prairie Fire

There are some decent if unspectacular pubs around Shepherds Bush - including a Brewdog - but this is a more interesting option, with its 16 taps and Kansas City BBQ.  

Sutton United

Hope, Charshalton

This marvellous pub wins award after award, and for good reason. It’s a genuine local hero - it’s community-owned - with high-quality beer to match. A couple of miles from the ground, admittedly, but worth it imo.

Tottenham Hotspur

Redemption Taproom

Beavertown has opened a new pub next to Spurs’ space-age ground, but they don’t need your money. Spend it instead at  Redemption, one of modern London brewing’s pioneers. Spurs fans will enjoy Hopspur, an amber ale.

West Ham

Howling Hops

The area around the Olympic Stadium is not exactly full of pubs, but Hackney Wick is not too far away. Beer Merchants is excellent, but I think Howling Hops is the pick due to atmosphere & consistently good beer. One of the most enjoyable of London’s taprooms. 

AFC Wimbledon

The Sultan and The Trafalgar 

Why go to one pub when you can do two? The Sultan and the recently reopened Trafalgar are two of London’s best, both within stumbling distance of The Dons’ shiny new home.

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Saint’s Alive

Saint Monday, the new brewery from the Graceland team, is launching on September 21st, from 6pm. Here’s what to expect.  

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August Performance

German Kraft isn’t the only London brewery to be thriving at the moment. Pillars in Walthamstow enjoyed their busiest ever August, “in terms of customers delivered to, beer that has left the brewery and trade sales revenue,” according to head of sales Peter Kennelly, while Two Tribes “shipped more beer in the first two weeks of August than in the whole of 2019”. 

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LBA Festival tomorrow!

This weekend sees the London Brewers Alliance Festival take place at the Griffin Brewery in Chiswick. More than 50 of the capital’s breweries will be pouring beer, with food from Prairie Fire (see above). Tickets, which cost £44 and include all your beer, are still available for afternoon and evening sessions. 

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What I did on my holidays

Spain is a fascinating country when it comes to booze. It feels like a wine place - it is in southern Europe, after all - but it isn’t, really. They make wine, it’s true, and plenty of it, but in terms of domestic sales it trails a fair way behind beer. Most of that beer, inevitably, is industrial lager. This year, I spent two weeks in Sitges, a seaside town close to Barcelona that is home to innumerable bars, most selling Estrella Damm (cloyingly sweet, very light, maize and rice) or Moritz (less sweet, rice).

Away from the golden sand and crepuscular streets running away from them, though, there’s more interesting beer - and this is where the London link emerges. There are two breweries in Sitges, as far as I can make out: La Sitgetana and Wylie, both of which operate on the dusty hills overlooking the main town. 

At La Sitgetana, I enjoyed a superb Robust Porter, rich and balanced, roasty and bitter, served with huge care. (They also make a Brown Ale, described on their website as ‘a genuine Real Ale’.) Wylie’s British beer, a Best Bitter called Shonkey, was less successful. There was lots of sweet malt and fruity yeast character, but no bittering hops to tether it to. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see - at a time when British beer is struggling in Britain - that there is some thirst overseas for London and the UK’s beer tradition. 

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Westminster Gossip

Gerry Dolan, who has been managing the Westminster Arms for 30 years, retired earlier this month. The 68-year-old Cavan native says he’s seen them all during his time at the Shepherd Neame boozer. “I’ve served everybody. You name it, they’ve been here – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bob Geldof and Prince Edward. I think a lot of the celebrities come here because we never bother them. They just come for a quiet drink.”

Amongst those who turned up for his farewell party was Nigel Farage, a divisive figure if ever there was one. It reminded me of what another publican, whose central London pub hosted Farage on occasion, once told me: staff always served the former UKIP leader in an unbranded glass in order to avoid unwanted publicity.   

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Going Dutch

Among a spate of recent openings, a new Dutch-focused bar in Bermondsey stands out. “It Ain’t Much If It Ain’t Dutch” (try that after one too many De Molens) offers 30 Dutch beers on tap at 67-68 Enid St, the same road as Moor and Cloudwater.  

Two new brewery openings, both of which we’re planning to feature more here about: Blondies, an off-shoot of a dive bar in East London, opened in Clapton in August; and EKO, which makes African-inspired Vegan beers, has secured a space in Peckham. Good luck to them both. 

Finally, The William IV in Shepherdess Walk, N1, has re-opened with a very decent if keg-centric beer list. 

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One City, Two Pubs

Blythe Hill Tavern, SE6, and The Honor Oak, SE23

The nine-year-old boy by my side is amazed by the size of a pint. He pokes me in the midriff as the barwoman at the Blythe Hill Tavern pours a glass of Harvey’s Sussex Best. “Woah! Is that how much a pint is? That’s a lot.”

It’s the last day of the summer holidays and I’ve brought my son to the pub. It’s a learning experience, for me as much as him. For him, there are multiple revelations: the size of a pint, the purpose of a fruit machine, whether it’s better to drink Diet Coke from the glass provided or straight from the bottle. For me, it’s about tackling the thorniest, most hornet’s nest-y of subjects: children in pubs. 

Plenty of otherwise reasonable people froth at the mouth just thinking about an infant in a boozer. The internet is replete with tales of children running riot on licensed premises, knocking over glasses and getting under feet, while their oblivious parents get blotto on Prosecco, or something else equally un-pub-appropriate.

My own view is, as you’d expect, richly nuanced. I don’t really like taking my kids to the pub because 1) it’s not much fun for them, & 2) consequently it’s not much fun for me. I feel, in a sort of general sense, that kids in pubs are a good thing, and that those who oppose it are mean-spirited and wrong. On the other hand, I still don’t want to take my children to pubs. 

But maybe I’ve been doing it wrong. Most of my limited visits to pubs with kids have taken place at the weekend, when everyone else has the same idea, and some pubs can feel a bit creche-y. Maybe it’s better to take them at different times, like, for example, on a Tuesday afternoon? That’s when I like to go to the pub, after all. Maybe children do too? 

There’s only one way to find out.

The Blythe Hill Tavern, one of my favourites, is a traditional pub: carpet, three rooms, basic loos, excellent service. It’s not really a pub for kids, if I’m honest, although I’ve seen plenty in here, particularly during those mad months immediately following lockdown. (Soon after, a sign went up on the door asking parents to fold up their pushchairs before entering.) 

We’re well past that, thank God. Having secured a pint of Harveys and a Diet Coke (£8.05 for both), we head into the large back yard, a concrete space enlivened by hanging baskets and branded sun shades. There’s a handful of other people here: an old man drinking something orange through a straw, a middle-aged man watching racing on his mobile phone and a younger couple who are giving off a slightly grumpy vibe. They are all, as far as I can tell, unmoved by the appearance of a child.

But why would they be upset? My child is as well-behaved as me. He’s a chubby-cheeked delight. And then there’s the weather: it’s sunny, but not too humid. You couldn’t pick a better day to be in a pub garden, and only an ogre would get grumpy about a coke-sipping infant at such a moment. 

We enjoy a happy half hour, rattling though some key discussion points - what he thought of the pub (4½ stars out of five), what he was looking forward to about school, which started the next day, and the infuriating rise of paper straws - before we moved onto our second pub: the Honor Oak.

 10 minutes’ walk west of the BHT, this pub has been at the centre of a culture war face-off, if you can call it that, recently. And it’s all about children! The pub occasionally hosts events during which drag queens read storybooks to kids, and some people - not many, in all honesty - have got their knickers in a twist. There have been a number of protests and counter-protests at the pub over the past year. 

Britain’s half-arsed culture war seems a long way away today, though. There’s no cask ale (the lines are currently being cleaned, a sign says), so I order Forest Road Ride, while my son goes for draught Diet Coke and a packet of Piper’s salt and vinegar crisps (£11.65 in total).

This is my first visit to the Honor Oak. Why? Well, it's always looked more of a food than beer pub to me, the sort of place that fills up with local families at the weekend, more Chablis than Carlsberg. 

But today - and it is, admittedly, almost entirely empty - it’s a delight. We occupy one of the large wooden booths at the front, enjoying the malfunctioning plant watering system - which sprays erratically here and there, like a baby boy mid-nappy change - and speculate as to how the button which controls the lights and heating in the booth works.

By the time we’ve finished, my son is plotting both future pub trips and future packets of crisps (Pipers are ‘9/10, better than Walkers’). As for me, I think I’ve worked out how to make going to the pub with kids fun: do it on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, when the pubs are empty. Take them out of school, if necessary. After all, it’s an education. 

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London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. If you’ve got a story or an observation, contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you like what you’ve read, please share it with your friends; if you’ve been forwarded this email and enjoyed it, you can sign up here. Thanks for reading.

A monthly newsletter about London beer and pubs, (mostly) written by journalist Will Hawkes

Subscribe here!

The Centre

Dockley Road Industrial Estate in Bermondsey has changed since I was last here. Then, pre-Covid, it was a scrappy collection of industrial units occupied by some of London’s best small food producers; now the same space is filled by soaring blocks of black and beige flats, with glass-fronted shop units at ground level housing many of those same producers.

Some elements, though, are unaltered. The Kernel Brewery, which inhabits a sizeable chunk of the pre-Victorian railway arches running along the north side of what is now called ‘Dockley Apartments’, is much as it was before, physically at least. That’s satisfyingly appropriate: there’s a feel of permanence about The Kernel that increases as London’s brewing world becomes ever more precarious. 

How precarious? Well, Bermondsey has risen and fallen since The Kernel was established in Druid Street in 2009 (by late 2010, when I pitched up to research a feature for The Independent, it had captured beer-drinking London’s attention). O’Riordain was working with just two colleagues, Chrigl Luthy and Toby Munn, brewing on a 6.5 hectolitre brewhouse that was subsequently bequeathed to Partizan, and bottling by hand, before the move to Dockley Road in 2012.

A lot has changed. Partizan no longer brews in Bermondsey. The other brewery most associated with The Kernel, Brew By Numbers, faces an even more uncertain future. Change is pervasive and relentless - but like the ravens in the Tower of London, we’ll know that modern brewing in the capital is in real trouble if The Kernel ever founders on the rocks.

Its significance is such that it has become something of a heritage brand, widely regarded as a London classic, like Paddington Bear or double-decker buses. Perhaps it’s the largely unchanged pale brown labels, maybe it’s the commitment to historic recipes; but The Kernel has seeped into the fabric of modern London like no other small brewery.

“In Druid Street, Toby had pink hair, I was trying to be cool but really had no idea,” says Evin, not a man given to rash decisions or, indeed, utterances. “We were gung ho! Now, I think, to most people we seem closer to Fuller’s on a scale of age. We’ve gone from being the new school of craft to a more traditional type of brewery.”

Some things have evolved. The brewery’s website once stated, boldly and plainly, that “we make Pale Ales, India Pale Ales and old school London Porters and Stouts towards these ends,” but there’s greater variety now. Lager, a result of extra tank capacity during the Pandemic; a whole variety of barrel-aged beers, of which more later; and cask-conditioned ale, which would have seemed remarkable back in 2010.

The reason they didn’t make cask then, Evin says, was financial - the slightly better margin on bottles was crucial as a small brewery. But cask, which still represents only a small chunk of production, makes obvious sense for a brewery like this, with its bottled-conditioned ales and 19th-century recreations. (Cask pale ale is sold for the same amount per litre as keg, which is more unusual than you might imagine.)    

There are many railway arches in London brewing, but few as atmospheric as these, particularly the wonky inner rooms where a collection of barrels (white wine, cognac, Irish whiskey) are stacked, tidily and untidily. Soaring, unmanicured brick walls - shaded every colour from yellow to grimy, sooty Oliver Twist black - provide one of London’s most genuinely 19th-century atmospheres. If you want to imagine the industrial era when London brought brewing into the modern age, this is a good place to do it.

Appropriately, change here is slow, as fruit sourced from Loughton in Essex (even the “tart, crunchy” apricots, much to my surprise) and yeast evolve over weeks and months in barrel, and often in bottle too. 

People stick around, too. Five people - including Evin and Chun Lee, who designed the brewery’s software system, called ‘Cheddar’, that handles stock and invoicing - are still working here who started at the old brewery. Until Covid, there was a flat hierarchy - everyone did a bit of everything - but that’s changed. The opening of the taproom introduced new colleagues working solely on that, while a natural human desire for progression meant the situation evolved in the brewhouse, too.

Covid-19 also affected the brewery’s sales. Once it struggled to keep up with demand; now it makes about 8000 hectolitres a year, short of its 9000-hec capacity. It’s not a problem, Evin says, although it is harder to plan for the future. “It seems like before Covid you’d have little ups and downs but things didn’t change that much, and you could imagine what the future might be," he says. “It’s just become so much more difficult to think about what’s going to happen next.”

And then there are the breweries that have fallen along the way recently - “there’s not much sympathy out there; economic realities are harsh” - and the pervasive cynicism now surrounding craft beer. “10 years’ ago, [craft brewers] were getting people excited based on a set of values, not just beer,” he says. “And everyone’s reward for getting involved and excited about those things was a pat on the back from someone who then took those values and sold them to somebody else for lots of money.”

The only major change in the immediate future is the relocation of the taproom around the corner into one of those new shop units, a pre-agreed shift that will allow the archway to be used for food production, as all the others are.

I remember coming to buy beer here in the high days perhaps a decade ago, and Evin’s son would be playing in a sandpit at the front of the brewery. Today, a decade older, he is upstairs at the taproom researching a school project on a brewery computer. Change is inevitable but, crucially, the values remain the same.

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Desi Pub of the Month: The Gladstone, Borough

In his latest column, David Jesudason, author of Desi Pubs, finds Britain’s first truly modern Desi pub in Borough

I have written a lot of articles about the Gladstone in Borough but I always have something new to say about it. Last night I was there and an uncle at the bar was trying to ply with coffee tequila, while plates of pies (paneer, keema or chicken tikka) were whisked past me and publican Megha Khanna told me about the media intrusion she’s had to suffer since I made the Glad the star entry of my book. Apparently a documentary maker filmed her all day despite promising to be out of her hair by the time the pub opened.

Sorry, Meg. But she’s become a media darling for a very good reason. Meg (and her brother Gaurav) run Britain’s first truly modern desi pub - it mixes great food with an ever-changing roster of impeccably poured craft beer. So many people follow in my footsteps and use this pub, like I did, as their entry to the world of desi pubs. It’s not a utopia, though, and some might feel this British-Indian pub leans too heavily on the first part of that hyphen especially because it normally has a white majority crowd. But that’s a superficial reading as everyone here is welcomed with open arms and introduced to diverse regulars - even filmmakers trying to get a desi pub series from Netflix on the back of my book. 

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Des Sez

Last week’s GBBF saw the launch of Cask Beer: The real story of Britain's unique beer culture, a new book by Deptford author Des De Moor about cask ale. It’s such a good idea you wonder why no-one has ever done it before. As a topic, cask ale is hard to beat: it’s knee-deep in mythology, culture, tradition and loads of other interesting stuff. 

And Des is the perfect person to tackle the subject. He’s a clear and engaging writer, scrupulously fair, with a commitment to accuracy and detail that puts many others to shame. He’s been working on the idea for a decade, he says, having initially been partly inspired by Evan Rail’s Why Beer Matters. I chatted to him this week to find out a little bit more about what readers have to look forward to. Here’s what I learnt:

There’s a lot of ignorance about cask beer

“Cask is so central to people’s understanding of beer in this country, but there’s an awful lot of myths and misunderstandings. I think that’s because when it first came into focus - during the 1960s and 1970s - there was very little public understanding of beer and brewing, even in parts of the industry. A good example is The Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood, founded in 1963, who thought the problem was the change from wood to steel casks. You can see why they thought that, but it was wrong.” 

Cask beer is not as old as you think

“One of the things I quickly discovered was that cask beer isn’t actually that old. Cask is a modern product for the industrial age, which is not how it’s presented - one family brewery website talks about its mediaeval origins, but that’s not true. It emerged around the middle of the 19th century; there was a really profound change at that time from the long-matured porters and pale ales that dominated before to the running, ‘mild’ beers that followed. If you transported an 18th-century brewer into the modern day, they’d be much more at home in Belgium than with the cask-ale tradition.”

London is the crucible of modern beer

“Industrial brewing began with Porter, and that began in London. Porter was so specific to London, this huge place, with an unprecedented level of population, all within easy reach of the city’s breweries. You needed something that was cheap, so they used brown malt - pale malt was much more expensive - but the beer made with brown malt is revolting when first fermented because it’s so heavily roasted. So you stick it in a cask for six months, and the flavours round off - not just the malt but the hops too. Without London you wouldn’t have had that, and without that the whole subsequent history of beer would have been different.”

Cask is now a niche product - and it’s time we all accepted that

“Cask as a product only accounts for 4.3 percent of beer production in this country. There’s a bit of cognitive dissonance with people who go around thinking it’s still the working man’s drink - but it absolutely clearly isn’t, and we need to acknowledge that, and to treasure it for what it is. If it’s going to survive, we need to treat it as something very special - and that brings in the issues of quality and price. We need to emphasise the things that make it different and special and make sure they’re always expressed in the right way.”

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Numbers Up

GBBF was an interesting event. Tuesday’s trade day was thronged - as busy as I’ve ever seen it - but numbers fell off very sharply around 8pm, by which time it was open to members of the public, who pay for their tickets. How did it go over the full week? CAMRA wouldn’t tell me the overall attendance (the organisation hasn’t always been so cagey), but did say it was up on last year. That’s good news, but I suspect there’s been a decline since pre-Covid in line with the rest of hospitality.

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Porter in a Storm

Fact of the day: London Black, Anspach & Hobday’s smash-hit nitro porter, now represents around 70 percent of production for the South London brewery. 

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New and Improved

There’s been a handful of new openings. In Brixton, Friendship Adventure, a brewery founded in 2017, has opened a second taproom in Market Row in the heart of Brixton Village Market. In Barnes, The Waterman’s Arms is to reopen in September under the aegis of Joe Grossman, who founded burger chain Patty & Bun. Expect that one to be food-focused. 

Meanwhile, the Grape and Grain, a Crystal Palace cask-beer destination until it closed in 2017, has been up for sale by owners JD Wetherspoon. 

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Two Pubs, Two Cities

Corona Bar & Koelschip Yard, Glasgow

A pair of stocky pals are occupying adjacent tables at the Corona Bar in Shawlands Cross, Glasgow. Having returned from a brief but apparently enjoyable cigarette break, they slide back into their seats, drinks where they left them. The first has rum and coke. The second - a traditionalist - has half a Tennents and a glass of whisky. Huge windows and a beautiful pitched stained-glass ceiling bathe them in light. God is in her heaven and, it appears, she’s Scottish. 

But what’s this? A middle-aged couple, the feel of outdoors pursuits about them, approach the bar. They have a short chat with the genial bearded barman, ponder, and then make their choice: two pints of Beavertown Neck Oil, please.

All very irregular, much like this regular feature taking a trip to Glasgow. There is method in my madness, though (and it’s not just because I ran out of time to do it in London ahead of a summer holiday trip to see grandparents in Scotland, and had to quickly think up a reason why a Glasgow edition would be legit). London beer does not - and has never - stop at the edge of Zone 6; it finds new worlds to conquer, as Whitbread and Courage and the rest did in generations gone by. (Will this do?) 

To be specific, Beavertown has decided to conquer Glasgow, amongst other cities. If you wander around Scotland’s largest city, you’ll see numerous adverts for North London’s premier hopslingers, from the huge screen above the platforms at Glasgow Central to bus stops all over the city. When my sister-in-law offered me a beer from a motley collection left in the fridge by her 18-year-old son and his pals, it was there, alongside Peroni and the rest. And it’s on bartops all over - particularly, it appears, the fashionable bits of the city’s Southside.

At The Corona Bar, it shares space on the handsome wooden bar with Budvar, Staropramen, Tennents, Guinness, Belhaven Best and another Londoner, Camden Hells, amongst others. Brew By Numbers cans are amongst options in the fridge. There’s no cask ale. A pint of Neck Oil is £6, pricey for Glasgow but about £1.50 cheaper than London. 

I take mine to a corner perch. This single-story Edwardian corner pub is bohemian, very bourgeois. There’s a couple with a spaniel, some people with dyed pink hair, three well-to-do gents, plus the pals at the adjacent tables. Tasteful hip hop - such as Roots Manuva - plays in the background. There’s football on the telly, but the sound is turned down. There are lots of plants and old Tram destination boards plus, for some reason, wooden tennis rackets on the wall. It’s spacious and light and not like a classic Glasgow pub at all. You can see in from outside!

Having finished my Neck Oil - decent, although less enjoyable the further down I went - I wander northwards towards the Clyde. There’s a lot of pubs in this part of Glasgow. On the outside of the Regent Bar, Neck Oil is listed alongside the other staples: Tennents, Strongbow, Madri, and so on. Further evidence, I guess, that it's becoming the default national craft option, Madri for hopheads, which makes sense - although you think that, particularly in Scotland, Brewdog would have something to say about that. 

Not everywhere sells Neck Oil, though. Koelschip Yard, for example, a bar the best part of kilometre north on Pollockshaws Road. This is a modern beer bar in an old-fashioned Glasgow pub: high windows means you don’t know what you’re getting until you’ve opened the door. There could be anything behind there, I suppose, but I’m pretty confident that a craft-beer place with the sign ‘Card Payments Only’ on the door is not going to be too daunting.

And so it proves. There are five people at the bar, including the barman, and four have beards. Two of them are chatting about Brian Wilson. Service is quick and friendly. The Kelly family crest is in pride of place on the wall behind the bar (this pub used to be called Kelly’s). The 14 beers on the list (including one cask beer) include Anspach & Hobday’s London Black, but I want something from Glasgow so I opt for Overtone’s Czech Yourself (£5.50), a Czech pale lager.

It’s opaque and there’s a touch of strawberry in the flavour, but I enjoy it, served in a squat handled Budvar glass with a nice collar of foam. There’s a lot to savour about this pub. It's very calm. Besides the gents at the bar, there are a couple of other groups chatting quietly about this and that: beer in Alsace, Tom Waits, a funny thing their daughter said the day before.

The beer takes a delightful half-hour to see off. As I get up to leave, one of the bearded gents is explaining why he dislikes a particular boss so much. “Treats his staff like shite, so I’ve heard but … to be honest, I’ve just never liked him.” Hard to argue with that.

What does this have to do with Neck Oil? Not a great deal, I suppose - except to say that, in common with bosses you don't really like, Neck Oil is everywhere and it's only going to get more so. Given the quality of some of the beers that have dominated British bars down the years, I can't get too upset about that.

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London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. If you’ve got a story or an observation, contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you like what you’ve read, please share it with your friends; if you’ve been forwarded this email and enjoyed it, you can sign up here. Thanks for reading. 

A monthly newsletter about London beer and pubs, written by journalist Will Hawkes. This is a special edition about We Are Beer Week produced in collaboration with the London Craft Beer Festival 

Subscribe here!

Donostia Beer

14 years on, I can easily recall José Ramón Elizondo, the former owner of Aloña Berri in San Sebastian. He was in his mid-sixties, straight-backed and smartly dressed, with a lavish white moustache and a genial, encouraging catchphrase whenever a customer ordered from the elegantly arrayed selection of dainty pintxos on the bar: muy bueno, muy bueno. 

His food was - to my uneducated palate, anyway - undeniably muy bueno, particularly brandada de bacalao, an unctuous blend of salt cod, olive oil and potato served on a dainty piece of bread.    

I expect plenty of you have had a similar experience. Any serious European glutton has gorged themselves in the Basque Country, whether it be San Sebastian (Donostia, to give it its Basque name), Bilbao or, for the serious heads, one of the towns in the region’s verdant, hilly hinterland (‘Bilbao? Yes it’s not bad but you have to try Oñati, darling’), invariably washing it down with high-quality wine or cider. 

But not beer. Here, as in the rest of Spain, beer is popular but limited. Not necessarily bad, predictably refreshing - but almost always pale lager, even if breweries making a greater variety of beer are on the rise. The way Spaniards tend to order beer - Una Cana, ‘a beer’, nothing more - tells you all you need to know about this nation’s, and this region’s, straightforward relationship with beer.

Enter Basqueland in 2015. Kevin Patricio and Ben Rozzi, Americans frustrated by the quality difference between Basque beer and the rest of its gustatory options, started brewing on a tiny scale for the San Sebastian restaurant, La Madame, where Patricio was head chef. In order to shift the rest of the 3000 litres produced in those early batches, they sent some to other restaurants in San Sebastian. It was popular, Patricio says; those restaurants, among them many of the city’s most-feted, soon demanded more.

At this year’s London Craft Beer Festival, the capital's drinkers will get an opportunity to taste why. Not only will Basqueland be at the festival - Patricio is there on Friday - but they’re also part of two events for We Are Beer Week: a collaboration beer and food pairing event with 40ft Brewing at the latter’s home in Dalston on Wednesday August 9th, starting at 5pm; and a tasting of beer from their Barrelworks Programme, hosted by Brand Ambassador Elliott Konig, at Kill The Cat on Brick Lane on Thursday 10th.

What is perhaps most interesting about Basqueland’s beers is how they convey Basque culture to the rest of the world, and the rest of the world to the Basque Country. These are beers brewed along global craft-beer lines - IPA, Helles, Imperial Stout, all largely unknown in San Sebastian until recently - but with a deft touch that reflects local preferences. “Our beers are all about balance and dryness, and they’re made to be good with food, too,” says Patricio (below, second from right, front row).

It’s notable, too, that their most popular beer is a 6.8 percent IPA, Imparable, not a session-strength pale ale or lager. That says something about local tastes.

Terroir, to be honest, doesn’t really come into it. English malt (Simpsons), American hops, London Fog Yeast: these are the tools of Basqueland’s trade. There’s no choice. This is not a part of the world where malt is produced in great volume, and hop-growing is nascent to say the least. This year, Patricio says, Basqueland will produce a green-hopped beer made with hops grown by a recently-established local producer.

This blend of the local and the foreign reflects how Patricio has done things since arriving from New York alongside his Basque wife Maite in 2011. At La Madame, Patricio - who is half Filipino - introduced flavours from Asian cooking, the sort of things that are easy to find in the UK or USA but were scarce in the Basque Country. Controversial, perhaps, but he insists that local chefs were never anything but friendly. “This part of the world is very welcoming to outsiders,” he says. 

Basqueland’s brewing team, led by former Toöl man Oscar Deuss, spends most of its time on the hop-focused core range, but there’s more experimental stuff, too. 75 barrels are housed at Basqueland, sourced from a supplier in Bordeaux - just around the Bay of Biscay and across the border - used to age a variety of different beers, some of which will be on show at the Kill The Cat event. 

And then there’s Basqueland Izakaya, the brewery’s venue in the heart of San Sebastian, serving not only beers from Basqueland but other European breweries alongside a pan-Asian menu that takes in everything from ramen to teriyaki. A short walk across the neighbourhood of Gros from Aloña Berri, which shut in 2010, it has that distinctive Basqueland feel: a blend of Basque and beyond. 

The event at 40ft is shaping up to be one of the highlights of We Are Beer Week. The collaboration brew is a dry-hopped Kveik beer, offering, Patricio says, “low-mid bitterness, [and] a nice dry and distinct yeast profile,” and made with a trio of hops: Azacca, Cascade and Huell Melon. Muy Bueno? There’s only one way to find out.

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What is We Are Beer Week?

For four years between 2014 and 2017, London Beer City - the precursor to this newsletter - operated as a beer week, tying together the London Craft Beer Festival and the Great British Beer Festival with a series of events at pubs, breweries and other venues around London. We Are Beer Week runs along similar lines: it’s a project aimed at bringing the excitement of the festival to venues around the capital. Keen to find out more? Peruse the schedule here. 

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Star of Sussex

Lewes may be Britain’s most interesting brewing town. This South Downs settlement of just under 18,000 people is home to Harvey’s, one of the greats of the English tradition, Beak, among modern brewing’s most feted names, and Burning Sky, just four miles away, a decent contender for the best modern brewery in the UK.

Then there’s Abyss Brewing. Based in a former maltings, it has its roots deep in Lewes - literally as it turns out, having been born in the cellar of a local pub - The Pelham Arms, run by co-owner Andrew Mellor - and having expanded courtesy of crowdfunding that brought in donations from more than 400 locals. “Lewes is a really exciting place to be,” says Andy Bridge, Mellor’s business partner. “On a Saturday, there’ll be people coming to Harvey’s, then us, then Beak - a really nice migration of beer tourists.”

In that respect, Lewes reflects modern British beer in all its variety. London drinkers who’ve not made it down to Sussex yet will get a chance to try Abyss’s beer during We Are Beer Week, at Clapton Craft in Finsbury Park. A special beer has been brewed for the occasion, and there’ll be more from Abyss too.    

What can you expect? Hoppy beers were where Abyss started, but now they made a wide range of styles - gose, stout and pilsner, for example. (They’re also keen on cask ale, with two hand pumps on at their taproom in Lewes.) A good range, a variety, and a fair reflection of their unique hometown.

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Gnome Home

La Chouffe is one of Belgium's most charismatic breweries, what with their gnome logo (check out Mc Chouffe and his kilt) and consistently good beer. Owned by Duvel Moortgat since 2006, La Chouffe will be hosting a party at West End Belgian bar Lowlander, with La Chouffe, Cherry Chouffe, and Chouffe Soleil aon draft, free stuff, Chouffe games and prizes.

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Five Beers to Try at LCBF

Given the sheer number of beers available at this year’s London Craft Beer Festival, choosing what to drink might prove problematic. Fret not! Here’s five to get you started:

Port City Optimal Wit

I drank a lot of beer on a short trip to Washington DC last year, but the best was made by Port City, a brewery based in Alexandria, just outside the American capital. Led by Bill Butcher, a stickler for doing things right, Port City’s approach is perhaps best exemplified by this superb Belgian-style wheat beer, which abounds with classic orange peel and coriander flavours. One of America's finest witbiers. 

Forest Road Sesh

This pale ale packs a huge amount of flavour into a 4.3 (CHECK) percent beer. Inspired by a sensory comparison session at this year’s Brewers Conference in the US, Forest Road used some high-end techniques (ask founder Pete Brown about it) to produce a beer that abounds in lime blossom, orange and grapefruit, with a long, clean finish that’s unusual in session pale ales like this. Not surprisingly, this beer already makes up 10 percent of Forest Road sales just a few months into its existence.

Beak Tiers

Beak - another Lewes brewery - is the name of the moment, if the well-spoken young man in a Beak cap sitting in front of me at Lord’s earlier this summer is anything to go by. If you like thick, juicy IPAs, then they’re up there amongst the best; this 6.5 percent fruity boi is a festival of tangerine and mango, like a smoothie for boozers. 

The Kernel Biere de Saison Apricot 

Deep within The Kernel’s brewery in Bermondsey, in railway arches which date back to the 1830s, there’s a couple of rooms where beer lingers in barrel and tank, on and off fruit and often in bottle too. These are beers that time to reach their peak, but when they do they can be sublime in a way we expect more from Belgium than Bermondsey. This saison is made with apricots from Essex, imparting bold fruit to balance the dry tartness that characterises the style.   

Lost & Grounded Extra Dry Lager

Once upon a time, it would have been verboten to bring a lager made with rice to a craft beer festival, but those days are long gone. Given it’s Lost & Grounded, too, you know this’ll be good: made with Pils malt and 25 percent flaked rice, hopped with Magnum and Tettnang, it’s extra dry and refreshing. If it’s hot at LCBF, you know where to go.

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Pastry Party

When I first heard the phrase ‘Pastry Beer’, I imagined a Croissant floating in a pint of Bitter, which - while a nice example of entente cordiale - is not, it turns out, quite right. The term actually describes a style of beer rendered sweet and unctuous by a mixture of brewing technique and sugary adjuncts - an approach that, you won’t be surprised to hear, is capable of turning traditionalists puce with fury.

Needless to say, these beers emerged in the United States, where a desire to recreate favourite desserts and sweets in boozy form drove a boom in the middle of the last decade. Alex Kidd, the man behind (very funny) beer blog Dontdrinkbeer, claims to have coined the term in 2017, and both it and the associated trend crossed the Atlantic in earnest soon afterwards.

It has led to some truly extraordinary beers, made with ingredients including (but not limited to) breakfast cereal, Skittles, doughnuts and more marshmallows than I care to imagine. The beers, as you might expect, tend towards the sweet, although there are plenty with a touch of tartness to keep things the right side of cloying. The production and enjoyment of these beers has become a lively, playful subculture within modern beer, populated by those who refuse to countenance the idea that beer should be limited to four ingredients.   

Two of Europe’s foremost pastry purveyors, Unbarred of Brighton and Norwegian outfit Amundsen, have collaborated on a special beer for We Are Beer week. It’s called Cherry Garsour, and it’s a cherry, chocolate and fudge ice cream sour, to be unveiled at Mother Kelly’s in Bethnal Green on Thursday 10th, the day before LCBF. For pastry past masters, it’s a can’t miss; for pastry apprentices, a chance to learn. There’ll be other beers by both breweries on (draught and can), plus prizes to be won, from 5pm until closing

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Orange-y Boom

Is it a coincidence that the London Overground’s most important line, which runs between Highbury and Croydon, opened in the year that craft beer began to take off in London? I don’t think so. There are plenty of other factors involved here (cough gentrification cough), it’s true, but there is a fairly strong correlation between the two.

The ribbon was cut on the extended offspring of the former East London line in April 2010; breweries and beer-inclined pubs quickly began to spring up along its route soon after. Some of the key pioneers have gone now - like the late lamented Mason and Taylor, the bar that Ed Mason co-ran before he co-founded Five Points, or Beavertown’s first base as Duke’s in De Beauvoir - but there’s still plenty of beer interest along this orange stretch. 

Plenty of these, you’ll not be surprised to hear, will be hosting events during We Are Beer week. The bars and breweries of Bermondsey are a hop, skip and jump from Rotherhithe Station; Texan beers will be flowing at Anspach & Hobday’s Arch House, while - a few hundred metres away - Turning Point will be hosting a tap takeover at Craft Beer Junction. The venue for LCBF itself is close to both Wapping and Shadwell, while Gipsy Hill will be taking over the taps at the Wapping Tavern.

A few stops north, at Shoreditch High Street, you’re within strolling distance of both the King’s Arms in Buckfast Street (home to a four-day celebration of hoppy beers from Raise The Bar winners) and Kill The Cat in Brick Lane, which will host Basqueland’s Barrelworks tasting. Their other event, at 40ft’s base ‘The Bootyard’, is almost on top of Dalston Station, while Hackney Church Brew Co are offering £3.50 core-range pints all night just down the road the night before LCBF.

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London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. If you’ve got a story or an observation, contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you like what you’ve read, please share it with your friends; if you’ve been forwarded this email and enjoyed it, you can sign up here. Unsubscribe here. Thanks for reading.

A monthly newsletter about London beer and pubs, (mostly) written by journalist Will Hawkes

Subscribe here

Liquid Lunch

On a sunny Tuesday lunchtime in late June, business at 10 Greek Street is brisk if not bank-busting. Groups of Soho types - well-dressed, 30-something, a touch on the loud side - are merrily deciding what to to order: Gloucester Old Spot Pork, Borlotti Beans & Sea Vegetables (£28), maybe, or Sea Bream, Fennel, Olives, Capers, Samphire (also £28)? The city hoots and hums outside. 

Not many diners, as far as I can see, are drinking beer, with the exception of one table: in the middle of the slim, simply-decorated room sit Luke Wilson, owner of 10 Greek Street, and Nick Trower, founder of Biercraft, a company which specialises in distributing beer to restaurants. Along with Cameron Emirali, who also co-owns 10 Greek Street, they run Braybrooke, one of the UK’s finest lager producers, and serve its Pilsner (launched earlier this year) on draught at the restaurant.

Few understand the current state of beer in London restaurants, and the impact of Covid-19 and the cost of living crisis, better than these two. So how's it going? Not too badly, judging by the health of their two beer businesses. Braybrooke, based in Market Harborough, is in the process of doubling the size of its brewing equipment under head brewer Alexis Inglis Arkell; Biercraft, which supplies beer for about 350 accounts - of which around 200 are restaurants - recently took on a refrigerated storage unit in Old Oak Common, previously owned by wine company Jascots, part of a project to bring logistics and deliveries in-house.

If there are problems, they’re those faced by everyone in hospitality now. Everything is more expensive than it used to be, from raw ingredients to the diners’ final bill. Covid-19 has changed the pattern of a working week: lots of people on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, far fewer on Monday and Friday. And then there’s the Elizabeth Line, the impact of which is still emerging. 

What is clear is that beer in restaurants has settled into a post-craft rut over the past half-decade, pre- and post-Covid. Restaurants, in the main, want just three beers: lager (the house option), pale ale and one more. The paler and crisper the better. Bottles are preferred, although 330ml cans work - but not 440ml, as Biercraft discovered when Pressure Drop moved to that format, and demand from restaurants plummeted. 

Some breweries are more coveted than others, according to Trower, 45. The Kernel has become a modern London classic. There’s something about its approach - varying ABVs, hops, consistency of quality and flavour, a consistent, unfussy aesthetic - that appeals to restaurateurs. “Restaurants want to work with institutions like The Kernel,” says Wilson, since last year also a director of Biercraft.

Back in the early days of the craft-beer boom, some people got excited about the possibility of beer lists in restaurants, but it was never very likely. The majority of restaurants and customers are very happy with wine as the accompaniment to food, thanks very much. Wine is crucial to a restaurant’s bottom line, and customers enjoy the higher ABV and lower volume alongside food. Beer exists as an aperitif, in the main, although it does depend on cuisine.

One quirk of the trade is the way breweries tend to be represented by a number of distributors, unlike wine, where restaurateurs crave exclusivity, according to both Trower and Wilson, who met while working at Liberty Wines. “Rule one was that none of the wines we supplied could be available in any supermarket,” says Wilson, 41. “You’d get a call at 9pm on a Saturday night: I’ve found such-and-such in Waitrose, you’ve ruined my day!”

10 Greek Street may have one excellent beer on draught, but the laws of restaurant booze apply here as much as anywhere else. The restaurant’s income is 60/40 food/drink, Wilson says, and of that 40 percent, beer makes up just 5. That helps to put into context why restaurants don’t focus more on beer: even when it’s as good as Braybrooke Pilsner, most customers will still order wine.

If Wilson seems concerned about anything, it’s 10 Greek Street: “The last six to nine months, with costs going up, it’s been tough. Working from home is a big thing. If there are train strikes, or even just heavy rain, people don’t come in. I still think we’ve got a number of years before it all settles down.” 

The Elizabeth Line is a mixed blessing, he says. Customers can get into town quicker, but back home much quicker too. “We used to have a sitting at 10.45pm, after the theatre, but now we don’t get anyone after 9.30pm. There’s a number of reasons for that - there are good restaurants everywhere now - but we’ve lost that sitting.”

It’s not all bad news. Compared to when 10 Greek Street opened - when Camden Hells was about the most exciting beer he could get his hands on - there’s much more good beer available to restaurants (largely thanks to Biercraft). Still, though, draught beer is unrealistic for most places, which are short on space for lines and who don’t serve enough beer for a Lindr machine, which can be wasteful.

The rise of natural wine, often bracketed with craft beer, hasn’t been the boon you might expect - “Those types of restaurants often go for Tsingtao or something like that,” says Trower - but there may be good news on the horizon. Bierschenke - which opened in Covent Garden at the end of June - has beer and food front and centre, and there’s another beer-focused food phenomenon on the rise. “I think gastropubs are coming back around again,” adds Trower. That’s something to ponder.

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Windrush Flavour

Given the Empire Windrush’s journey to Tilbury 75 years ago, it seems appropriate that a beer brewed to celebrate that key moment in modern British history has also crossed the Atlantic. Windrush, a lager brewed with smoked malt and spices used in Caribbean cooking - thyme, scotch bonnet and pimento seeds - is the creation of Robyn Gustard Weise, a Brixton-born, Brooklyn-raised brewer.

She says the beer came about after she was asked to brew a beer for Barrel & Flow, a Black arts and craft beer festival in Pittsburgh, by Wild East, the New York brewery she was working for last summer. “One of the bartenders at the brewery knew I was really into smoked lagers, and he shared a Schlenkerla Smoked Helles,” she says. 

“It was really crisp and refreshing but not in-your-face smokey; I added some pepper to the beer and it tasted really good. And of course everything needs a name - it was coming up to Carnival season, and I thought it would be cool to nod to that culture, my culture.” 

It arrived in London because Harlem Brewing Company founder Celeste Beatty, her mentor, put her in touch with Brixton Brewery, and they were happy to make it here. Gustard Weise, a regular visitor to the UK (she has family in South London), came over in June to launch the beer. It should be available until the end of August, including at Wild Card Brewery in Walthamstow, Supercute in Brixton, and The Horn of Plenty in Stepney Green. 

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STOP PRESS!! LCBF July Special

There will be an extra London Beer City this month. I’ll be sending out an additional missive to celebrate the London Craft Beer Festival’s We Are Beer event, a city-wide craft beer celebration that takes place in the week of the festival at venues around the city. It’ll be a lot like the old London Beer City, so it made perfect sense to collaborate on an exclusive preview newsletter. You can expect to find that in your inboxes the week starting the 23rd of July.  

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Desi Pub of the Month: The Scotsman, Southall

In his latest column, David Jesudason, author of Desi Pubs, zeroes in on a mind-broadening Naan in Southall

Since my book was released at the end of May it has inspired my neighbour to travel across London - east to west - to visit Southall a staggering six times. Her visits to the majority Desi enclave are heartwarming to me as it was always my intention to get more people travelling around the country and taking themselves outside of their comfort zone.

And she’s certainly being radical by visiting the Scotsman. As an attractive Bosnian woman who doesn’t drink but loves food she’s subverting the normal crowd who would visit the Southall pub - think Punjabi uncles at the bar with boozy tales to tell. I was worried that they would make comments about her appearance in both senses of the word, but the opposite has happened.

She’s worked her way through the menu, chatted to the locals and has since explored the wider area - eating paan leaves and shopping for mangoes. And, like her, once you’ve ordered the Scotsman’s jumbo naan you’d be coming back to Little India again and again.

Desi Pubs is out now.

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Open Season

A battle over The Trafalgar, a well-known cask-ale pub in south Wimbledon, appears to have been won by the good guys. Closed in 2021 amid rumours about conversion into flats, it went up for lease in January, attracting plenty of interest. A deal was struck in June for the pub to reopen under the aegis of former tenant Rodger Molyneaux (also of the Hope in Carshalton) and Oli Carter-Esdale, until recently manager of the King’s Arms in Bethnal Green.

Drinkers can expect much the same as before, according to Carter-Esdale, with a strong focus on cask ale, good keg and bottled beer - and the new leadership team are aiming to “save as much of the famous carpet as possible”. 

“I’m hoping I can blend the best of what the pub used to offer with what I managed to leave behind at the King’s,” he adds. “[It’ll be] A sort of aesthetic ode to historic, Victorian features that offers a welcoming, inclusive safe haven and space for all, with excellent beer and atmosphere to match.” He’s hoping to open later this month, although it may be August.

It’s not the only opening of note lately. North-East London is on the move: Macintosh Ales, run by former Lyle’s front of house man Charlie Macintosh, has launched an ale house at its new home in Stoke Newington, to be open every weekend; and Mother Kelly’s is opening its blendery and taproom in Tottenham this month. Brave Sir Robin in Finsbury Park is also to reopen soon.

Husk Brewing has moved to Canning Town, meanwhile, while big names from the London hospitality world - Oisin Rogers, formerly of the Guinea Grill, and Charlie Carroll, founder of Flat Iron - have taken on The Devonshire in Soho (above). This is excellent news for anyone seeking a decent pint close to Piccadilly Circus. 

In less good news, The Experiment, a collaboration between Pressure Drop and Verdant, in Hackney is closing. The last service is this Saturday. 

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The Art of Brewing

Orbit has collaborated with Nigerian artist Emeka Ogboh (above, with Orbit brewer Chris Matthewman) on a beer to celebrate the opening of his exhibition at the South London Gallery, ‘Lagos, Peckham, Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes’. It’s a 6 percent golden ale, called ‘No Food For Lazy Man’, brewed with English hops alongside traditional Nigerian ingredients: Sugar Cane, Calabash Nutmeg, and Melegueta Pepper. The beer was fermented under Ogboh’s sound installation so that the beer is “vibrating to the sound of Lagos”.

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In Like Flint

Next week sees one of the UK’s most vaunted new breweries, Two Flints, arrive in East London for a tap takeover at Mother Kelly’s bar in Bethnal Green. The event, on 20 July, will include a meet-the-brewer with the Windsor outfit; beers will be available from noon. 

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GBBF Incoming

The Great British Beer Festival, Britain’s biggest beer event, takes place in two weeks. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I appreciate the opportunity to try British ales that aren’t always available in London, plus the German and Czech lagers. There’s an interesting list of brewery bars this year: my recommendations are Fyne Ales, Thornbridge, Iron Pier and Oakham. GBBF runs from 1-5 August at Olympia in West London. 

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Two Pubs, One City

Hermits Cave & Stormbird, Camberwell

A man is deciding what to drink at Stormbird. He has a Brompton bike, helmet, and veins bulging out of his forehead caused, I can only assume, by sustained physical effort. He peruses the keg fonts, has a short think, looks meaningfully at the barman. “What’s a nice, kinda gentle pale ale?” he asks.

It's a reasonable request, especially at 5pm on a slow Sunday in Camberwell, the sluggish heart of South London, soporific in the summer heat. Buses, of which there are many, crawl along Camberwell Church Street. Customers drag chairs out onto the pavement to bask like lizards. Friends stop and chat in the street, willing this Sunday afternoon to last. Monday need not happen. What’s going on north of the river? Who knows? Who cares?

Camberwell is one of my favourite places. My mum went to school here in the 1950s, marched in her Salvation Army uniform over the hill from brown-paint East Dulwich - still decades from gentrification - to Mary Datchelor, a girls’ grammar school in Camberwell Grove, closed in 1981. Her parents, my grandparents, attended and possibly met at William Booth college, which towers over Camberwell from its eerie on Denmark Hill. 

They sold The War Cry in south London pubs, I fled to the toilet in one, 17 years’ ago, during my stag do. That took place at the 2006 Epsom Derby - I backed the winner and spent the proceeds on a slab of Foster’s Lager, a decision I regretted almost immediately - and then the Castle in Camberwell. One of my dimmer friends decided there should be a stripper. When she arrived, I went and hid in the men’s loos. 

At that time Stormbird was a bar called Funky Munky, but its twin across the road, The Hermit’s Cave, was already a staple of Camberwell’s pub scene. Owned by the same family, that relationship - young and old, upstart and established, Stormbird and Hermit’s Cave - has always seemed to inform their respective characters. One is the older version of the other, brown bitter as compared to keg sour. But how does that relationship work now, when many (most?) craft-beer drinkers are the wrong side of 40?

Well (spoiler alert) I’m past 40 now. It’s time to find out. 

When I enter, The Hermit’s Cave is not exactly bursting at the seams. There’s me and one small group, two women and a man, sitting on a table that’s half in the pub, half on the pavement. The vibe is somnolence. The only excitement is on the big screen, highlights of England’s just-completed victory in the third Ashes Test, Mark Wood bowling to discombobulated Australia batsmen.

Out of five or six pumps, one is dispensing cask ale, Oakham Citra (£4.90). It’s decent but lacking zip. In truth, zip is in seriously short supply all round - even the barman looks bored. I don’t mind a lack of zip, though, especially when there’s stuff to look at, and The Hermit’s Cave has plenty of that:

1. It says Nonce on one of the windows (lol). Brand name? 

2. There’s an old-fangled Reliance geyser, a Victorian water heater, in one corner, looking a bit like it’s been fly-tipped

3. Above the bar there’s a feast of old junk, including an accordion

4. Beneath the TV is a very pretty fireplace with ceramic surround featuring white flowers

5. On said fireplace is an advert for ‘Crisp Artois’ - buy two pints of Stella, get a packet of crisps. Tempting.

As I leave a group of young people come in and order glasses of Beavertown.

Across the road, most of the tables are taken, inside and out. Stormbird is in the sun and The Hermit’s Cave isn’t, which may be a factor. Another is the beer, varied and good value, relatively speaking. I go for Track Sonoma (£4.20) which is nice but a bit soapy after the uncompromising hoppiness of the Oakham.

There’s music, very quiet music. I can’t really hear it. Nick Drake? It’s so subdued I can hear people ordering at the bar from my seat along the back wall. “Can I also get a half?” a woman asks, after her male accomplice. Noise filters in from the street. Buses, bicycles, the occasional shout. Nothing to get too worked up about.

The customer base ranges from young - 20s - to older than me. Craft beer has been around for a decade now, and the 30-somethings who loved it when it first emerged are in their 40s now. They’re still going to Stormbird - but maybe they go to The Hermit’s Cave when it’s cooler. Hard to tell on a day like today.  

The man with the bicycle is presented with a half of Verdant’s Lightbulb, which seems to fulfil the brief. Good work by the barman. I finish my pint and wander up the road to the former Castle, now the Camberwell Arms, a well-regarded gastropub, and peer through the window. Food seems to be the order of the day, now, and wine. I doubt they get many strippers. 

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Finally …

Here’s an interesting article from Boak and Bailey about Henekey’s, a London-based pub chain that thrived long before Wetherspoons. 

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London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. If you’ve got a story or an observation, contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you like what you’ve read, please share it with your friends; if you’ve been forwarded this email and enjoyed it, you can sign up here. Unsubscribe here. Thanks for reading.

The New Saints

What remains when a brewery dies? Promotional material, mostly. Arch 382, Mentmore Street, E8, until recently used for storage by London Fields brewery, is full of marketing junk, all of it rather ugly. Bottle openers, keg badges, pallets of out-of-date cans, tarpaulin posters, bar runners, promotional items that defy simple description, all branded London Fields, which was closed by owners Carlsberg Marstons in late 2021. Once fussed over, now destined for a skip in the yard.

The arch is being prepared for its next tenant: a new brewery stepping in London Fields’ shoes, called Saint Monday. Earlier this month a deal that had been a year in the making was confirmed, with Grace Land - which owns six pubs around East and North London - buying the assets of the former brewery, including the name, for a price which owners Andreas Akerlund and Anselm Chatwin insist is less than half of the asked £2m.

For that they’ve got not just Mentmore Street but also the brewery and taproom on Warburton Street. On a Friday lunchtime a week after the deal was inked, this space was a cacophony of noise and transformation, of hammering, cutting, sawing. The front area, soon to be an outdoors space, was having the roof removed. A new bar in front of the glass screen that separates bar from brewery will follow.

One thing that won’t be changing is the brewery itself. While many small new breweries have to make do with equipment reminiscent of an elderly Ford - a few miles on the clock, bits cobbled on - Grace Land have landed themselves a Porsche. It’s a 15-hec Kaspar Schulz kit, installed in 2019 and little-used, boasting pretty much anything a small brewer might need. 

Mark Walewski, formerly of Beavertown, Brew By Numbers, Alefarm (in Denmark) and, most recently, Mikkeller’s brewpub in London, is the brewer. He expects to be making beer by the end of June, with the core lineup to include an 5-percent-ish American Pale Ale, a West Coast IPA, and an oat lager - something a bit different, he says, to the Lost & Grounded Helles now on at all of Grace Land’s pubs.

Walewski’s pedigree is one reason why Saint Monday’s chances of success seem reasonably high. Another is the neighbourhood. This corner of Hackney is modern East London in its purest possible distillation: across the way from the brewery is a new development, The Laundry, with flats starting at £595,000, which includes access to an on-site cinema and gym. (On the advertising hoarding around the yet to be completed structure, it reads “A Life in London Fields is a life full of COLOUR and CHARACTER”.) The other arches contain people making delicious & expensive food, from smoked fish to sourdough.

Given that, it’s perhaps odd that both London Fields’ iterations failed - but they were unusual breweries. The first was founded and run by former drug dealer Julian de Vere Whiteway-Wilkinson, who sold out in 2017 to Carlsberg amid an investigation into his tax arrangements. In turn, the Danish macrobrewers appear to have lost interest, given that the money invested in London Fields, while huge by microbrewing standards, was a tiny drop in the ocean for them. But big companies do that, when people change jobs or a new idea comes sweeping through the office.

Akerlund and Chatwin have demonstrated more commitment to London’s brewing scene. Swedish-born Akerlund, 52, is one of the founders and owners of Barworks, born out of the success of Living Room, a coffee shop that opened in Soho in the mid-90s. Barworks grew to encompass a wide variety of (mostly excellent) pubs before COVID-19 arrived in 2019. That led to the sale of many of their best spaces; Akerlund’s entire focus is now on Grace Land.

(It’s not the first time he’s been involved in a new brewery, either - along with the other two founders of Barworks, he was one of the initial investors in Camden Town Brewery.) 

Akerlund met Chatwin, 42, when the latter was working as a bar back at Two Floors, Barworks’ Soho bar, about 20 years’ ago. Grace Land followed, in the form of Camden’s Black Heart, “a dismal failure for many years”, according to Chatwin, but now a staple of London’s music scene. Of their six pubs, it’s the one that represents the pair best: together, they look a bit like the remnants of a late 90s rock band, invariably clad in black jeans, rarely photographed unless you bully them into it (see below).

It’s an odd time to be opening a brewery, some might think, but Grace Land has the comfort of six pubs to sell it to, plus the taproom. There’ll be no sales team. Their pubs have recently opened up three lines by removing Camden & other beers, so there’s room for manoeuvre.

The pair want to get Saint Monday up and running as quickly as possible, not least because of rent (£97,998 per annum for the brewery and bar, according to the sale advert; £41,200 for Mentmore Street, which may become a bottle shop. The arches are owned by The Arch Company). There are still decisions to be made, from whether to use the serving tanks they’ve inherited to what, if anything, Saint Monday’s branding will look like. On the latter point - and on many others - I suspect they won’t be looking for inspiration in the skip outside Mentmore Street.  

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London’s Burning 

The purchase of London Fields is a timely reminder that one of the most disastrous and - retrospectively, at least - comic events in London’s modern beer history took place there just over 10 years ago. This was 2013’s ‘London’s Brewing’, the London Brewers Alliance’s second celebration of the city’s brewing revival, held in the ‘The Brewhouse’, a pair of railway arches that, confusingly, weren’t actually a brewhouse (and which are not part of the package bought by Grace Land). Everything went wrong. 

I remember it vividly. I was scheduled to give a talk at 12pm on Saturday but by then things were already falling apart, so - 20 minutes after my allotted time, with no-one apparently in charge and tetchy crowds growing at the understaffed bars in front of the stage - I cut my losses and went to The Cock Tavern on Mare Street, which had recently been re-opened by Peter Holt, the man behind Kentish Town’s Southampton Arms. When I got there, I realised plenty of others had already had the same idea.

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Desi Pub of the Month: The Terrace, Southall

In his latest column, David Jesudason, author of Desi Pubs, finds a taste of the Black Country in West London

Now that my book’s officially out and I’m spending my time watching it rise in the charts it’s probably time to share the secret of its success. The big reveal is it’s popular because I’m telling other people’s stories. So instead of this book spending thousands and thousands of words describing mixed grills and curries, it delves into the stories of the Indian diaspora and how they changed this country for the better. This was a rewarding process and, ultimately, one that required a lot of legwork as every interview - bar one, due to a publican being ill - was done in person. 

Towards the end of the book I discovered The Terrace in Southall and didn’t have time to speak to the landlord due to this labour-intensive process. What I can tell you is this part of West London has been crying out for a modern desi pub which offers comfortable surroundings and provides a retreat from one of the most vibrant - and brash - high streets in the country. It’s a different vibe to Southall’s Scotsman - one of the desi pubs that inspired my book - and is London’s answer to the modern desi pubs well known in West Bromwich.

Desi Pubs is out now.

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Kings of the Hill

It had to happen eventually. Antic, the South London-based pubco that has taken charge of dozens of transpontine boozers over the past few decades, is opening a pub virtually next door to a pub they used to run until fairly recently - or across the road, at least. 

The Falconer, as it will be, or the Bird in Hand, as it currently is, is just over Dartmouth Road in Forest Hill from the Sylvan Post, a Post Office turned into a pub by Antic in 2012. Antic’s former financial backers handed it - and around a dozen other pubs - to Portobello post-Pandemic, and they still run it. 

There was understandable frustration from Antic when they lost the Post, which raises the question: will that manifest itself in some sort of pub-based rivalry, now they’ve got a new boozer across the road? South-east Londoners await with bated breath.   

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Firkin Refreshed

Firkin, a chain of brewpubs which transformed London brwing (and to an extent, British beer) when it emerged in the late 1970s, is back - after a fashion. I’m told that Didier Autard, the owner of the Fox and Firkin in Lewisham, this week installed a 12-hectolitre brewhouse (to be named named Firkin Brewery), in a former Sainsbury's warehouse at the back of the pub. Brewer Hugo Anderson, who worked for many years at Ab INBev’s Stag Brewery in Mortlake, is consulting on the project. 

The Fox was the second original Firkin pub, opened in 1980. It’s a large pub with a 3am licence on Fridays and Saturdays, plus a huge garden - certainly the most impressive in the neighbourhood. Updates on the beer once I’ve tasted it.  

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Beaver Bus

If you’ve been in town recently you’ll have struggled to avoid Heineken’s Summer marketing blitz, with billboards exhorting drinkers to ‘Get a Taste of Brixton’ and grammatically infuriating Beavertown ads all over the gaff. Far be it from me to give Heineken any extra help, but I did quite like this Beavertown-branded bus. 

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Your Schloss

There’s nothing Mancunians enjoy more than going on about how marvellous their city is, and now London will get to judge for itself. Next year, it’s been confirmed, will see a London branch of Albert’s Schloss, the Manchester-founded Germanic/Mittel European beer hall chain, open in the former Rainforest Cafe on Shaftesbury Avenue. 

With the exception of The Delauney, which is more upmarket, there’s nothing in the West End like it - although Bierschenke opens in Covent Garden this summer. We could be entering a Deutsch decade. Let’s hope so.

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Two Pubs, One City - 

Big John’s Biltong Bar & The Bird’s Nest, both Deptford

A small man at the bar is pointing at me and laughing. “Look at this egg!” he says, indicating my head. I am rather egg-like, particularly after a haircut, but this is nonetheless not the sort of welcome a man of my age expects when he steps across the threshold of licensed premises. Perhaps sensing this, his pal steps in. “Don’t worry mate, he can’t handle his drink,” before complimenting me on my new coat. (It is a nice coat.)

I don’t think it’s overly misty-eyed to suggest that London pubs have lost a little of the unpredictable energy they once had. Most of the more ungoverned pubs have shut, of course, and lots of those that remain are focused on getting bourgeois bores like me to part with £8 for a glass of fizzy hop juice. Much easier to do that when you’ve ensured the experience will be safe, that there’s no chance of random violence.

Violence is not unknown in Deptford, while its High Street is a graveyard of old pubs. If you walk from top to bottom, you'll see the remains of a dozen or more, built to serve beer to some of the biggest drinkers in the city. (That might make you melancholy, if you’re that way inclined, although the best antidote is reading about this sort of thing.)  

But while (most of) the pubs have gone, Deptford retains the feel of somewhere where unexpected things might happen. Big John’s Biltong Bar fizzes with this sort of energy, even early on a Wednesday evening. When I and a friend arrive at about 8pm, a group of four pals are well into a lively session, occupying both a table at the front and making frequent visits to the bar (where the unfortunate egg comparison occurs).

There are five keg beers available, of which the most appealing is Guinness (£4.80). It’s a very tight little place - the width of a slim shop-front - with tables squeezed in next to each other and all manner of junk, from old maps of London to beermats, on the walls. You can’t help but chat to people, especially when they’re keen to chat to you - and Pete (not his real name) is keen to speak to us.

He’s the man who complimented me on my coat, and he has a lot to say - about how he lost his job after an unfortunate incident involving throwing hamburgers in McDonalds, about how he was sleeping rough on Blackheath, about how he’d paid £80 for a coat that doesn’t have a zip. He asks us to inspect the coat. He’s right, it doesn’t have a zip. 

After he repeats the story about how he lost his job, we finish up and wander over to The Bird’s Nest, a pub with a similarly unvarnished appeal. 

Inside a band is setting up. The bar, I believe, has recently been moved to the side of the room, to make space for the small stage and so that beer can be served through hatches to the tables in front, by the side of the four-lane A2209. 

Not many pubs in London look like this any more. Little has been spent on the decor, there’s a pool table at the back and the gents’ loo is a grimy classic of the genre. There’s no cask ale, or, as it turns out, the beer (Forest Road) we ask for initially. In the end we go for Brixton Lager (£5.60), which is nice enough.

The band preparing to play is led by a chubby, North American young man in a smart shirt. His look suggests something along the lines of REM or The Smiths, but it’s more like garage rock. I’ve had enough after two tunes. Outside is calmer: there are three or four groups sitting around picnic tables, a man cooking jerk chicken/pork, a bar called The Snake Pit with an old double-decker bus attached, and a man with one of those huge dribbling dogs. 

We can still hear the band, who play Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” as their encore.

As we’re chatting, Pete wanders down the A2209 and spots us. He sits down. He’s in even more ebullient form, even more bullish, gently mocking me and my pal in order, I suspect, to appeal to the latter’s girlfriend, who’s joined us. He’s the sort of character that makes pubs what they are, or were, and he’s sleeping rough on Blackheath. It’s a touch glib to say ‘That’s modern London’ but it does sometimes feel that way.

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LBA Delay

The London Brewers Alliance festival, which was scheduled for Saturday 17 June, has been postponed to Saturday 16 September “because of unforeseen circumstances beyond the organisers’ control.” More details here. 

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London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. If you’ve got a story or an observation, contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you like what you’ve read, please share it with your friends; if you’ve been forwarded this email and enjoyed it, you can sign up here. Thanks for reading.

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The Shock of the New

There’s a motley selection of breweries at Brew LDN. This beer festival, heir to Craft Beer Rising, offers a blend of multinational-owned brands pretending they’re not (Camden Town, Drygate), ‘How do you do, fellow kids?’ family breweries (Timothy Taylor, Outland by Badger Brewing/Hall & Woodhouse), ageing micro stalwarts (Blue Monkey), international icons (Sierra Nevada, Budvar) and perhaps half a dozen mid-range craft breweries offering murky tributes to the Yakima Valley.

Amongst them this year was Great Beyond Brewing Company, which doesn’t fit into any of these categories. It’s a much rarer beast: a new brewery in London, established at the tail-end of last year in railway arches under the Overground at Hoxton. A new brewery, in this economy? It might seem unlikely, but even now, with the ink on London brewing’s obituary not yet dry, there are young and not-quite-so young men hoping to make it big in beer in the Capital.

Not that they’re wet behind the ears. Manning Great Beyond’s stall was John Driebergen, who is steeped in modern London brewing: the 35-year-old was head brewer at Fourpure until recently and, before that, brewer at Meantime. Along with Ollie Parker and Nick Walsh (both also formerly of Fourpure), Driebergen accumulated around £500,000 from friends and family to get things rolling last year.

Great Beyond is a few steps ahead of Snowmoon Brewing Co, an East London partnership tiptoeing tentatively down the same path. Founded by ace homebrewers Joon Chung and Oli Edmonds, their first beer, Moonrise, a Cold IPA brewed in collaboration with Elusive after Chung’s victory in a West Coast IPA competition (one of many by the pair over the past few years), is out now. 

So what’s going on? Are they mad, or is there still space in London for new breweries? 

Well, maybe. Great Beyond, the lavishly-bearded Driebergen explains, was planned explicitly as a taproom-focused company, a model that seems to have a greater chance of success in a city where hoppy beer in pubs means Beavertown in the same way that stout means Guinness. 

Taproom events, from sold-out quiz nights to Sofar Sounds, are legion. Driebergen hopes to sell as much as half of the brewery’s beer at the taproom, but there’s also plenty of interest from local pubs, including two permanent lines at Howl at the Moon. 

The site is good: it’s a bit awkward to find from Hoxton Station, but they have this still fashionable neighbourhood largely to themselves, brewery-wise. Even better, it’s a TfL arch, rented on a 9-year lease inherited from boxed fruit and veg specialists Abel & Cole, rather than with ArchCo. On the flipside, there’s not much money: the 10-hectolitre brewery came second-hand from Romania, and a few unanticipated difficulties when they opened absorbed much-needed capital. 

The five members of staff, including the founders, are doing everything themselves - which has turned brewer Driebergen into an unlikely and, it appears, slightly reluctant salesman. That’s not to say that he doesn’t believe in the product, which is explicitly different from what he made at Fourpure, with a focus on hoppy and sour beers. “We’re very deliberately not using any of the same ingredients,” he says, definitely, in his American East Coast tones. “It’s a complete blank slate.”

The same is true of Moonrise, who have similarly clear ideas of what they aim to brew. The pair, who met as members of Beer Boars, are planning to combine 33-year-old Edmonds’ passion for lager-brewing with the hoppier beers favoured by Chung, 37. Their pedigree is excellent. Both are regular winners of homebrewing competitions: Edmonds, for example, won the Lager Than Life competition run by Pillars in 2022 with a German Pils that subsequently also won the LAB Open Competition.    

Edmonds, from Buckinghamshire, works in finance for an affordable home provider; Chung, from South Korea, makes his living in urban planning. The latter was a lager drinker when he came to the UK in 2012 but his wife convinced him to try IPA, and from there he moved onto sour beers and the wider world of flavoursome beer. Together, they’ve decided to focus on Cold IPA. “From the very first batch that we did, there was something interesting,” says Edmonds. “When you combine lager yeast with hops, it creates something a little bit different.”

There are long-term plans for a brewery, formulated during the Pandemic, but the immediate future is a rolling campaign of cuckoo brewing. Chung’s recent success has given them a platform for takeoff, which begins tomorrow at All Good Beer in Hackney Downs.

For Driebergen, the next step is crowdfunding to make the taproom snazzier and the brewing process more effective. Investors will be offered taproom-based benefits in return for helping Great Beyond to defy the economic headwinds. “We don’t have cash reserves, we don’t have a lot of money,” Driebergen says. “It’s about survival at this stage, but sales are good and the taproom is growing. It’s building momentum.”

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Camden Down

Grace Land, which owns six pubs in East and North London, recently decided to review its lager options. For many years, their boozers - which include The King’s Arms in Bethnal Green and The Axe in Stoke Newington - have been serving Camden Hells, a hangover from when co-owner Andreas Akerlund was a significant investor in the pre-AB InBev company. At that time Alex Troncoso (below), now co-owner of Lost & Grounded in Bristol, was head brewer at Camden.

Deliciously, Camden and Lost & Grounded faced off as two of the final three options … and Lost & Grounded came out on top. I think it’s fair to say that Troncoso’s time at Camden didn’t end with hugs all round, so I’m sure he enjoyed it. There’s plenty to enjoy for Bristol’s Antipodean lagermeisters at the moment, with their Keller Pils being named best in show at America’s top event.

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Very Strong Stout 

40ft, the Dalston brewers, have collaborated with East London Liquor Company to produce a Whiskey based on the malt bill for its Stout. Golden Promise, Chocolate, Amber, Black, Brown and DRC Malt were used, creating, so I’m told, “a  deep, roasted base note with a fudgy fruit finish.” The whiskey was fermented, distilled and aged at East London Liquor Company in a Sonoma Bourbon cask.

From next week, 40FT will drop one bottle of the whiskey at a different cocktail bar in London each fortnight,  where 40ft x ELLC boilermakers will be served until the bottle runs dry. The list of bars will be kept secret and announced via @40ftbrewery and @eastlondonliquorcompany before each drop.

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A Date with Desi-ny

No Desi Pub of the Month, I’m afraid, but a reminder here that David Jesudason’s book about Desi Pubs - which covers the entirety of the UK - is published next week. Order your copy here.

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You Won’t Believe This List of Important London Beers

Modern London beer began in 2009, when The Kernel opened, and reached full steam in 2013, when Five Points, Fourpure and The London Craft Beer Festival began, at a time when 15 to 20 breweries of varying sizes were opening in the City every 12 months. Heady and, as it turned out, short-lived times. Last year, according to Des De Moor, the number of breweries reduced (from 132 to 122) for the first time since 2006. Last week, Brew By Numbers and Brick breweries, both based in south-east London, signalled their intent to appoint administrators, although in both cases it now looks less terminal than feared.  

Nonetheless, it feels like an era has come to a belated end, which is more than enough excuse for the list below. This is a personal selection of the most important beers to have come out of London during the past decade or so, based on their success, how they illustrate the ebb and flow of London brewing fashion, and, crucially, how much I like them. Does that make sense? Hope so. Let’s list:

2010: Camden Hells

Jasper Cuppaidge, founder of Camden Town Brewery, was a hard man to interview. It’s not that he was difficult in person - not with me, anyway - but he’d jump from one idea to the next without fleshing things out sufficiently, which made him hard to quote. He produced 30-second riffs rather than fully-formed songs.

It was this relentless energy, I think, that made Camden the most fashionable brewery in London for the two or three years before he sold it to AB InBev, in 2015. By then the brewery was focused on Hells, just the sort of higher-quality, snazzily-packaged lager London was calling out for, but it hadn’t always been that way. 

Camden’s website claims Hells is “the reason we started our brewery”, but that’s not strictly true. Cuppaidge was looking around for a flagship when he started, from pale ale to stout, but it was Hells that stuck. A lot of that was down to Alex Troncoso - of whom, more above - who fine-tuned the recipe to perfection.      

2012: The Kernel Table Beer

Some things in London beer haven’t changed much over the past 14 years. The Kernel still has much the same labels, much the same philosophy, and lots of people still spell it The Kernal. The beer, though, has evolved.

When The Kernel started in 2009 it was about hop-focused pale beers, and stouts and porters that drew on London’s brewing history. They were very good, and hugely popular, capturing the imagination of London’s beer drinkers in a way that must have set imaginations aflame in Kentish Town and De Beauvoir.

These two streams - hops and local tradition - came together in Table Beer, a low-ABV hoppy pale ale that relies on the soft texture and lower carbonation common in cask ales. I remember buying it in 500ml bottles in the late, lamented Mr Lawrence bottle shop in Brockley, and marvelling at the depth of flavour despite the lack of booze. No wonder it’s become the brewery flagship, even in an era when they make a much wider range of beers.

2012: Brew By Numbers 01/01 Citra Saison

The first time I met the two founders of Brew By Numbers (Dave Seymour and Tom Hutchings) was in a basement flat on Southwark Bridge Road, which served as Hutching’s home and their first brewery. They were earnest young chaps, evangelistic about Belgian beers, and Saison - a sort of non-style style, based on an idea of funky rural Belgian ale, of which the most famous is Saison Dupont - was just about to enjoy its moment in the sun.

Hence their Citra Saison, which combined the rustic, tangy flavour of Saison with punchy, limey hop character. It was really delicious. What makes it interesting now is how it represents a moment in London brewing which is gone: the idea that you could build a business on new beers, that brands were passé, that a brave new world was emerging. Brew By Numbers took this to the extreme with their somewhat confusing naming convention (the first number is the style, the second the iteration of that style, I think), a convention the brewery, now run solely by Hutchings, has ditched.    

2013: Beavertown Neck Oil

There are two events from the early years of modern London beer that stand out. One is Camden Town’s lavish IPL launch at a venue in Camden in 2014; the other Beavertown’s opening night at Duke’s Brew & Que in 2012. A beer called Neck Oil was available that evening, but it was a cask pale ale based, if my memory is correct, on the Black Country classic Bathams Bitter. (I briefly spoke to founder Logan Plant’s father at the event; he lamented the lack of a Mild in the Beavertown line-up).

It didn’t last long. The modern Neck Oil, Britain’s most popular ‘craft’ keg ale, came into being in 2013. Its success has relied on three factors: the initial input of brewer Jenn Merrick, a master at crafting high-quality sessionable, hoppy beers; Nick Dwyer’s illustrations, which captured drinkers’ imaginations in a remarkable way; and Logan’s stardust.

Gamma Ray, its older sibling, was the top seller for a long time, but it’s all about Neck Oil now. It must be in a plurality of central London pubs, selling for upwards of £7 (and sometimes £8!!?!) a pint. That’s a very strong brand, which is presumably why Heineken completed the takeover of Beavertown last year.    

2017: Wimbledon XXXK

Most people haven’t tried this beer, nor will they. That’s a shame because it might be the best beer made in London this past decade, so smooth and rich, complex yet harmonious. It’s a masterpiece, really, and it’s wowed everyone I’ve shared it with, from wine writers to beer-phobic relatives.

Conceived and created by Derek Prentice, whose brewing career began at Truman’s in the late 1960s, it was served as a party at Wimbledon Brewery to celebrate his 50 years in brewing. It’s a link to London’s brewing past - like The Kernel’s dark beers, but more so, since Derek began his career in brewing when that semi-Victorian world still existed.

2018: Lucky Saint

If, in 2013, you’d asked me what I’d be drinking in 2023, non-alcoholic lager would have been somewhere down the list, between ‘beer made of human wee’ and ‘mead’. But here we are. Non-alcoholic beer is a big thing, and some of it is actually quite nice.

Lucky Saint, of course, is made in Bavaria at an undisclosed brewery (although I have my suspicions about which brewery it is), but the company is based in London - they opened a pub here earlier this year, after all - so they make the list. What makes Lucky Saint so good is the way it's made - a blend, I’m guessing, of 0.0 lager and a little bit of full-strength unfiltered stuff, that adds back so much of the flavour lost in vacuum distillation.

2019: Five Points Best 

2019 was a big year for London brewing. Fuller’s, the last of the city’s independent Victorian breweries, sold out to Asahi in January; in April, Five Points released Best, their version of Best Bitter. The two events are linked in my mind, the latter a seeming reaction to the former. 

It’s a lovely beer, distinguished by potent hop character - provided by Hukin’s - and the perfect dry finish, an essential in any serious Best Bitter (and a characteristic shared with Fuller’s London Pride). Since it came out, we’ve seen a glut of new cask beers and a renewed interest in Mild amongst the city’s smaller brewers. Boring Brown Bitter - as some used to call it - is now getting the respect it deserves.

2021: Anspach & Hobday London Black

Paul Anspach and Jack Hobday make a good combination: their personalities dovetail, one more laidback, the other a stickler for detail, both essentially practical. They’ve navigated a fairly difficult beer scene expertly over the years, tacking first this way then that, trying different things, but nothing has made such a splash at London Black, their nitro porter.

In essence, it’s a punchier Guinness; all the flavours you’d expect but turned up a few notches, in the same creamy, good-looking package. The fact that a nitro-poured beer is one of independent London brewing’s big success stories tells you how things have changed over the years. The fundamentalism has gone - which is lucky for A&H, as their next trick is a smoothflow bitter … 

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Brewing Up That Hill

For any true head, Des De Moor’s London’s Best Beer is an absolute must-have, not least because the tireless De Moor publishes regular updates. The latest is full of interesting tidbits, including news that the Canopy site and equipment in Herne Hill has been acquired by Bird House London, a group that runs a gaggle of bars around London. The name is yet to be confirmed, but they hope to start brewing this month, for the taproom and their bars.

In further De Moor news, his no-doubt authoritative tome about England’s greatest glory, cask ale, is getting closer and closer to publication. Not to be missed.    

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London Shrinks

This year’s Brew///LDN beer festival (see above) took place for the last time at Printworks, a massive nightclub in Surrey Quays. Printworks is currently under threat of closure, and 2023’s event had a similar fin-de-siecle feel: the biggest of the three rooms was unused, which made for a livelier atmosphere but didn’t say much for the health of Britain’s brewing industry. London, though, was well-represented, with Camden Town, Fourpure, Hackney Church, Jiddler’s Tipple, Toast, Signature and Great Beyond (again, more above) taking stands at the two-day event.

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Late Pints

Sometimes a hero emerges out of nowhere - a hero like James McIntosh, who has put together an ever-evolving map of places to get a late drink in London, a city where licensing laws sometimes seem designed to stop people having fun. A quick look at the map suggests to me that the latest you can get cask ale in London is at 4am, at the Horse and Groom in Shoreditch. Can anyone do better than that?   

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Two Pubs, One City

Sir Colin Campbell, Kilburn & The Crown Hotel, Cricklewood

Why is London so intriguing and enticing? It’s not the weather, or the welcome, or the quality of the shop signage. I think it’s because this city (a giant unplanned mess, essentially, carelessly carved by private and public enterprise out of the surrounding countryside) is almost impossible to fully know. You can live here all your life and still have visited only half of it. London is frequently sullen and overpriced, but there’s always something new just around the corner.   

Which brings me to Kilburn, in both senses. Until recently, I had never been to this north-western inner suburb, but it’s a place that has lived in my head for a while, thanks to membership of Facebook pub groups and the (fascinating and enlightening) book “An Unconsidered People: The Irish in London”, which features a series of interviews with people who came here in the 1940s and 1950s to escape Eamon De Valera’s economically illiterate government.

Between 1931 and 1961, around half a million women and men crossed the Irish Sea, many ending up at Euston. From there, the cliché has it, they walked as far as was possible with a suitcase in each hand - which took them to Kilburn (and lots of other places, in truth, but we’re not concerning ourselves with that right now). Their arrival transformed Kilburn and changed London forever.

Transformation, though, is not a one-time thing, as anyone who’s been to Kilburn recently will know. It looks like a lot of places in London: slightly chaotic, extremely diverse, noisy, defined by relentless traffic. It’s hard to pick out anything that’s distinctly Irish. So is there anything left that links this place with Ireland? 

The pubs, perhaps. There are lots of pubs here. I know because, on a warm Wednesday afternoon earlier this month, I counted them. After a quick detour to see the rebuilt Carlton Tavern (even nicer in the flesh, I think), I trudged northwards up the Kilburn High Road. There’s the Queen’s Arms, The Old Bell, The Juniper, The Earl of Derby, The Coopers Arms, all in quick succession; and there are some interesting relics, like the former Red Lion, which closed in 2012, The Victoria Tavern/Biddy Mulligans, gone by 2007, and The Kingdom Bar.    

One of the most famous of Kilburn’s Irish pubs is the Sir Colin Campbell, which has just reopened under new management. That’s obvious as soon as you walk in: Iit smells of paint, and there’s a man up a ladder connecting the electrics for a big screen TV. It’s not quite operating at full speed, too: I hadn’t meant to order Guinness (£5.50), but the six hand pumps are not yet in action, and I don’t fancy any of the other usual suspects (Kronenbourg, Amstel, Neck Oil).

This is a small pub, composed of two slim rooms divided by a central bar. On the right there’s wallpaper and high tables, on the left painted walls, bar stools, a cast-iron fireplace and beautiful long wooden benching. Happily, I’m on the left. There are two other customers, both men, both also in the left-hand section: one drinks Guinness and reads a book, basking cat-like in the sunshine spilling through the front window, another sips 1664 with a copy of the Metro.  

It’s so blissfully calm. The outside world is at arm's length; the sound of traffic and the bleep bleep bleep of a crossing enters through open doors, but not in an oppressive way. The only serious incursion is a white plastic bag, blown in on a gentle breeze, that lodges itself on the foot of the book reader. 

Is it Irish? Well, there’s a small selection of Irish Whiskey, and there are regular folk sessions - but there are also those handpumps, plus stickers on the front window announcing the pub’s place in the Good Beer Guide, 2020 and 2021. It just feels like a nice London pub, clean and simple and welcoming. 

It’s about a 20-minute walk from the Sir Colin Campbell to the Crown in Cricklewood, under the railway bridge at Kilburn tube station and up Shoot-Up Hill. Everything gradually becomes calmer. The main landmark is a plaque to mark Learie Constantine’s former home in an elegant pre-war block of flats, Kendal Court.

At the top is The Crown, recently reopened, a late Victorian wedding cake of a building: deep-red and built in what I (an architectural ignoramus) would guess is Jacobethan style. It’s rich in detail, exemplified by the ornamental bases of the street lamps outside, which feature fierce-looking canine countenances.

For many years in the post-War period, Irish labourers would wait outside The Crown every morning to pick up a day’s casual work. It was the centre of things, an iconic place in the London Irish experience. (Dexy’s Midnight Runners ‘Celtic Soul Brothers’ video was filmed in and around The Crown in 1983, a tribute, perhaps, to McAlpine’s Fusiliers).

Well, it’s not what it was. Even worse, it doesn't seem to know what it wants to be: hotel bar or pub? There’s a long bar with a handful of beers available - most notably Madri, supported by a cornucopia of POS items, including an isolated font right in the centre of the bar, the only one visible as you enter. “Is that your best seller?” I ask the friendly young woman behind the bar. “Oh yes, we were quite surprised,” she says. Presumably not everyone was surprised.

It’s Guinness again (£5), and it’s not very good: a bit tart, the glass not clean. There’s bland jazz playing, and a huge TV screen dominates one end of the bar, the end where - I think - Dexys play in that video. On the plus side, my chair - a high-sided armchair - is very comfortable, and there’s a beautiful, original plaster ceiling. Overall, though, I’m underwhelmed. This is someone’s idea of elegance, but not mine.

As a symbol of how Kilburn has moved on from the post-war era, though, it’s hard to beat. Not impossible, though. A few minutes’ walk north of The Crown there’s a large brownfield site, hidden from public view by wooden hoardings. This is where the Galtymore, perhaps London’s most famous Irish ballroom, stood from 1952 until a few years’ back, although it closed in 2008. That’s another thing about London: you turn your back and it’s gone.

London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. If you’ve got a story or an observation, contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you like what you’ve read, please share it with your friends; if you’ve been forwarded this email and enjoyed it, you can sign up here. You can unsubscribe here. Thanks for reading.

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‘WE ARE MOVING!’

For Andy Smith, the founder of Partizan Brewing, it came down to two things that are really one thing: the departure of Aussie brewer Harrison Long, who’d had enough of the cost of London, and the expense of renting space in Bermondsey. In March, Smith moved his brewery to Market Harborough, where they’ll be sharing space with “long-term friends” Langton Brewery.

The news was announced with an unusually bold post on Instagram: ‘WE ARE MOVING!” it read, before going on to briefly lay out details of the move. As ever with Andy, there was plenty more left unsaid.

“Every year we sit down with shareholders,” he tells me down the phone, “and we decide how to improve sales and lessen costs. The rent in Bermondsey was eye-watering. Every year it’s been the same thing: ‘Perhaps we should move out of London?’ Usually the counter to that is twofold: the bar in Bermondsey, which brought a lot of money in, and staff, who live in London. The bar hasn’t returned to pre-Pandemic levels and, heading into another tough year, we had much less staff than usual.” 

How important is Partizan’s departure for London brewing? Well, there are still over 100 brewing companies in the capital, and Partizan was never one of the biggest - but it was a stalwart of the modern scene, founded in 2012, using brewing equipment gifted by The Kernel. 

As London’s beer world has changed over the past decade, Partizan has stubbornly embodied the best aspects of those early days: flavour withour foolishness, a passion for more than just hops, an almost-comic reluctance to engage in self-promotion. Partizan has always been small-scale but never small-time - and now, sadly for London, it’s based in Leicestershire.

The cost of the space on Almond Road in Bermondsey was exacerbated by a dispute with the arch’s owners - The Arch Company - that culminated in a risk that the brewing equipment would be seized. At that stage, Andy took advice and sold the brewery’s assets to Langton, thereby securing them from that prospect. This means he’s now employed by Langton, but he insists nothing else will change. “It’ll still be me making the Partizan beers on the same brew kit,” he says. (He didn’t want to discuss financial details). 

Ironically, he says, the move should mean he spends more time out and about in London. Most of Partizan’s 2000-hectolitre annual production is sold in the capital, and he plans to spend two days a week in town doing a more, as he puts it, “public-facing” role. 

He seems very phlegmatic about what has happened, and to a degree that’s understandable. He hit 40 a few years ago, and moved to Suffolk with his partner and son last year, having decided he was “quite keen to not have a mortgage when I was 70-whatever years old”. In that respect this is a classic London story; middle-aged people have always left for a different way of life. In another, though, it’s yet more evidence of how life in London gets financially tighter by the day, something we’ve known for years but that, in the aftermath of Covid lockdowns, has become ever more fraught.

If this isn’t quite the end of the line for Bermondsey, it’s certainly a blow. Like Anspach & Hobday and Brew By Numbers, Partizan’s beer will now be made away from Bermondsey, a place that has become much more about consumption than production. The Kernel (among others) remains, though, a factor that Andy thinks is key.

“I think Bermondsey is always going to have The Kernel, and that’s such a strong, iconic brewery. It’s very easy for me to be pessimistic at the moment, but they’ve always kept the quality and consistency and their identity [whatever has happened]. Bermondsey [as a modern brewing centre] was built on the back of The Kernel, and they’re not going anywhere. 

“But Bermondsey has become a really confusing place, even for someone who worked there. I don’t really know what’s going on - there are lots of bars. There’s probably going to be a big shake-up at some point.”

The same might be said of London. Rumours about the future of this or that brewery circulate on a weekly basis; while Beavertown and Camden thrive, buoyed by the safety that big money brings, others are struggling. 

“I don’t see it getting easier any time soon,” says Andy. “It’s getting thinner and thinner out there. After people, I’m sure everyone’s biggest expense is rent. Landlords took huge hits during Covid and they’re trying to claw it back, trying to get their little slice where they can.”   

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Desi Pub of the Month: Sun and Sand Lounge, Finchley

In his latest column, David Jesudason, author of the soon-to-be-published Desi Pubs, finds a pub where vegetarians can eat as well as meat-lovers 

Like all boozers with a bit of history, Desi Pubs often face a bit of opposition when they’re modernised. How do you keep the uncles happy as well as reaching out to a wider demographic? The Sun and Sands (near Finchley Central Tube station) was very similar to last month’s Desi Pub, the Boulevard, in that it started like a club with blacked out windows - ignorant residents thought it was a strip bar - but now is very light, airy and restaurant-y.

It’s still a pub though as you can sit at the bar with a pint. Like 65-year-old Jaggi Singh Litt, who between mouthfuls of peanuts tells me about his favourite North London desi pubs and can’t wait to get his hands on my upcoming book. He misses the previous landlord (he had a heart attack in his 50s) and the old decor - you can see why as this was a rare safe space for him in the past.

These days it’s transformed into somewhere you could take a date, which shows itself in the excellent food which caters expertly for both meat eaters and vegetarians - the new owner is the latter. Order the chilli paneer (soft texture, but with a nice firm bite) and say ‘hi’ to Jaggi from me.

David’s book, Desi Pubs, comes out next month. Pre-order it here

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Restart the Car

Bethnal Green’s Boxcar went into administration last month, but the brewery battles on. Brewer and head man Sam Dickison has retained control of the brand, and, he says, is “talking with a few breweries, distributors, and logistics people at the moment” about contract brewing, with the aim to have new product available in May - first kegs, and then later cans. 

Boxcar, which was founded in 2017, has won plaudits for the quality of its Dark Mild, and the prospect of reviving that beer is motivating Dickison: “One of the main reasons I didn't want to let it die is because I think Dark Mild deserves to be available all over the UK,” he says.

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It’s Sour Hour

Next week sees Sour Times, a festival of sour, barrel-aged and wild ales, take place at The King’s Arms in Bethnal Green. The event lasts from Wednesday (19th) until Saturday (22nd); expect beers from Burning Sky, De Ranke, Tilquin and more.

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Pub Reviewers of Instagram

One of the joys of Instagram is the stuff it feeds you from accounts you don’t follow. Indecipherable in-jokes about American Universities, old football videos (mostly Mourinho), hilarious incidents occurring completely spontaneously on the streets of London/New York/wherever - I get a lot of these, presumably because I can’t help watching them. 

In terms of beer, I’m offered two things; reviews of Guinness, and of London pubs. The former has taught me to tell the difference between a great pint and a bad one (the key, as far as I can discern, is that it’s served in a branded glass) while the latter is a genuine joy. People have strong opinions about London pubs, and their passion provides a great way to discover places you hadn’t heard of.

I thought it would be interesting to get in touch with my favourite London pub accounts and find out more about what they do. Those accounts are: Booze House Tales (B), run by Franco Allen, 36, who lives on the Isle of Dogs and comes from Essex (pictured above); London Pub Explorer (L), run by Alistair Von Lion, which has almost 33,000 followers; Maria Recommends (M), run by Maria Rangin, 35, who lives in Woolwich and comes from Sweden (pictured below); and Simon’s Pub Tour (S), run by Simon Cereda, 28, a Londoner who lives in Tufnell Park (final image).

(I’ve edited responses for brevity, but hopefully I’ve ensured the meaning is unchanged.) 

How long have you been writing about London pubs on Instagram? Why do you do it?

B: I started on Google Plus, about 2016. Me and my mates were doing a pub crawl around where we’re from, Rainham, and we recorded it on there; I had an Instagram account for personal stuff - but when I moved back to London, I thought why not start visiting pubs? It’s been an interesting journey, trying to delve into different things. It’s evolved.

L: The genesis of it was exploring, which started about 2000. I didn’t even really know I was doing it; in 2006/7, I got more into urban exploring, trying to get into derelict buildings, closed pubs. Then I wanted to put them on a platform, to show what I’d uncovered, to talk about the urban decay, the social corrosion, the lack of community that happens with closed pubs. I started on Instagram in 2016. 

M: I started back in 2018. I’ve always loved a good pub, and my friends usually asked me for recommendations. The account started as a way to remember the best pubs and beer gardens I’ve been to.

S: I started posting pictures and brief descriptions in summer 2017. I didn’t really know what else to do with the platform, the whole thing was a bit tongue-in-cheek. However, I was quickly hooked … I love documenting London’s ever-developing pub scene. It’s been great fun to discover a whole community of like-minded people through Instagram.

What’s your idea of the perfect London pub? 

B: A bit of a chameleon, offering different things at different times of the day. I love seeing the evolution of a pub during the day: people catching up with a few mates in the afternoon, live music in the evening. My favourite pubs, like the Pride of Spitalfields, are cosy, super-friendly, busy places.

L: It depends on the time of the day. In East London, where I live, you’ll see different time frames during a day at the weekend. That’s the beauty of a London pub: that ebb and flow, the constant state of flux. I like barstools - without barstools, for me, it’s not a pub. I love how the Boleyn Tavern looks: it’s been restored to how it was after the partitions were ripped out in the Seventies. It’s got something for everyone in terms of the different sections.

M: I truly enjoy a good beer garden; many pubs think a few park benches thrown out on the sidewalk is just fine. It is so easy to go from boring to the cosiest option in the neighbourhood with a parasol, a few potted plants, a candle and maybe even a blanket. But ultimately it has everything to do with the staff. Friendly staff can make the most boring decor become homely.

S: I look for a pub with a unique identity in a striking, traditional building but with contemporary drinks choices and independent beer available. There are more than a few out there that tick all of those boxes!

What do you drink?

B: I’m more of a cider drinker; that’s what got me into drinking in pubs. I’m moving over to cask ale at the moment, and I recently joined CAMRA.

L: Guinness would be a go-to, but I like some of the craft beers and, after a meal, a glass of red wine. If I’m with my brother, always ill-advised, we might hit the top shelf and have a glass of whisky.

M: Usually lager, sometimes IPA or Pale Ale, cider on a sunny afternoon. I love a pub with fun and local craft beers.

S: I usually stick to beer; I’ll give anything a try, from imperial stouts through session pales to tart sours. However, my favourite type of beer is a Grisette - more on tap in pubs please!

How important do you think pubs are to London?

B: I see pubs as a community centre. It’s a place to meet your friends, to chat. Different people pop in at different times. It’s a carousel of the community outside, that’s what I find compelling. London pubs have a lot of history, too; it’s the story of the city, in a pub.

L: Modern London doesn’t put value in community, and the pub is the cornerstone of community. For some people, it might be the only chance for a chat all day. A kind word, a smile, two minutes of your time: that has massive value. 

M: They are the best part of the city. Pub culture is something pretty unique. I’m from Sweden where we lack that culture, and it’s the thing that I would miss the most if I ever move away. How they create that third space we all need, besides our home and our work - the home away from home feeling - it is just amazing.

S: Pubs have been in London in some shape or form for centuries, and have played such a crucial part in the history of our city. They’ve given their names to whole communities, been the stomping ground for generations of the same families, and served as communal living rooms for many in a city where space is such a luxury.

Why do you think people are so interested in London pubs?

B: I like to travel, and you don’t see pubs in other countries. Drinking elsewhere is quite different. I think people that travel to London love the history of the pub, the idea that you can pop in, have a drink, have a meal.

L: I think it’s tangible. You can go out and enjoy an organic pub experience as people have done for hundreds of years. So many things now are manufactured and diluted. The history of these pubs, you don’t get that everywhere - England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, that’s where pub culture exists, and despite what’s been lost, it hasn’t been eroded as much as a lot of British culture. 

M: I always recommend people visiting London check out the pubs, because of the unique culture but also the history. Looking at Big Ben is nice, but sitting in the pub where Jack the Ripper’s last victim was last seen alive, or a stone’s throw away from where the Mayflower set out is a more personal way to experience history. Also, you haven’t really been to London without experiencing a pint and a fish & chips or Sunday Roast in a proper boozer.

S: There’s a romance to them. There are so many pubs in London that you can never truly visit them all … For me it’s a mission to visit as many as possible, and use pubs as a basis to explore the city. If I don’t know at least one pub in any neighbourhood, I make a point of trying to visit.

Are you optimistic about the future of London pubs?

B: I’m more on the optimistic side. I think pubs will survive, but they’ll have to change … you don’t get many wet-led pubs in London anymore, I think they’ve had to diversify to survive. Gastropubs are not my favourites. I do think it will get worse before it gets better - I think the government needs to do more to protect them, like the way Germany does with nightclubs.

L: I’m terrified. There’s going to be a two-tier drinking landscape: you are going to have very high–end gastro, and then you’ll have Wetherspoons, Enterprise, Craft Union, and nothing in between. I can see widespread Monday, Tuesday closing in the next ten years, I can see having to book becoming the norm. Soon a lot of young people won’t remember how beautiful it was to walk into a pub, sink into the banquette seating, or a corner booth. It fills me with dread: unless there’s high footfall or it’s an affluent area, the days of the back-street pub are almost over. 

M: It’s sad that the large breweries and pub chains are buying up all the independent places. There’s fewer and fewer left, which just means we lose a lot of the personality. A lot have closed or been rebuilt or refurbished to a point where they lose a lot of history and originality. But I’m optimistic, pubs are a big part of people’s lives in London. I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t have a favourite, and it’s never difficult to get my friends out to explore new ones.

S: I know that many pubs are feeling the pinch, coming off the back of the pandemic and now with massive hikes in bills. Every day I see another piece of sad news about a pub or brewery … it seems very tough out there. That said, there are plenty of successes too: pubs adapting to modern tastes, independent breweries upsizing and lots of places embracing the benefits of social media. These green shoots give me optimism.

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O’Shea’s Away

Nick O’Shea, co-founder, general manager and director of Ignition Brewery in Sydenham, is moving on. O’Shea played the key role in setting up and driving Ignition - which employs people with learning disabilities as brewers, bar staff and more - in 2015, but feels the brewery needs someone with a different skill set to drive it forward in its next stage of development. “We’ve had some good responses and I’m confident we can have a smooth and orderly transition,” he says. He expects the process to be complete by the end of August.

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Three’s A Crowd

London’s beer festival season is fast approaching. First up is the London Brewers’ Alliance Festival, back for the first time in four years at the Griffin Brewery, home of Fuller’s, in Chiswick. Expect 50 London breweries pouring more than 100 beers in two sessions, on 17 June. Tickets are £40 a session, which includes beer.

CAMRA’s Great British Beer Festival, meanwhile, will take place between 1 and 5 August at Olympia. General admission tickets are £16, which doesn’t include beer (but you can keep your glass). If you’ve never been, imagine a huge pub, serving cask ale from up and down Britain, plus plenty from the US, Germany, Belgium, the Czech Republic and elsewhere. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea but - for the record - I’ve always loved it (occasionally a little too much).

Finally, there’s the London Craft Beer Festival, which will take over Tobacco Dock for two days, the 11th and 12th of August. Expect Britain’s most highly-rated modern breweries (from Elusive to Floc to Lost & Grounded), some classic producers (Duvel and Timothy Taylor’s, to name two), excellent food, various other booze options, entertainment and more. If you want an idea of what’s happening at the cutting edge of British beer, this is where to start. 

Highlights include a big feature on the new London brewing quarter of Walthamstow with Signature Brew, Exale and Pretty Decent Brewing Companies, the world’s first “pasta beer” brewery called Beyond Belief, and the return of The Cask Yard, devoted to cask-conditioned beer. Tickets are £57.50, including beer.

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Two Pubs, One City

The Audley and The Barley Mow, Mayfair

Mount Street, which runs from Park Lane to Berkeley Square in Mayfair, offers plenty of historical interest. Former residents include Winston Churchill and (fictionally) Biggles, flying ace; Gimme Shelter, perhaps The Rolling Stones’ crowning moment, was written in a flat overlooking Mount Street by a sullen Keith Richards; and Scott’s, the street’s famous fish restaurant, was first bombed by and then, a few weeks’ later, sprayed with gunfire by four IRA men in 1975. The latter incident led to the Balcombe Street Siege, in which all four surrendered after a six-day standoff.

Such drama seems impossibly distant on a blissful Tuesday lunchtime at The Audley, which occupies the corner of Mount Street and South Audley Street. Sunshine blazes through its huge south-facing windows onto a turquoise carpet, bounded by long, brown, very comfortable banquettes. There is artwork of varying quality, obvious but unobtrusive, including the ceiling, painted in vivid shades of pink, red and turquoise by the recently deceased Phyllida Barlow. A beautiful clock, made by Camerer Cuss in London, overlooks the room. There is no piped music, just the chatter of the young bar staff and the not-so-young customers. All is serene.

The Audley re-opened in the autumn, having been bought and done up by Swiss owners Iwan and Manuela Wirth, founders of Hauser and Wirth. It’s an idealised version of an English pub, right down to that sound-muffling carpet - and, I have to say, it really works. The details are right, from the bar snacks (scotch eggs, etc) to the extremely comfortable seating. It’s posh, but not intimidating. This is what pubs in Mayfair should be like.

If there’s a quibble, it’s with the beer. Not the price (Yes, it’s £6.50, but it’s Mayfair) but my pint of Landlord is a touch over-vented, even if it tastes perfect, the flavour elements crisp and easily identifiable. I’m not sure how many of the six or seven men in here at 12 noon are drinking cask ale, but most are quietly nursing pints. “Do you like sausages?” one says suddenly and repeatedly to a pal, in a way that suggests a very unlikely casus belli. Happily, it’s not so. He just wanted to know if his friend wanted a sausage, one of the items offered on the bar menu (£3 a sausage) - and he did.

Just as I’m finishing my pint, a large American gent enters and flops on the seat a few tables away from me. He sits and sits and sits. He doesn’t realise, it’s soon clear, that it’s bar service only, but one of the young bar staff puts him straight. He orders a roast beef sandwich and a pot of tea, which is - I think - both a very English and not very English thing to order in a pub.  

If you walk north from Mount Street, you soon hit Grosvenor Square, where Mick Jagger went to a protest, got pushed around a bit and then wrote ‘Street Fighting Man’, and where the former American Embassy - gilded aluminium eagle still intact - is currently being transformed, noisily, into a hotel. 

Around the corner on Duke Street is The Barley Mow, another recently tarted-up pub. Cubitt House, which runs perhaps half a dozen high-end boozers in West and Central London, re-opened this street-corner place in the autumn. Large glass windows, emblazoned with a variety of alluring slogans (‘Oysters & Pies’, ‘Cask Ales’, for eg) offer a view of the interior’s elegant fittings: large pendant lamps, pale-brown padded stools, a rich, dark-brown wooden bar.

(Quick historical note: Like the Audley, The Barley Mow has a slightly gruesome terrorist-related recent past. In 1978 Palestinian Terrorists murdered an Israeli air hostess, Irit Gidron, during an attack on a coach outside the adjacent Europa Hotel.) 

Inside, gentle jazz is noodling away in the background. At the bar, an American bar in a baseball cap is eating a pie and chatting in a genial and interesting way to the young women behind the bar. It’s quickly clear that he is very much at home here: when a 20-something man orders two packets of crisps and nothing else (apparently waiting for a pal to arrive), he makes sure he doesn’t leave the bar without a glass of water - and when a loud and very slightly obnoxious patron departs, he turns to the server and says, quietly and with perfect timing, “Imagine being his girlfriend.” 

I’m drinking Allsopps (£6.40). It’s in a good shape, albeit a touch cloudy - but it’s been cloudy both times I’ve had it, so maybe that’s just what it’s like. At the bar, the American guy and the barmaid are chatting about stem cell research. It’s the perfect London pub moment: utter calm, with Oxford Street and its teeming crowds - crowds which I am about to melt into - just yards away.

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Sitting Room Pub Crawl

Fancy a night out in London but can’t, for whatever reason, actually go out in London? You’re in luck. A game seeking to replicate the experience of a London pub crawl has been launched - as far as I can make out, you need to visit three pubs to win. Easy peasy. More information here.

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Borough of Beer

Battersea brewers Mondo has opened a beer and pizza venue at Borough Yards, the new development in the archways across the road from the old Barclay Perkins brewery. There are 14 taps pouring Mondo beer and one cider; pizza comes from Joe Public.

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Beer Admiral

The Admiralty on Trafalgar Square has been reopened following a fire last July. The pub, which owners Fuller’s describe as their flagship, opened its doors last Wednesday after London Fire Brigade Deputy Assistant Commissioner Greg Ashman and Soho firefighters helped Fuller’s Chief Executive Simon Emeny cut the ribbon. 

25 fire engines and around 125 firefighters battled the blaze last summer, with more than 150 people evacuated from the building. The renovated pub is powered completely by a “zero carbon energy source”, according to Fuller’s.

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London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. If you’ve got a story or an observation, contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you like what you’ve read, please share it with your friends; if you’ve been forwarded this email and enjoyed it, you can sign up here. Thanks for reading.

Many of these  pubgoers are not here primarily to get out of the rain, though.  From my perch close to the bar, a pattern soon emerges. A group enters and stands, a touch bashfully, close to but not at the bar; one member goes to the bar; s/he mentions a booking; they’re led into the Grand Lounge, a richly ornate former Billiards Room that is - in the evening, at least - now devoted to eating.

None of them have Liverpool accents; they’ve all travelled here, like me, to see the shiniest jewel in the city’s pub crown. You might think it’s a shame that such a place is used mainly by tourists - but actually, The Philharmonic, opened in 1900, wasn’t built for ordinary Scousers. As Quentin Hughes put it in his marvellous 1964 architectural guide to the city, Seaport, “Buildings like this … formed part of the [mercantile] culture [of Liverpool], a setting to which wealthy businessmen had become accustomed.”

It’s easy to forget that Liverpool was once like that, a place where a barbed quip from its rival city, “Manchester Man, Liverpool Gentleman”, made sense. Both Liverpudlians and outsiders have done their best to forget the era when Liverpool (or at least its merchant class) was hugely rich, when it was Tory, when sectarian division was as much a part of the culture as it has been down the years in Belfast and Glasgow.  

You sometimes hear people describe Liverpool as an Irish city, and a walk around the centre shows why. There are dozens of pseudo-Irish boozers, all Emerald Green and exhortations to enjoy the craic. The Celtic Corner. The Blarney Stone. McCooley’s. It seems unlikely that anywhere loves Ireland more than modern Liverpool (I haven’t been to Boston, admittedly).

But to have called Liverpool ‘Irish’ when The Philharmonic first opened would have been to risk a full-blown riot. Liverpool once had a sectarian divide as wide as anywhere, a divide that persisted well in the post-War period, a divide that was a key part of the city The Beatles grew up in. (Neatly, The Beatles’ religious upbringings were perfectly balanced: Harrison - Catholic; Lennon - CofE; McCartney - agnostic; Starr - evangelical).

Liverpool has outgrown that, but not just that. To a degree, sadly, it also seems to have outgrown pubs - or at least, a certain type of neighbourhood pub. In Chinatown, there’s a small tree growing out of the long-closed Nook, where last orders were once called in English and Cantonese. In L8 (Toxteth or Dingle? No idea), a short walk south, The Globe is the last pub standing on a street which once had many.

To the East, on Smithdown Road, is The Royal Hotel, once a key part of the city’s famous student pub crawl, now home to student flats. Apparently it was gas-lit into the 1990s; only the marvellous tiled exterior survives now. Many of the other pubs on the crawl are also shut.

Indeed, during a three-hour walk through this charismatic chunk of south Liverpool, only the pubs on bourgeois Lark Lane - coffee, boutiques, murals, etc - seem to be thriving. Elsewhere they’re increasingly scarce. In that respect, though, Liverpool is like the rest of England, where an abundance of choice has replaced the one-size-fits-all Local (where, needless to say, not everyone fitted).

All the displaced pub energy here seems to be focused on the centre. Britain’s city centres have been increasingly drink-focused since the 1990s, but few are as lively as Liverpool. There are boozers of all kinds, from The Philharmonic all the way down to a bar devoted, rather perversely, to Only Fools and Horses. Bold Street has got all the casual dining you might ever need. 

There’s a feeling of restless change - epitomised by the new Everton football stadium, emerging from Bramley Moore dock to the north of the centre - a feeling reflected in these drinking options: a big glass-fronted Yates is five minutes’ walk from its more restrained predecessor, now forlorn behind metal grill fencing.    

Liverpool’s centre offers a mixture of evolution and conservation that should keep everyone happy. There are many beautiful and inviting pubs, even if the otherwise excellent Museum of Liverpool doesn’t (as far as I could see) touch on their role in the city’s story. My favourites are the Roscoe Head, a haven of interwar cosiness, pies and warm welcomes, and The Lion Tavern, with its tiled corridor and ‘News Room’, which may actually be the acme of pub comfort.

If the Museum ever decides to add something about drinking in Liverpool, I’d suggest a recreation of the American Bar in Lime Street (“probably the most famous hostelry in Great Britain, behind London’s Cheshire Cheese”, according to The Liverpool Echo when it shut in 1930), which was the first port of call for arriving Yanks and theatrical stars in the first years of the 20th century. It was run by Mary Ellen Egerton, ‘Ma Egerton’, an Irishwoman, whose next move was to take on The Eagle Hotel behind Lime Street Station, the pub which still bears her name.

On that same sodden Tuesday evening, I ended up there, watching the last knockings of Manchester City’s evisceration of Red Bull Leipzig, chatting to a local couple about this and that. A perfect pub moment, a timeless joy in a city where forgetfulness and memory walk hand in hand. 

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Bread Winners

Good Company does not feel like a brewery taproom. It looks more like an art gallery café, with its angles and exposed pipes and bold, blocky colours on the wall. At 11am in the morning, gentle elevator jazz is playing - tinkling piano and the strum of acoustic guitar - and the whole place smells like coffee.

But then Toast, the brewing company that runs this space alongside Change Please Coffee, is not like most breweries, and it hasn’t been since it was founded in 2016. It’s explicitly ‘mission-focused’, determined to highlight the global scandal of food waste, and has always existed at a slight remove from mainstream beer, be that craft or otherwise.

That feels like a sensible approach, now more than ever. Toast recently raised £2m in funding - some of it from Heineken - and opened this café-bar, in Regents Place, just north of the Euston Road, at the start of March (its offices are next door). It doesn’t own a brewery, preferring to contract (at SEB in Broadstairs, for now) and it doesn’t sell much beer on draught in pubs. It’s popular in restaurants and supermarkets and, according to CEO and co-founder Rob Wilson, more women buy it than men.

“The majority of our customers - 55 to 60 percent, where we can track it - are women,” says Wilson, 39, although he admits the data is limited and skewed by the fact that, in many households, women are still responsible for doing the shopping. “But I think it would be more balanced [than for an average brewery] anyway because it’s a value-based decision, rather than a purely beer-based one.”

Their target customer is someone who’s more exercised by the fate of the Amazon than by trying the newest Yuzu Sour. She or he is, as Wilson puts it, the type of person who would buy a Patagonia cap or a Finistere hoodie instead of an Adidas one, who eats Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, who gives Ella’s Kitchen food to their kids (he concedes there’s a fair amount of overlap there with the average craft-beer drinker).

Toast’s value-based culture (Wilson insists the key thing is how the beer tastes, and I believe it - but it’s what the beer stands for that sets it apart) has, I think, made it more accessible, easier to grasp, for those not in the beer world. It’s very popular in non-pub hospitality of all kinds, from Wahaca to Sadler’s Wells to British Airways. For restaurants in particular, Toast makes a lot of sense: a good quality beer which demonstrates the operators have a social conscience, and doesn’t interfere with the serious business of the wine list, where the profit margin lies.

Toast’s interaction with the mainstream beer world has consisted largely of collaborations, from Guinness to Northern Monk to Utopian. While the impact of bread on the flavour of the beer is limited (typically, bread replaces 25 percent of the malted barley), I’ve always thought the implied message of Toast, that you can make great beer out of old bread, was a difficult one for the brewing industry. What happened to the ‘finest malt and hops’?  

It’s a challenge for Toast, too. “How do you communicate that in a desirable way?” says Wilson. “We haven’t come up with a silver bullet as to how to do that. We shied away from it for a while.” No longer, it seems: the beer glasses at Good Company are decorated with images of loaves, a reflection of the fact that those who drink Toast’s beers are at ease with the idea of surplus bread being used to make it. In common with most people, I suspect, they don’t really care about malt and hops. They just want something nice to drink.

And Toast’s beers are nice to drink. Their four core beers (Lager, Pale Ale, Session IPA, American Pale Ale) are joined on the bar at Good Company by collaborations and beers brewed by similarly progressively-minded producers - like Oxford’s Tap Social, for example. This week there were two delicious, elegant beers (a grapefruit pale ale and a 6.2% blonde) brewed alongside Gebrouwen Door Vrouwen, a Dutch brewery run by sisters Tessel and Do De Heij that is 100% female-staffed.

This is a small but growing business. Toast currently makes about 7000 hectolitres a year, on a 50/50 retail/trade split. The next step, Wilson says, is to get their product into more pubs. At the moment, they only have a dozen or so draught listings, almost exclusively in the South East.

Beyond that, things simplify: Toast wants to change the world. What does that look like? A billion slices of bread that would otherwise have gone to waste used to make beer, Wilson says (they’re currently somewhere between 3 and 4 million). You get the feeling he would be very pleased if every beer in the world was made with surplus bread - or surplus breakfast cereal or potatoes, or “lots of other starch-based things”. Potato IPA? That really would launch Toast into the craft-beer mainstream.

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Helles for Heroes

Some breweries are great at shouting about what they do; others, not so much. Pillars, Walthamstow’s lager brewers, could until recently have been put into the second camp. It was only on the recommendation of two well-informed London pub types that I decided to try their beer, and I’m glad I did. It is excellent.

The reason they’re no longer so diffident has much to do with Pete Kennelly, the affable Dubliner who has been head of sales for just over a year. With a background in beer that takes in Brewdog and Siren during more than a decade in London, and great contacts, he is just what Pillars needs.

I went to meet him in mid-February at the brewery in Walthamstow, on a day when the company’s canine mascot, Murphy - a Boston Terrier, naturally - was trying and failing to find a warm spot for a nap on the concrete floor. At the back, the brewing team was bottling this year’s Icebock, a 12-hour task. “The longest day of the year,” smiled Samie Razaq, one of four founders; the others are his brothers (Eamonn and Omar), plus their pal Gavin Litton. The brewery opened in 2016.

Time is a fundamental part of the Pillars story, as for any lager brewery. Pillars’ flagship beers, Pils and Helles, spend six weeks in tank, more than twice as long as ale would. Pils represents about 80 percent of the brewery’s annual production, but Helles, which recently got a new recipe, could soon be eating into that.

Out have gone American hops (Centennial, Citra), to be replaced by more classical Teutonic flavours: Tettnanger, Mittelfruh, Hallertauer Traditional. The result is a balance of sweet malt (all English, from Crisp) and the prickly, lemony spice of German hops. It’s an excellent beer, just what you’d expect from the style, and a sign of the times, too, as London’s star-spangled craft-beer world shifts towards more elegant, classical flavours.

Pillars, which is based on one of London’s more appealing industrial estates - next to cider-focused bar TRAP, Wild Card’s barrel store, across the road from God’s Own Junkyard and close to the chi-chi shops and restaurants of Orford Road - is growing. Last year it made 2000 hectolitres of beer (capacity is 6000), a modest total but an increase of 130 percent on 2019, the last pre-Pandemic year.

Two more units are about to be added, and investment has been made in equipment, too, from horizontal conditioning tanks (added last summer) to a reverse osmosis kit for water treatment. They’re working smart, too: Kennelly tells me about a hook-up with Five Points and Crafty Apple cider, which will see them invest in a T-Bar font at the soon-to-reopen Queen’s Head in Limehouse in return for guaranteed space on the bar. It’s the sort of thing big breweries do all the time, and it’s well past time for smaller operators to collaborate in response. 

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Desi Pub of the Month: Boulevard Bar, New Southgate

In his latest column, David Jesudason, author of the soon-to-be-published Desi Pubs, finds a club-turned-pub at the heart of its community

One of the common stories of a Desi Pub is how they went from safe spaces for British-Indians to culinary hotspots for all. This is a Punjabi story of landlords (always men) first serving beer to working class Desis (mainly men) and then realising there was a wider market for quality Indian-style food, such as sizzling mixed grills.

In London, though, this wasn’t always the case. In the ’80s and ’90s Desis needed safe drinking spaces but they also wanted to eat Shish Kebabs and Chicken Tandoori. The regulators saw these establishments as restaurants and refused to give a wet licence or a food licence allowing bar drinking. This led to the “membership” club - although when I interviewed an old landlord about this quirk they laughed and said everyone was a member!

The Boulevard Bar in New Southgate is one such former venue. It’s run by Kalpesh Shah, who is a Hindu born in Kenya, and the Boulevard has all the hallmarks of the club past including blacked out windows, long bar and table dining. But it’s such a pub: when I visited a woman called Debbie Stevens-Ely (above, left) told me, “I can’t imagine life without this place. I would be devastated if it closed,” and residents of a street who normally communicate on a WhatsApp group were having a night out.

There were Mixed Grills but Shah had stamped his personality on the menu with dishes such as Patra, and was the exquisite host to his super diverse crowd. None of whom, of course, were members.

David’s book, Desi Pubs, comes out in May. Pre-order it here

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Eastern Promise

If you Google the Carpenters’ Arms in Bethnal Green you’ll soon discover that, in 1967, it was bought by the Kray Twins for their mother Violet. Apparently they spent a lot of time here, doing gangster stuff. The last time I went in - probably a decade ago - there was a picture of them on the wall.

Soon, hopefully, it will be notable for better reasons. Adrian Kinsella, landlord of the Bank of Friendship pub in Highbury, took it on in December and is currently doing it up, with the aim of being open on Easter weekend. Kinsella plans to sell all London beer - London Black but no Guinness, Five Points Best as a permanent cask ale, lots of other good stuff - and is very keen that the place be a welcoming, comfortable space.

This feels like part of a greater move towards old-fashioned hospitality in London pubs at the moment, with Irishmen like Kinsella leading the way. “I think that old-fashioned idea of the pub - great hospitality, great beers, comfort, warmth, a sense of being part of something - has gotten lost over the years,” he says. “People have gone from one thing to another in a desperate bid to survive. For us, everything is about the customer.”    

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Ment to Be

The London Brewers Alliance has launched a mentoring scheme. Open to all staff of LBA member breweries, it aims to provide opportunities for junior brewery staff to partner with experienced professionals and to encourage more opportunities for less represented groups within the brewing industry.

Mentees will have the opportunity to learn from experienced professionals, gain valuable insights into the business, and develop new skills to help them progress in their careers. “The launch of the scheme comes directly from feedback from our members, and we're excited to be partnering with a number of key providers to ensure the success of the program,” says LBA chair Gawain Cox. To apply to be a mentor or a mentee, fill in this form.

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Two Pubs, One City

The Prince’s Head, Richmond, and The Nag’s Head, Peckham

A man is swearing, on the table next to mine. I count five fucks in 20 seconds, including a final, flamboyant ‘faark all’ - delivered in the sort of old-fashioned South London accent that just about survives in a city where most kids speak MLE. It’s a bravura performance, clearly sincerely felt but not, from my perspective anyway, intimidating.

I’m in the Nag’s Head, a pub in Peckham. Older readers - that’s most of you, let's be honest - will know that a pub called the Nag’s Head was the local in Only Fools and Horses, the most popular sitcom of the 1980s, set in the then very working-class neighbourhood of Peckham (even if it was filmed largely in Bristol). The Nag’s Head was, if not quite the centre of the action, then second only to the Trotters’ flat.

Only Fools And Horses was not unusual. Many of Britain’s most popular sitcoms and soaps have revolved around pubs: The Queen Vic, The Rover’s Return, The Woolpack, The Nag’s Head, The Grapes. Given the centrality of pubs to British life, even now, this makes sense - which is almost certainly why Ted Lasso, an American series about a fictional football club, AFC Richmond, revolves around The Crown and Anchor, an actual pub called The Prince’s Head, by Richmond Green.

What is interesting, to me anyway, is how being on TV affects pubs in real life. Do they become more like their fictional depiction, life imitating art? Does stardom go to their heads?

On a Thursday afternoon, and despite persistent drizzle, The Prince’s Head is undeniably a star, at least on the outside. Covered in white render, Fuller’s branding from the early 20th century, a paved area in front, even a couple of red phone boxes - this is Richard Curtis territory. You can see why the Yanks liked it. It’s exactly how many Americans imagine England to be, frozen in 1950, forever stiff-upper lipped over a glass of room-temperature brown beer.

The pub’s interior is not quite as enchanting. It’s nice, sure, but standard: a dark blue painted bar, hard floor, wooden furniture, section at the back set aside for diners. There are lots of dogs, including one that keeps on barking at the others, much to its owners’ evident embarrassment. I order London Pride (£5.15, perhaps a touch flabby) and find a seat in the corner of the pub.

If you didn’t know, would you realise Ted Lasso had been based around the pub? A quick look at the front room would suggest not. Yes, there’s a couple of AFC Richmond scarves behind the bar, but there’s also a rugby ball, and my London Pride glass is advertising a national rugby competition. If you look online you’ll find plenty of excitable Lasso fans who’ve taken pictures inside the pub, but there’s not much permanent that immediately screams Lasso.

There are a couple of 60-something Americans on the table next to me, but they don’t seem like Lassomaniacs (as I believe they’re called). They’re more interested in the dogs, particularly one huge beast which exits the pub soon after my arrival. Apparently it’s an American Bully. It looks like it could take your arm off with one toothy tug.

After I finish my pint, I take a quick turn around the back to see if there’s anything I’ve missed, Lasso-wise. There is: a shrine of sorts, right at the back, featuring a shirt and a couple of other bits. It’s a bit apologetic, I think, a little bit hidden away. There’s a vague sense of embarrassment here over the Lasso link. The Prince’s Head just wants to be a bourgeois boozer but the Americans won’t let it, the swines.

“If it’s a choice between Richmond and death,” Virginia Woolf once wrote, “I choose death.” Richmond has surely changed since the 1920s, but its bourgeois lethargy still feels a long way from Peckham. This is a much livelier place, home to hipsters and dozens of West African churches, the site of not just Only Fools and Horses but the equally joyous Desmonds, and this year’s big new rom-com, Rye Lane. The Britain of tomorrow is slowly being born here.

In The Nag’s Head, though, yesterday takes precedence. On a Friday afternoon, this single room pub is packed out with old geezers, most of them white, drinking a motley variety of lager and keg ale brands. There’s a mobility scooter parked outside. There are five screens - including an absolutely huge one - showing horse-racing. The music is strictly British classic rock, largely The Rolling Stones, from Under my Thumb to Jumping Jack Flash. One man, dressed in drinking suit, grey hair slicked back, sipping a glass of John Smith’s Smooth, sits alone by a table in front of the big screen, eyes trained on the action. He leaves using a zimmer frame.

But don’t get the wrong idea. An LGBT flag hangs in the corner, and there are young punters scattered here and there too. And, to my middle-aged delight, there’s one cask ale alongside the big brands: Southwark Bankside Blonde, served in almost perfect nick (it’s a touch cloudy, but the flavour and texture is spot on), for just £4.15.

I sit by the window and stare towards Peckham Rye itself. This is a great London view: red buses and people of all backgrounds, movement and life and colour. A man on rollerblades, tugged by a staffie, races past on his way up Rye Lane. Inside, the swearing man admonishes his friend: “Fucking ‘ell Jude, that was 40 years ago!”

40 years ago, Only Fools and Horses was in its pomp - and this pub was called The Morning Star. It existed under that name for more than a century, featuring in Muriel Spark’s Ballad of Peckham Rye, before it became The Nag’s Head perhaps 20 years ago, according to this account. It was named after the pub in Only Fools and Horses, a whimsical evocation of the perfect working-class South London pub.

And, to be honest, it works. The Nag’s Head could be the Only Fools pub, except 40 years’ on. Just as I’m leaving, one old bloke gets up to go and have a fag outside. He stops by the adjacent table for a chat.

“You alright?”

“Yeah, you alright?”

“Always better to see you …”

“I was just about to say the same!”

Chuckles all round.

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Brewer’s Acre

Guinness’s arrival in Old Brewer’s Yard, Covent Garden is set for the autumn, planning quibbles notwithstanding. It’s an auspicious time for the world’s greatest beer brand to return to the British capital given that it has rarely been more popular this side of the water, but it’s not the only auspicious thing about what they’re doing.

This corner of Covent Garden is drenched in beer history, ancient and modern. Belgo, cathedral of the 1990s fashion for Belgian beer, existed until recently on Earlham Street. Across the road at the start of the current century was the Soho Brewing Company, which became Bunker in 2003, a German beer hall/brewpub-type arrangement I remember with perhaps undeserved affection. That building had once been part of the Combe brewery, a huge pre-Victorian concern so significant that the Prince and Princess of Wales dined there on steak and porter in 1807, or so legend has it.

That’s not all. Belgo may have left this corner of town, but it’s going to be replaced by Biershenke, a new German beer hall arrangement, albeit with lager imported from Germany. There’s something in the water, surely.

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Kops Out

Lucky Saint’s new pub is now open and operating in Marylebone. Good luck to them; their solitary beer is an excellent product. It isn't, though, particularly new - London has a history of non-alcoholic beers that stretches back into the Temperance era, at the end of the 19th century. The most notable non-alcoholic London brewery of the time was the Kops Brewery, founded in 1890 and based at 20 Townmead Road in Fulham (the structure is still there, with its faintly oast-house style roof and a blue plaque explaining what it once was).

It’s hard to work out how Kops made their beer - some form of early vacuum distillation, perhaps - but it was clearly somewhat popular. Founded by the Polish-born Henry Lowenfeld, it advertised itself as “The Great Temperance Beverage’ in newspapers such as The Woman’s Signal, and lasted until the end of the First World War. Forgotten now, largely, but that’s true of all beer brands in the end - except maybe Guinness.

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Wild Horses

The carpet at the Greek Street end of the Coach and Horses is scarlet, overlaid with the sort of pattern you’ve seen a thousand times but would be hard pressed to describe. Three main repeating shapes are particularly baffling. Are they flowers? Not like any I’ve seen. One looks more like a Space Invaders alien.

It doesn’t really matter; what is significant is how spick and span it is. Ali Ross, General Manager at the Coach and Horses, says the carpet - produced by Axminster, naturally - was laid after Fuller’s took on the pub in 2019. It’s much the same as the one that was there before, she adds, except less grubby. As a metaphor for this most famous and infamous of Soho pubs, that’s perfect, so let’s run with it.

Before Fuller’s took it in-house, The Coach had two landlords in more than half a century. From 2006 until 2019, it was Alastair Choat; before then, it was Norman Balon - and if you’ve any interest in London pubs, you’ll know exactly who he is. “London’s Rudest Landlord” was his reputation, and he encouraged it. According to Jeffrey Bernard, journalist and not-very-bon-viveur, he had it printed on the pub’s promotional matchboxes.

Customers like Bernard, immortalised in Keith Waterhouse’s play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell (the action takes place at the Coach and Horses); Tom Baker, Doctor Who and subject of the most entertaining Day In The Life of all (written by Bernard); and the Private Eye team, who enjoyed boozy weekly lunches upstairs at the Coach and Horses until Balon’s retirement, made the pub legendary. Journalist Christopher Howse describes it in detail in his memoir ‘Soho In The Eighties’:

“There was no music in the Coach,” he writes. “The people standing had a hard time getting served over the shoulders of the regulars sitting at the bar. To get to the lavatory was an obstacle course of squeezing through gaps, stepping over limbs, and not nudging an arm holding a drink - or there’d be bellows of anger or worse … As I neared the door of the gents’, a thin figure sprawled towards me. ‘Fucking bore,’ he spat, glaring at me.”

Things change, and nowhere more so than Soho, which has never been what it used to be. Those bar seats are gone, and the [famously disgusting] toilets are much nicer now, like the carpet, the beer, the cellar - renovated in 2019 - and, some might say, the person in charge. 

Not that everyone welcomed the changes that brought Ross to the pub in 2019. Choat, who’d introduced singalong sessions around the piano and vegan food, launched a campaign against Fullers’ takeover, collecting nearly 12,000 names on a petition warning that the pub company would “very likely strip it of its unique character and spirit” if they took it over.

Have they? Hard to say, really - but what is certain is that this iteration of the Coach and Horses is a very good pub. The beer is better than it's ever been; there are six handpumps, and they get through 20 firkins of cask ale a week. In particular I can vouch for the London Pride, which is as good as anywhere in the city. (There’s also all manner of keg craft beer, such as the Verdant Putty that caused so much fuss a few weeks’ back.)

Drinkers don’t seem to have been put off by the change of management. On a recent Monday afternoon it was packed; on Friday morning, when I spoke to Ross, hopeful punters, their little faces pushed up against the window, kept requesting entry pre-12pm opening. This level of popularity is partly because it’s the Coach and Horses, but it has also got a lot to do with Ross, her Lithuanian deputy Ugne Grevyte and a team that is young and mostly female. 

If Balon was the perfect landlord for Soho’s booze-addled decades post-War, this 38-year-old Londoner, born in East Finchley to a mum who came from Spain at the age of two and an Anglo-Indian dad who arrived here when he was 20, suits the neighbourhood now. She’s worked for Fuller’s for all 13 years of her hospitality career, from West London to The City, but Soho is a bit different. “It’s a joy to come to work,” she says, emphatically.

The customers here are still more interesting than is normal, although they don’t always drink as much: Willem Defoe and Robert Pattinson were photographed here for Esquire Magazine in the summer of 2019, to promote their film The Lighthouse. Despite pints of Fuller’s appearing in the images, they didn’t touch them, Ross says. 

While The post-war Coach and Horses was never an exclusively male place - both Howse’s book and a 1987 documentary about Bernard confirm that - it was, like most pubs then, a bit of a sausage fest. It had a certain ambiance, an enter-if-you-dare vibe that put a lot of people off, perhaps especially women. It doesn’t feel like that now - the windows are still frosted but the stools by the bar are gone and the doors are thrown open when it’s warm - although some things are slow to change.  

“Some days I look around the pub and it’s all men,” Ross says. “And then other days there’s people on dates, groups of girls drinking cask beer, people who work in the restaurant next door, and it’s a nice mix. You know, I don’t think we’ll ever get to the stage where it’s just girls sitting in a pub. 

“But I think the days of going to the pub and downing eight to 10 pints, we’re slowly moving away from that. It’s really unhealthy. The way people are drinking thirds, discussing what they’re drinking, I find that a more comfortable place.”

However it changes, the Coach and Horses seems to have a lifeforce of its own. It gets into people’s blood. Choat recently wrote a play about Balon. Has Ross tried being rude to the customers? “People like that, sometimes,” she says, laughing. “It’s a strange thing - they don’t expect it and it puts them off guard. They quite enjoy a little telling off now and then.”

But perhaps Balon, who’s still battling on at the age of 96, wasn’t as mean as all that. He still comes into the pub to play cards before opening some Wednesdays; he’s not such a cantankerous old bastard, Ross says, he’s “very sweet and supportive”. Another Soho legend shot down.

On the wall at the pub is a sign reading ‘Norman’s’. Above is a new sign - less than a month old - reading ‘Alison’s’. What’s this? “The team made me the sign for Christmas,” she says. “We had our staff party on Sunday and when we were a bit drunk we put it up there.” Is it staying up there? “It’s going to stay up.” And why not? Things change. In Soho of all places, you have to get used to that.

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Another Brexit Dividend

The Hamilton Road Industrial Estate, SE27, is a good place to take the temperature of London brewing. Until recently, it was home to two breweries, Gipsy Hill (Units 5, and 7-11) and the London Beer Factory (Units 4 and 6). Not any more. The latter left before Christmas, headed for Norfolk - and while the former are still in-situ, things are as difficult as they’re ever been.

The various pressures breweries are facing are much the same as those all businesses are struggling with now, from energy costs to the decline in customers’ disposable income. Everything - malt, heat, etc - is more expensive than it was. But there’s an extra burden many breweries - and other companies based on industrial estates - face: the escalating cost of light industrial units. Sam McMeekin, founder and managing director, explains.

“Brexit severed the smoothness of the supply chains between Britain and the rest of Europe, and made the previous ‘just in time’ model no longer viable,” he says. “This has meant that lots of European companies have had to take on warehouse space in Britain, and they’ll pay whatever it takes, because their business depends on it.”

The price Gipsy Hill is paying for its home has almost quadrupled since they first signed a lease in 2013. Then it was £8 a square foot; £16 by 2018; now £28. Putting aside all other factors, McMeekin says, these price rises means they need to make another 5000 hectolitres of beer a year to break even: 22,000. Post-Covid, they’re making 13,500.

This means price increases, of course: about 5 percent last year and something similar this year. Gipsy Hill crowdfunded last year, and will be looking for private investment this year, and they’re increasingly focused on those places that can do high volume - pubs such as The Wheatsheaf in Borough, The Gladstone, also in Borough, or The Railway Tavern in Tulse Hill.

“That’s the positive note,” says McMeekin. “It’s been tough for pubs, but it almost seems like the great ones have got even better. Working with them has been a dream.”

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Desi Pub of the Month: The Aroma Lounge, Wembley

In his latest column, David Jesudason, author of the soon-to-be-published Desi Pubs, savours superb food in the home of football:

There’s a good argument that co-landlord of the Aroma Lounge in Wembley, Shiba Tiwari, might be the best chef in the country. That’s right. Not the best desi pub chef. Nor the best chef of Indian food. But the best chef.

‘Bold claim’ you might say but here’s my compelling argument (I hope). There’s nowhere in the country where you can get such high quality desi, pub, vegetarian or restaurant food cooked (or overseen – as there’s a team of chefs as well as Tiwari) by someone who really wants to push the boundaries of excellence. The dishes such as Mock Duck and tandoori chops cater for every demographic and are always mouthwateringly excellent.

When they opened the Aroma Lounge they didn’t really publicise the venture as Tiwari had been working in Indian restaurants for 27 years and they knew his food would be so incredible it wouldn’t need any slick marketing. It gained a loyal following from a desi crowd who would enthuse about the dishes on Facebook group CARBDashian and, unlikely as it sounds, Premier League footballers.

It’s a rare thing: a pub which is packed when they show big matches on the TV but with fans eating food that is truly remarkable.

David’s book, Desi Pubs, comes out in May. Pre-order it here

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Mother’s Little Helper

In 1987 the Queen Mother visited the Queen’s Head pub in Limehouse, pulled a pint of bitter, necked it, wiped her lips on a floral sleeve and declared, with a loud burp, that it “tastes better than Champagne”. The beer she enjoyed so much was Young’s Special, and various images from that trip can still be seen on Young’s Beer Co pub walls all over the city. The pub, however, has had a few tough years - but it’s about to make a vigorous comeback. 

That’s thanks to Tadgh Barry, once of the Greenwich Pensioner in Poplar, who is currently in the process of fitting out the pub ahead of a reopening this month. Expect beer of the same quality as at the Pensioner; for more information and progress updates, see the pub's instagram.

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Two Pubs, One City

The Real Ale Way, Hayes, & One Inn The Wood, Petts Wood

The two pubs listed above have at least three things in common:

1. They’re micropubs

2. They have terrible names 

3. They major on beer from Kent despite being in Greater London

I’m going to focus on the third of these (apologies to fans of micropubs and places with terrible names). I find it fascinating (well, quite interesting) that, despite having been part of London since 1965, a residue of Kentish sentiment remains abroad in these sleepy outer ’burbs, an inclination to turn towards the Downs and Weald rather than the Great Wen, particularly when it comes to beer. Why should that be? It’s a real three-pipe problem. Perhaps visiting the venues can offer me some insight.

Before that, though, some crucial context. Kentish stubbornness on this matter has a long history, a history that can be summed up in one word: Knockholt. It’s as evocative in Kentish lore as The Alamo is to Texans (I’m guessing here, never been to Texas). This village of 1000 souls refused to be part of London when the capital took its current form in 1965 and, more impressively, subsequently convinced the powers-that-be to agree it wasn’t part of London. 

It left London on April Fools Day 1969, with a touching ceremony at Knockholt Police Station, a humble two-storey structure originally built to detain drunken hop pickers. PC Kenneth Keenes of the Metropolitan Police gave the building’s keys to Kent PC Alan Cooke, before they both posed, avec clé, for a photographer from the local press. Miss Fowler, the village’s postmistress, spoke for many: “There are pros and cons to it, but I am glad to be in Kent.”

Pros and cons! It stirs the blood. That Kentish tradition of forthright, no-holds-barred chat was on full display at The Real Ale Way when I arrived mid-afternoon one recent Sunday. There were about 10 people in the pub, but all the noise was coming from four middle-aged pals sitting at the bar. In quick succession, they discussed a close friend’s recent death, made a joke about a woman called Beryl, chuckled at a lewd gag, and then got into hot sauces and chillies, in some depth. “That’s the annoying thing about it,” said the resident expert, alluding to a supermarket hot sauce. “It’s tailored to the British palate.” 

The pub is housed in a 1930s mock-Tudor shop unit opposite the station. Opened in 2018, it serves - almost exclusively - Kentish beer, cider and wine (the crisps are also from Kent). On this Sunday there were seven cask ales, with just one from outside Kent: an interloper from (of all places!) Surrey, Titsey’s Gresham Hopper. I studiously ignore it, opting instead for Larkin’s Pale (4.2 ABV, £4.50), poured on gravity in the chilled back room. It’s delicious: brambly and bitter, a touch of sweet malt. 

Not too much expense has been expended on decoration, it must be said, although there is a delightfully kitsch painting of the Queen with her corgis. A TV, sound down but showing the thrilling Six Nations rugby union game between Italy and France, dominates the room.

Outside, things are on the surreal side of suburban. A man walks by in deerhunter and plus fours, wheeling a Penny Farthing. Down the street, a mother is putting her daughter straight about the small dog she’s cooing at: “it’s not a French Bulldog, darling, it’s a Boston Terrier.” Around a corner there’s The George, described on the sign as ‘Country Pub & Dining’. I scoff. Country? Lol. This is suburbia, Georgey Porgey.

But there is a patch of country here: Bromley Common, which separates Hayes from Petts Wood, my destination. And it has historic Kentish significance: Kent played All-England at cricket here in 1739, the first of many similar matches, and beat them too. Now it’s home to quite a few horses, a bridleway which is mostly rutted mud, and the (very nice) home of Bromley Common cricket club (who play in the Kent League, naturally).

After the Common, it’s a long haul through neat but dull suburban streets and across a railway line to Petts Wood, but it’s worth it. One Inn The Wood, housed in a 1960s shop unit, is alive with chatter and gentle laughter. There are families outside, as many women inside as men, and lots of beer - much of it from Kent. Even better, the two lads serving (who are playing chess on a tiny board in between fetching beer from the cold room at the back) offer a warm welcome. 

The pub focuses on, as the website puts it, “produce from our wonderful county of Kent.” I go for Tonbridge’s gently bitter ‘Permanent Wood’ (£.6 ABV, £4), the name apparently a reference to its status as house beer rather than anything else, stop sniggering at the back.

There’s one seat left, next to a tiny Spaniel called Trixie, and I boldly occupy it. Trixie’s owner is talking to a pal about Sunday roasts (‘The meat is in already, and the veg is easy’). In front of me is a mural of a verdant forest glade with a dog running through the middle. A “Kent, Beer Garden of England’ poster is on the wall next to it, and there are hops. Good to see that, unlike The Real Ale Way, there is some Kentish theme to the decoration.

As I wander back to Petts Wood, I gather my thoughts. What have I learnt? That humans crave community, and these micropubs provide that in buckets. Also, that a sense of identity is a big part of ‘community’, and to think of yourself as coming from an ancient county is more romantic and attractive than being from a relatively humdrum suburb. (That’s probably what I would have assumed, anyway, but at least I had a nice afternoon’s walk and two tasty pints.) 

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Chain Reaction

One of the things I didn’t necessarily expect post-Covid/Britain’s economic collapse was for London craft-beer chains to expand. But that is, to a certain degree, what has happened. The Craft Beer Co opened a new venue, The Bear, in Paddington late last year, and now two more stalwarts of the past decade are spreading their wings.

Firstly, Kill The Cat, a snazzy little bottle shop on Brick Lane, is opening a kitchen and bar in Spitalfields Market next month. And then there’s Mother Kelly’s, owner of bars in Bethnal Green and Vauxhall, which - I hear - has some interesting expansion plans in the offing. More on that when we have it.

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Valentine’s Wahey

Got something romantic planned for Tuesday 14th February? Cancel it! Here’s something better: Orbit are launching their Baltic Porter, the result of a collaboration with Devon lager hotshots Utopian Brewery, at The Southampton Arms that very evening. Given the calibre of the breweries involved, this is likely to be good - and there’ll be a cask of Orbit’s Dead Wax London Porter on the bar too.  

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Penny Drop

Finally … There's a three-day beer festival at Big Penny, the brewery formerly known as Truman’s, next week. The beer list is London-heavy, including Anspach & Hobday, Five Points, Hammerton, Wild Card, Wimbledon and more; look out, too, for Gravesend’s Iron Pier and Sussex’s Burning Sky. More details here.

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London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. If you’ve got a story or an observation, contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you like what you’ve read, please share it with your friends; if you’ve been forwarded this email and enjoyed it, you can sign up here. Thanks for reading.

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The Generation Game

It’s the morning after his birthday celebrations and Jack Duignan is back in the pub. “It got a bit out of hand,” he says, a touch ruefully, as he drops the dog leads for his Boston Terriers, Ludo and Manny, and they hurry away, tussling and scrapping, across the scarlet-carpeted floor of The Sutton Arms in Clerkenwell. 

10.30am on Thursday, a week and a bit before Christmas: too early for a restorative drink? Perhaps, but Jack, who’s turning 31, is not here for hair of the dog. His name is above the door, alongside that of his father, Mick. Jack was born upstairs, in the pub his dad has run since the 1980s, in a part of the city where his family is steeped in the trade: cousin David runs The Old Fountain near Old Street, a similarly well-run, much-loved establishment.

Wednesday evening’s events - which included beer from Manchester’s excellent Track Brewing Co and music from brass ensemble the Tromboners - demonstrate exactly why this handsome street-corner pub has captured the imagination of London’s beer world. The Sutton Arms is an irresistible blend of old and new, a traditional, no airs-and-graces pub that sells excellent beer from the UK’s best breweries. In the post-Covid era, when even the most demanding of beer aficionados craves some old-fashioned comfort, that is an unbeatable combination. 

It’s not the only potent pairing here. Jack is responsible for what’s available on the bar - but we’ll get to that later. Mick, now 74, is the main attraction for many of their customers, with a pub heritage that stretches back more than 40 years and the sort of chat that turns a pint into a real pleasure. He took charge of his first pub, The Hansler Arms in King’s Cross, in 1979, after an extensive interview process with owners Whitbread, and thanks to a CV that drew heavily and a little creatively on the family connection to the Old Fountain. 

It was a great place, as Mick tells it. Stories pour out of him: the Scottish football fans who took up residence during Home Championship games at Wembley, the coppers from King’s Cross Police station, across the road, who shared the pub with a diverse case of ne'er-do-wells, and the first cask ale he ever served: Flower’s Original. “It was cloudy, hazy. I thought - what am I doing wrong?” He soon got the hang of it.

Born in Hackney in 1948 to parents from Roscommon in the heart of Ireland, Mick took on the Sutton Arms, just off Clerkenwell Road, in 1989. (The Hansler Arms is now shut, commemorated with a framed article about it by Roger Protz on the wall at the Sutton Arms). He can remember when he signed the lease on the pub because it came just before Arsenal’s unforgettable Title triumph in 1989, when the famous Anfield victory was shown on a TV propped up on the pool table (which, like most pool tables in London, is now long gone).

The celebrations went on long into the night, so Mick was a little worse for wear when a famous face was first through the door the next morning. “I had a diabolical hangover, I was in a right state,” he says. “I was told - ‘Robert De Niro’s in the bar, sitting on his own’. Oh fuck off! But he was; his girlfriend at the time was working at a film studio down the road, I think. He had half a bitter, the first one out of the pump that morning. 

“He drank about that much [Mick puts finger and thumb together to show about half an inch] and brought it back. It was too warm. He had half a lager instead. He was much happier with that.” 

Then there’s Rod Stewart - smart suit, drank Bitter, two pals who were probably bodyguards - and the puppeteer who left Margaret Thatcher’s Spitting Image doll in the pub when he rushed off to pick something up, with inevitable consequences. Mick’s regulars back then were printers, journalists from the nearby Reuters building, workers from various local businesses - all now gone, more or less, but the Sutton Arms, unlike too many London pubs, has found a way to survive.

There was no inevitability, though, that Jack would join his father at the pub. As a 10-year-old, he collected bottles until he realised £1 a shift was a “rip-off”, and he was on West Ham’s books (Mick thinks the Hammers made a mistake letting him go; his other son, Greg, also played youth football, for Orient. Jack is still a passionate West Ham fan, with both dogs named after players). He fancied a job selling trainers, but his Dad convinced him to give the pub a go.

It didn’t start well. In fact, as Jack puts it, he “hated it”, but it sparked an interest in beer. On nights out, his friends would drink Foster’s, but he’d be trying different things; Belgian beers, American beers. At that time the pub sold a fairly classic selection - Stella, Guinness, London Pride - but Jack’s advocacy convinced Mick to put Vedett IPA on a spare tap. Soon they were selling ten 20-litre kegs a week, and so another tap was converted to guest beers, sourced from Cave Direct.

Things have accelerated since. There are 16 beers on the bar now, up from eight (three are cask, and there are excellent pies). The biggest names (and biggest sellers) are Paulaner and Guinness, the latter the one beer from the past that they couldn’t say goodbye to. It just sells too well. It doesn’t matter what the price is (and it’s been going up a lot lately, grumbles Jack), people will pay it. 

Mick still lives upstairs but Jack has moved to Leyton. He needs the distance. Growing up in a pub wasn’t always easy, he says: “We never had a normal life. I still have scars on my arm from when I was eight or nine, coming home, walking through the pub, and people were putting their fags out on you by accident.” He pauses to consider what he’s just said. “Jesus Christ!” 

A lot has changed since then. Jack’s seen it first-hand, from the rise of Beavertown (“People ask us for whatever we have that’s most like Neck Oil or Gamma Ray”) to the resistance he got when he wanted to take Stella off the bar, to the value of lockdown, which was a surprise boon for The Sutton Arms. It helped the pub to engage with people, breweries and customers who came by to pick up beer.  

So what’s next? Jack wants to do something else in the beer world, in addition to the pub; Mick is keen to keep doing what he’s always done. “I work for Jack now,” he says. “I don’t want to stop working, especially when it’s like this. I like the daytime, getting things ready, making sure the cellar looks good. I’m a creature of habit; call it what you want, I like doing things properly.” 

Call it what you want, indeed. Whatever it is, it appears to be just what London’s beer lovers are looking for right now.

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Luck and Judgement

Lucky Saint, the London-based non-alcoholic lager brand, is powering ahead. The company, whose unfiltered lager is made in Bavaria, has just raised £10m from investors, and you can see why. The beer is not only very good but intensively marketed too, with the result that it’s available pretty much everywhere, from supermarkets to restaurants - and soon there’ll be another venue stocking it. 

Lucky Saint’s very own pub, in fact. The company is planning to open in Marylebone, where its offices are based; a new company, called the Lucky Saint Pub Co, has been established, boasting the same two directors that run the beer company (although founder Luke Boase’s name is spelt incorrectly). 

The word is that they’re planning to serve alcoholic as well as non-alcoholic drinks. That would be a smart move: remember Brewdog’s alcohol-free bar in Old Street, which opened with a bang before very quickly closing with a pop? 

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Desi Pub of the Month: The Three Tuns, Slough

In his latest column, David Jesudason, author of the soon-to-be-published Desi Pubs, finds unexpected delight beyond the boundaries of Greater London:

Liking Desi Pubs often takes me out of my comfort zone. Before I became obsessed with them, I thought I was a metropolitan type who only felt at ease in a city setting. Or maybe my love started because of how fresh they felt compared to the type of pubs I had started to become numb to: expensive gastropubs or craft-centric ones with whitesplaining staff (I’m bored of nodding along when someone tells me about an IPA’s origins).

I wasn’t sure what I was to expect when I travelled to Smethwick or even parts of West London, like Hounslow. It’s easy to have misconceptions of places like these and, embarrassingly, I was really prejudiced about Slough even though you can travel there using contactless payment making it feel like an extension of this city. I thought it was a white, naff backwater as shown in The Office but the reality is it’s a young, super diverse place with a desi pub, The Three Tuns, that’s a beacon for South Asians from all over the country. It used to be a dangerous dive but now it has wonderful fusion food (keema nachos!) and lively bhangra nights. Ironically, its biggest customer base is the Slough Trading Estate so if The Office was realistic then you’d have seen David Brent dancing to Punjabi pop.

David’s book, Desi Pubs, comes out in May. Pre-order it here.

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A Tonic for London Beer City readers

One of the best magazines to have emerged of late is Tonic, a biannual celebration of drinks and travel. I have a particular reason to love this marvellous mag: a story I wrote in its first issue, about The Oberpfalz in Bavaria and its communal lager-brewing tradition, helped me win the Fortnum and Mason Drink Writer of the Year award in 2021.

Now you can have a copy of that first issue, entirely for free, courtesy of the generous Londoners - Benita Finanzio and Rob Ellison - behind the publication. Simply head to the Tonic webshop and add LONDONBEERCITY to the discount code box to get your free copy (If you’re outside the UK, you’ll have to pay postage). And that’s not all. Tonic is also offering a 20 percent discount on subscriptions. Go to the subscription page and add LONDONBEERCITY20 to the discount code box to get your discount. 

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Two Pubs, One City

The Griffin, Shoreditch; The Well & Bucket, Bethnal Green Road

There’s one cask ale on at The Griffin, a slim, aubergine-tiled pub just off Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch, and I’m the first to order it. It’s 12.20pm. 

The serving process proves surprisingly complex. First, the barman peels cling film from the nozzle, and then pours perhaps an inch of beer into a small glass. He tastes it, is apparently satisfied, and begins to pour a full pint into a dimpled jug. Then he stops again, tastes that, puts it to one side, and attaches a sparkler to the nozzle. A new jug is filled and placed on the bar in front of me. 

It’s Oakham Citra (£5). Given the rigmarole, I’m sceptical - but I needn’t be. It’s absolutely delicious, as good as I’ve had it in years. The beer is hoppy (raspingly bitter at this early hour, actually) and well-conditioned enough to survive a thorough sparkling. Some people talk disparagingly of beers that ‘taste like grapefruit’ - but that’s what this tastes like, and it’s superb. One-note, but superb.

I feel the same way about the pub. It’s a very satisfying space: two doors into the street swinging open and shut, etched mirrors, the corridor-like slimness of the room. Even the men’s loos, home to two of the best urinals in town, are marvellous. It just lacks the welcoming ambiance a proper landlord/lady would give it (see Sutton Arms, above), but otherwise it’s a joy. 

Until recently this pub was owned by pub company Barworks, a key player in London's beer revolution. Established in 1998, Barworks really got into its stride with the arrival of craft beer: the founders (one of whom, Andreas Akerlund, is a friend of mine) invested in the Camden Town brewery and built a family of beer-focused pubs in East and North London, including The Exmouth Arms in Exmouth Market and The Three Johns in Angel. These were good pubs of a modern kind, offering often excellent beer in elegant surroundings.

In 2021, though, the company sold 13 pubs - including The Griffin - to another company, Urban Pubs and Bars. For London’s beer drinkers, this was one of the most significant changes wrought by, or at least during, Covid. While Barworks were committed to modern beer, Urban Pubs seem less so. It’s a changing of the guard, an ill wind - so I’m told - for beer lovers in this city. 

That’s not immediately obvious at The Griffin. There’s only one cask ale, true, but it’s in excellent shape. There are keg beers by Burning Sky, Boundary, Burnt Mill and other independent breweries on the bar, there’s Schneider Weisse and Saison Dupont. A lot of good beer by anyone’s standards.

This lunchtime, though, they’re all struggling to compete with Guinness, which is flying across the bar on a day when the temperature outside is just below freezing (both barmen are wearing woolly hats, and not solely for sartorial reasons). About half of the pub’s 20-odd customers are drinking it.

You wouldn’t think this was its natural audience, but it’s clearly having ‘a moment’, as they say. This is a well-heeled crowd, as befits modern Shoreditch. The music is loud. There are lots of puffa jackets with fur-lined hoods, and only one suit. An older gent is wearing a gilet on top of a pink shirt, with chinos. It’s mostly men, although there is one young woman in a Santa hat. The atmosphere is festive, relaxed. It’s lunchtime drinking just before Christmas. 

Three posh men wander past as I get up to leave. “Yah, we were out with Ben Howard and that gang … no, in Soho.”

A ten-minute walk eastwards takes me to the Well and Bucket, another Barworks-turned-Urban pub. I wander past The Old Blue Last and The Queen’s Head, one more Urban venue, which until September last year was home to Goose Island’s London brewpub (that must be it for Goose Island venues in London, surely?).

The Well and Bucket has changed a lot more than The Griffin, and not necessarily for the better. There are four handpumps on the bar, none in use. There are new tables around which you must manoeuvre to get to the bar, not a good sign in a pub. The tables are much smaller than they were, too, and most of them have reserved tickets on them. The message is clear: this is a pub for diners now.

There is beer, though, even if - with the exception of Signature - it’s drawn exclusively from brands owned or recently sold by the big boys: Camden, Brixton, Magic Rock, Fourpure. I order a pint of Camden Hells (£5.90), which is decent but a bit too cold given the outside temperature, and take a seat at a table by the front window. 

I’d better be quick: a note informs me that it will be occupied by Adam - and three pals, presumably - at 2.15pm. I suspect they’ll be enjoying much the same experience as a table to my right, where 12 colleagues are working their way through an office Christmas lunch. It’s early and the ambiance is subdued, despite the multicoloured paper hats most are wearing. (On the other side of the pub, incongruously, two men are huffing and puffing as they remove a long, low bottle fridge.) 

Xmas has arrived here in a way it hasn’t at The Griffin. The room smells of Christmas Dinner; there are lots of decorations. Physically a lot of what was here before remains, including some gruesome images on the left-hand wall as you come in, and a painted mirror at the back boasting that the pub is ‘noted for oysters and porter’. Not any more it isn’t. There are no oysters (the menu is generic gastropub: burgers, sausage rolls, etc) and Guinness is the only dark beer, but that’s surely not worthy of note. Everywhere sells it.

As I drink up, two women enter, and order pints of Neck Oil. A young man follows, dressed in a Santa Claus jumper, and checks the names on the tables. It’s these ones, he turns to tell his friends. He’s Adam. It’s time for me to go.

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One Mile, End

Things continue to look pretty gloomy in the brewing world. Businesses are closing up and down the country, including a number in London: Canopy, Solvay Society and, most recently, One Mile End. The latter had particular resonance for me. Back in the days when London Beer City was a beer week rather than a newsletter, One Mile End were enthusiastic participants, especially Simon McCabe, the genial Middlebrough-raised head brewer (pictured below in 2017), who subsequently and sensibly headed for Finland. (He now makes wine as well as beer, and appears on magazine covers.)

Elsewhere, there’s a London departure and a revival, of sorts. London Beer Factory has left the SE27 industrial estate it shared with Gipsy Hill Brewing, and - according to Des de Moor - is now making beer in Norfolk. More on that when we have it.

Brodie’s, meanwhile, which played as key a role as anyone in kicking off London’s beer revolution, is back, albeit not in the capital. Once based at Leyton’s William IV pub, the beer will now be made in Hereford, by Tom Barlow, the former Brodies head brewer gifted the brand by founder James Brodie in 2018. “Expect plenty of cask beer, clear beer - no haze here! - and fun,” he tells me. 

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And its Burns, Burns, Burns

One of the best foods around is Haggis, a savoury pudding so delicious vegetarians have rightly demanded - and got - their own version of it. It’s the undoubted main event at any self-respecting Burns Supper, of which there are dozens going on in London later this month. This might be the most fun, though: There’s Yer Supper, at the Pembury Tavern in Hackney on the 25th of January. Attendees can expect London-brewed beer from Five Points, Finnish whiskey and haggis pizza, all for £25.   

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The Needle and The Spoons

Fun times in Covent Garden, where Wetherspoons are facing considerable local opposition as they seek to turn the former TGI Friday’s on Bedford Street into a pub. Spoons, which recently announced plans for a pub & 3,800-square-foot beer garden at the O2, is under fire over the proposed opening hours: 8am until midnight, which doesn’t seem unreasonable in the centre of Western Europe’s biggest city.  

“The change of use from a restaurant to a pub would encourage a different clientele, drink led rather than food led,” writes one local just about subduing an attack of the vapours, in a submission to Westminster Council. “This is wholly inconsistent with the character of the area.” 

I’m not the biggest advocate of Tim Martin’s pubs - they’re often cheap, it’s true, but they never quite hit the mark - but this seems to be about snobbery as much as anything else. Covent Garden has been for drinking at all hours since Shakespeare was a boy. A decision by Westminster Council on whether to approve Spoon’s planning application is expected soon. 

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Dog Learns New Tricks

Finally, one of South London’s best pubs has just got a little bit better. The Dog and Bell in Deptford has added a new room, which takes in a curved bar, a bar billiards table and a TV (invariably showing horseracing). When I spotted it on New Year’s Eve I thought I was seeing things. “Narnia,” is how one observer put it.

And finally finally: Not too far from there, in Bermondsey, there’s further good news. The Old Justice, which we mentioned in last month’s newsletter, has new owners. Good luck to them.

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London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. If you’ve got a story or an observation, contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you like what you’ve read, please share it with your friends; if you’ve been forwarded this email and enjoyed it, you can sign up here. Thanks for reading.

What are the elements that make a beer memorable? I’d say there are four: the venue, the moment, the quality of the beer, and the sense that I’ve achieved something in advance (tbf that might just be Protestantism). A beer in foreign climes? All the better.

On the rare occasion I’ve been asked to name my favourite beer, I’m stumped. I’ve drunk many technically excellent beers, and plenty more that are complex/characterful, but they’re just beers until you put them in context. A beer is only as good as the circumstances in which it takes place.

All of which is to say that the best beers I drank in 2022 are a motley collection of fogeyish favourites, a reflection not only of my increasing decrepitude, but also that these are the beers served in the most interesting places - or those that I find most interesting at the moment. Make of that what you will.

 Timothy Taylor Boltmaker, at The Fighting Cock, Bradford

The story I enjoyed producing above all others last year was this one for Pellicle. It basically wrote itself, after a day’s yomping around Bradford with the founders of Bundobust - Marko Husak and Mayur Patel - plus David Bailey, Bundo promo head honcho & top-notch illustrator, and Matthew Curtis, Pellicle co-founder. We ate, we walked, we chatted about this and that, some of which made it into the article. 

Of the pubs we visited, my favourite was The Corn Dolly, with its scarlet carpet and Bradford City memorabilia, but I was feeling the effects by then. More memorable was Boltmaker at The Fighting Cock, a spartan but charismatic venue adrift amidst the post-industrial jumble of west Bradford. The beer was so good we had two pints when we only had time for one.

Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild, at The Beacon Hotel, Sedgley

By the time I reached The Beacon Hotel I’d walked 30 miles in two days, through Netherton and Blackheath and Brierley Hill. There’s no better way of getting to know somewhere quickly than using your feet, and The Black Country is stubbornly unknown to those of us who don’t live in those parts. Neatly, this is reflected in the availability of its tastiest beers, notably Bathams, nigh-on impossible to find elsewhere. 

The same is true, largely, of Sarah Hughes Ruby Mild. One of the last things I needed for this story was an interview with some Mild lovers, and I thought The Beacon Hotel, home to Sarah Hughes, would be the perfect place to get it. I was right - the trio of pals quoted at the top of the story were enthusiastic, funny, welcoming and genuinely eccentric. They were as good an advert for the benefits of going to the pub with your pals as you’ll ever find. 

Spaten Helles, St Emmeramsmühle, Munich

I had one key objective when I went to Munich in May: to drink all six of the city’s major-brewery Helles in beer gardens. (spoiler: I achieved it, well done me). The most enjoyable moment came on the afternoon of Thursday 19, a day of delightful warmth and sunlight, when every second pedestrian seemed to be gulping from a bottle of Augustiner Helles and young Muncheners lay hugger-mugger on the sandbanks beside the sluggish Isar. 

In the morning I’d been to the Stadtmuseum (v good) and interviewed Gregor Fransson, so I decided to celebrate by walking across the river and up a hill to the Hofbraukeller for lunch (Nürnberger Rostbratwurst, Hofbrau Helles). After that, I spent an hour and a half strolling through the Englischer Garten and along the Isar until I reached St Emmeramsmühle, a restaurant and beer garden about four miles north-east of the city centre. It was perfect: semi-rural, great service, chestnut trees, a smattering of other customers, the whole thing knee deep in Bavarian kitsch. Spaten’s Hell was crisp, lemon-bitter and very refreshing, the perfect beer on a perfect day. 

Senate Beer, Heurich House Museum, Washington DC

I don’t often go to panel events because I find them dull, but there’s always an exception, and its name is/was ‘The Complexity of Innovation’. This took place at the Heurich House Museum in Washington DC, when I was there in late June. The panelists were black brewers and advocates, and the discussion was a window into a world I knew nothing about.

Afterwards, I spoke to Courtney Rominiyi, one of four founders of DC’s Black Brew Movement, over a beer in Heurich House’s verdant and delightful back garden. Another eye-opener. The beer I drank, Senate, is an adjunct lager, made in DC until the 1950s and revived recently by the Museum and Right Proper Brewing Co, a DC brewery. Like DC itself, it’s way more interesting and enjoyable than it has any right to be.

Bass, Devonshire Arms and Coopers Tavern, Burton-on-Trent 

The closure of the National Brewery Centre is not good news, even if it had been looking very threadbare of late. For writers, the (hopefully temporary) disappearance of the archives is a minor disaster: there’s so much good stuff there that shines light not only on Britain's brewing story, but also on the social history of this country. 

I was in Burton in April to research a book idea that may/may not see the light of day some time in the not too distant future; afterwards I decided to reward myself for a day’s hard archive-bothering with three pints of Burton’s legendary beer, Bass, in three different pubs. They were: The Devonshire Arms (sparkled, very good); The Roebuck (sparkled, too cold); and the Cooper’s Tavern (gravity, very good). The pint at the Devonshire was the prettier but the one at the Cooper’s was good all the way to the bottom of the glass. And that, I believe, is the sparkler debate settled.

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Smoke Signals

If you made a list of London’s five most important breweries, who’d be on it? Fuller’s, certainly. The Kernel, equally certainly. Camden and Beavertown, very likely. Meantime? Possibly. Five Points, Signature, Wild Card, Sambrook’s: you could make a case for all of them, and about a dozen others too. 

One name you might not consider is Big Smoke, and with good reason. It’d be odd, surely, to include a brewery based outside the capital, without a major presence east of Hammersmith. Wouldn’t it? 

Well, maybe not. Look at it this way: when you arrive at or leave Heathrow, London’s main airport, you’re very likely to pass one of their pubs, in Terminals Two, Three and Five. The former (Big Smoke Taphouse & Kitchen) can be found after security, the latter two (The Oceanic, the Globe) before. 

The brewery also has a pub at Luton Airport. A lot of people from across the world have drunk, and will drink, Big Smoke’s beer when visiting London. Along with Fuller’s, this is the brewery that provides the first and last impressions many visitors get of our city. That makes them important.

I went to the Taphouse this summer, en route to Washington DC - and, in a fit of journalistic rigour, I jumped on the Elizabeth Line to Heathrow late last month to recce the other two. The Oceanic, it’s fair to say, is a bit tucked away, in Heathrow’s least appealing terminal - but The Globe is definitely not. It couldn’t really be more prominent, dominating the airy departures hall at Terminal Five, gaudily advertising the possibility of a cold drink before the soul-sapping chore of putting your liquids in little plastic bags and removing all metal from your person. 

I was there in time for a Friday lunchtime pint (Big Smoke Electric Eye, £6.90). The pub was perhaps a third full, but felt busier thanks to the decor - angular tiling on floor and walls - plus TV screens showing football, huge posters for ‘Flight Mode’ (a pilsner only available at the airport), and staff hurrying here and there with food and drinks. There was big-name beer as well as Big Smoke, and a hail fellow, ‘would you like some crisps with that’ sort of welcome. It’s a shiny and confident place, the sort of pub-cum-diner that proliferates at major airports.

So who are Big Smoke, and how did they become so significant? The story begins in Surbiton, at a handsome Victorian pub called The Antelope, not far from the River Thames. Big Smoke Brew Co was established here in 2014 by James Morgan and Richard Craig, with Nick Blake - a genial Kiwi (is there any other kind?) - in charge of the beer. In 2018, they moved to the current site in Esher, Surrey, just beyond Greater London’s boundary, in search of more space.

Brewing, though, is only the second most important thing about Big Smoke. This business is built on boozers. Morgan - whose dad Dick has run pubs around London for decades - met Craig when he hired him to work at Shillibeers, on the Caledonian Road, in 2001. They went on to take charge of The North Pole in Islington, one of the city’s first craft-beer focused pubs. They are steeped in pubs, with contacts most brewery owners would kill for.

That’s how they’ve accumulated a pub estate numbering 13 (not including airport pubs, or their taproom). The first five are leased from Greene King, the latter eight from Punch. These pubs tend to be in London’s leafier suburbs - Harpenden, Berkhamsted - with a few outliers, including The Prince of Wales in Hammersmith.

How have they afforded it? 46-year-old Craig insists this hasn’t been achieved through venture capital cash; he and Morgan still own 65 percent of the business, with the rest held by a silent partner. A couple more pubs will be added early next year, he says. 

270 people in all are now employed by the company. Just five of those are on the brewing staff, based on an industrial estate in Esher, an affluent corner of an affluent county. This is where the focus is beginning to shift. In January they hired Jenn Merrick as managing director, to oversee the brewing business. She is tasked with tidying up how the company goes about making and distributing its beer, in particular by creating clear financial controls, a job tackled in tandem with ex-Beavertown colleague Sarah Elkins.

It’s a very smart hiring. Regular visitors to Beavertown during Merrick’s time there (as I was) will know how much of the brewing side she controlled; since then she’s been in huge demand as a consultant all over the place, even as her own project -  Earth Station - has been stymied by bureaucratic flip-flopping. She’s a natural problem solver.

Big Smoke, she says, is on the cusp of a period of brewing growth, taking it from 10,500 hectolitres this year (around 20 percent of it cask, and excellent too: seek out Dark Wave Porter) to a potential annual output of 50,000, similar to Beavertown’s production on their old Tottenham site when she was there. 

There’s a lot that needs to be done before that can happen, of course, and the current economic situation means no company can be totally sure of its future, but the signs are promising. Big Smoke could be landing in pubs all over London, and perhaps in your top five, soon.

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Dodo battles against extinction event

The Dodo in Hanwell is one of London’s best micropubs, so when owner Lucy Do talks about the problems hospitality is facing, it’s worth listening.

Do joined the Hospo Demo protest at Parliament in November (above, with Andy Parker, owner of Elusive Brewing in Wokingham), an attempt by the world of hospitality to get the government to engage properly with the huge issues they’re facing. Already businesses are beginning to close; even at The Dodo, a company run in a “very risk averse” way, with no debt, times are tough. Visitor numbers are not back to pre-Pandemic levels, and there’s no longer any rhyme or reason as to when the pub is busy or not - which makes staffing decisions tough. On top of that, the huge rise in energy costs is leaving many operators facing disaster, Do says.

The Dodo is not at immediate risk, but it may need to increase prices. Do feels that hospitality must be more honest with customers when talking about the problem they’re facing. “We’re really good at putting on a brave face, but it’s bleak out there,” she adds.

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Desi Pub of the Month: Three Falcons, St Johns Wood

David Jesudason, author of the soon-to-be-published Desi Pubs, has kindly agreed to contribute a ‘Desi Pub of the Month’ to London Beer City. Here’s the first: 

‘What’s a Desi Pub?’ I get asked this question a lot and I usually say it’s a British-Indian pub where the landlord has stamped their cultural imprint on it whether that be food, drink or events, such as bhangra or even kabaddi. It’s a definition that means a Wetherspoons doesn’t suddenly become a Desi Pub if they hire a manager of Indian origin. In truth if you really want to know what a Desi Pub is then I recommend visiting one and there’s plenty in London and some you might have walked past on numerous occasions. 

The Three Falcons (nearest Tube Edgware Road) in St John’s Wood is the perfect example. It’s run by the impossibly young Zora Singh, who is 20 years old, and has a team of chefs turning out some of the best Indian food in the country. Maybe even the world – Singh’s father runs a restaurant in Delhi called Wok in the Clouds which is very famous for its Murgh Makhani (Butter Chicken), but because of the quality of the ingredients in the UK even Indians claim it’s better at the Falcons. The pub used to be the Richmond Arms, which was falling into disrepair, and this is one of the best characteristics of a Desi Pub: taking over an ailing business and totally rejuvenating it.

David’s book, Desi Pubs, comes out in May. Pre-order it here.

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Christmas, Time of Good Beer

If you’re struggling to get in the Christmas spirit, struggle no more. The London Christmas Beer Festival is back, and this time it’s bigger. The 2022 event takes place at Tobacco Dock, with 50 breweries, plus spirits, cocktails, cider, snacks and more, next Friday and Saturday.

In terms of what to drink, you can’t really go wrong. I’d recommend London classics like The Kernel and Partizan, plus lagers from Braybrooke and Hofbrau’s Winterzwickl, which will be available in the Roadhouse Vault. 

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Two Pubs, One City

A regular series about pubs and modern London

The Star Tavern, Belgravia, and the Buckingham Arms, Westminster

Six Englishmen come barrelling into The Star Tavern. With my back to the door, I can hear them before I see them, barking merrily away, demob happy, work finished at 3pm on a Friday afternoon. They gather behind me at the small U-shaped bar, where a solitary barman (“Be with you in a minute…”) is just about staying on top of things. 

“What are we on?” the first to the bar asks the others. Two London Pride, Two Asahi, Two Neck Oil. 

If that’s a satisfyingly symmetrical selection, a summation of London beer at the moment, then The Star aspires to be a little more timeless. The drinks menu, sat on each table, has a slightly over-cooked preamble reflecting on the pub’s popularity with London’s 1960s criminal underworld (The Great Train Robbers? Find me the London pub they didn’t drink in), Punch cartoons cover the walls, an open fire entices and reassures. 

But the most English thing of all - and we’re talking upper-crust English - is the shabbiness. Posh people dislike things that are too fancy, that try too hard. The Star doesn’t try too hard. Floorboards creek, the carpets are a couple of stages beyond careworn, chairs and tables don’t fit in the space they’ve been allotted. 

London Pride (£5.20) thrives in this ambiance. (My pint is in good condition, lively enough, and bitter). It’s a key part of The Star’s heritage offering (“It’s so good, we never run out,” promises the drinks menu) and the reason I’m here, on the last Friday in November: this is one of only two London pubs that have appeared in every edition of the Good Beer Guide, which published its 50th iteration in October.

There’s something both natural and surprising about how English The Star is. Belgravia, land of embassies, is at least as international in flavour as any other central London neighbourhood, but most of the people in here are English. There’s one American woman (I can tell because she hasn’t eaten all her chips), but pretty much every other customer is English, and lots of them are drinking cask ale.

There’s a good mix of generations, too. When I step out of the front of this handsome pub (set in a mews, the yellow brick facade is darkened by age; at the top, the name is spelt out in solid Victorian type, crested by a beautiful pale blue autumn London sky) a group of younger customers are saying a drawn-out goodbye: “I’m going to head,” one tells the others, plummily and finally.

Me too. South-east down Belgrave Mews is the back of the Austrian Embassy, austere in brown concrete, the first of many as I wander eastward. Spain, Norway and Italy follow. Then, suddenly, embassy London gives way to tourist London, Victoria, a land of unappealing but invariably full pubs. A Routemaster containing middle-aged women eating afternoon tea rolls past on Buckingham Palace Road.

The Buckingham Arms is on Petty France, tucked away from the tourist hordes, opposite the back of Wellington Barracks. This is the other London pub to have been in every Good Beer Guide, 15 minutes’ walk from The Star. It’s attractive but, to my eyes, odd. From the front it looks like half has been chopped off, and the main room inside is all nooks and unlikely angles. The ceiling is all over the place height-wise.

The beer, though, is very good. I ignore Beavertown - it really has become the Bass of modern London, a must-have for any major operator - and Camden Hells in favour of Young’s Bitter (£5.30), or Ordinary as it was still called when I first drank it more than 20 years’ ago. It is close to perfect, zippy and with a pronounced hop bitterness.

There’s a classic pub scene playing out as I sit down towards the back of the main room. A young woman in an Ecuador football shirt is struggling to get one of the many TVs to work. Her struggles attract the barman. He jerks the controller towards the screen as he presses a button, in the hope that the TV will understand he means business and stop mucking about. It doesn’t. Another young man, in chef’s whites, has a go, but with less conviction. Same result. The young woman sits, disconsolate, with her chin resting on her hands. (Ecuador drew 1-1 with the Netherlands). 

This is more like modern London. The Portuguese group on the table next to mine have just finished lunch, a very late lunch, and there’s a thick fug of fried food in the air. Two of them have drunk Estrella, two Coke. At the end, one goes to the bar to pay; his phone, left on the table, keeps ringing, ‘Born to be Wild’. 

As I leave I poke my head in the next room. Actually, it’s more a corridor than a room, with space for customers along one side. That’s not what’s remarkable, though. There’s a large, wall-sized painting of a smiling John Young (who ran Young's Brewery for 40 years, dying the same week the brewery closed in 2006) featuring a 1980s (I think - see image) pump clip. There’s also a fairly involved explanation of the brewing process, as it was at Young’s. 

It feels like stepping back in time. Pleasing as it is to be reminded of John Young, an indomitable champion of cask ale, I wonder how many customers will know who he is. Who is this display aimed at? Maybe Young’s is happy for customers to believe it still makes beer. It doesn’t, but then Fuller’s - the pub company that owns The Star - doesn’t either. Perhaps that’s one reason why both are looking backwards, in their own way.

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It’s Shirking Time

Speaking of the Good Beer Guide, I met up with a remarkable man called Martin Taylor recently, at the marvellous Shirker’s Rest in New Cross. Martin has been to every pub in the 2022 Guide - all 4500 of them - which is why I was interviewing him for this article in the Daily Telegraph. After you’ve read that, visit the Shirker’s; great cask ale and huge Slab crisps, which have to be seen to be believed.

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Cologne for Christmas

Xmas Ales are not such a staple in the UK as they are in Belgium, which is a shame/not a shame depending on how you feel about Xmas spices, which tend to feature heavily. Orbit, the Walworth Road’s No 1 brewery, are aiming to turn things around with a festive version of Nico, their delightful Kolsch, called Jolly Saint Nico, made with nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice.

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Dark Clouds, Happy Fans

Asahi decided to close Sussex’s Dark Star Brewery in November - a decision which has put some good people out of work, including head brewer Henry Kirk. A kick in the guts, especially as just a week earlier he was celebrating Dark Star’s revival of Gale’s Prize Old Ale, a project he has guided, and which, it appears, has been very successful. Online sales have been good, while the London launch saw the capital’s beer cognoscenti celebrate the continued existence of one of England’s genuinely unique beers.

Among them was John Keeling, Kirk’s former boss at Fuller’s and the man who kept the last Gale’s batch of Prize Old Ale squirrelled away in Chiswick, thereby making this latest revival possible. As ever, Keeling was not short on opinions - specifically, about why CAMRA & SIBA should be campaigning for a cask-ale tax break - but he was initially speechless when a beer-loving Australian journalist enthusiastically asked him to join him in a selfie. Ever the professional, though, he quickly composed himself.

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Bearing Up

The Elizabeth Line is already reshaping London in interesting and unexpected ways: craft beer, for so long hard to find the other side of Pimlico, is making a concerted push westwards. After Forest Road’s Quiet Night Inn launched in Westbourne Park in November, the Craft Beer Co has opened The Bear a stone’s throw from Paddington Station. It mixes the best of the other Craft venues - a huge range of beer, breweriana on the walls - with a more modern feel. My first impressions are they’ve got this one right, but time shall tell.

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Justice, at Last

Finally, here’s some excellent news. The Old Justice, a Grade-II listed ‘Brewer’s Tudor’ pub in Bermondsey, has been restored to its original 1930s-style state after Southwark Council forced the owners to repair damage they made in 2017, when they removed the bar and timber panelling. The pub, which featured briefly in the video for Paul McCartney’s 1984 smash ‘No More Lonely Nights’ (and the terrible film that came from, ‘Give My Regards to Broad Street’), is currently being marketed for public house use.

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London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. If you’ve got a story or an observation, contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you like what you’ve read, please share it with your friends; if you’ve been forwarded this email and enjoyed it, you can sign up here. Thanks for reading.

A monthly newsletter about London beer and pubs

Call me Ahab

Moby Dick, as you will no doubt recall, is the story of one man’s obsessive hunt for an elusive white whale. For the past half-decade or so, I have pursued my own white whale - admittedly in slightly less dramatic circumstances - in the shape of a brewhouse that may or may not have been purchased 10 years ago, that may or may not have been used, and that may or may not be about to finally enter into production.

The story begins in Camberwell. Antic, the South London-based pub company founded in 1999, which has subsequently expanded, contracted and expanded again across the city (how many other pub companies include a list of places they used to run on their website?), was based there until about eight years ago. One of the most admirable aspects of Antic’s operation, then and now, is a desire to provide affordable options, from budget Bangers and Mash to a pint of Best Bitter, brewed from British ingredients, for £3.30.

It was this desire that led the company, which is owned and run by 52-year-old ex-Army man Anthony Thomas, to announce in 2011 that it was constructing a brewery in their then-premises, on Valmar Road in SE5. Stephen Lawson, a former Firkin brewer, was hired in June 2011. Planning permission to convert the premises into a brewery was granted in 2012. And then?

Not very much. We know that, despite what was reported in several publications in 2011, they didn’t buy Meantime’s old kit - I asked Rod Jones, Meantime brewer at the time, and he said it went to Pennine Brewery in Yorkshire. And they didn’t brew in Camberwell, either. Des De Moor, indefatigable compiler of Camra’s London beer guide, repeatedly enquired on Twitter when the brewery would be in operation - but it never was. Finally, in 2015, Antic took over the Clarence and Fredericks brewery in Croydon, renamed it Volden, and began pumping out a range of traditional beer styles.

Industry rumour, though, has long had it that Antic did buy a kit in the pre-Croydon days, and that it had sat, gathering dust, ever since. De Moor, who doesn’t normally get things wrong, writes on his website that a 32-hectolitre kit was purchased. If it did exist, and it wasn’t sold, why was it never used? I kept meaning to find out, but more important things - life, work that would actually result in payment - got in the way.

Now the full story can be told. Earlier this year, I spotted a selection of fermentation vessels, stored in the open air outside Antic’s current base in Malham Road, Forest Hill - vessels that, those in the know tell me, look quite different from the equipment inherited from Clarence and Fredericks. My interest was re-piqued, so I got in touch with Antic.

It turns out there was a brewery, British-built and 32hl as De Moor says, purchased for the Camberwell site. According to Thomas, who I spoke to via email, the site was almost ready to go in 2013 when the brewery’s “bank funder” went bust - meaning they had to vacate Valmar Road and put the brewery into storage while Volden began in Croydon. The business’s offices eventually landed in Malham Road, but on the other side of the road, where they couldn’t get planning permission for a brewery - so, when the opportunity came in 2020, they crossed over to a larger, more suitable site.

The same year, Antic closed the Croydon brewery and announced they would soon be brewing in Forest Hill, although that hasn’t happened yet. (The beers have been contract-brewed, at Portobello and Wimbledon). There has been plenty of work going on at the site, though, and Lawson says that a combination of the two brew kits, from Croydon and Camberwell, will soon be installed. Beer is promised in early 2023. It’s been a long road, but the white whale of London breweries could be about to come up for air. 

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Winter of Discontent

It’s going to be a tough winter for many operators; the closure of Canopy, amongst others, shows that. I’m interested to hear from pub and brewery owners who are facing difficulties this winter, and what you plan to/can do about it. Please get in touch at londonbeercity@gmail.com.

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Partizan Serenade

THE title of ‘nicest person in beer’ is fiercely debated, but one strong contender is Andy Smith, the self-effacing founder and owner of Partizan. This Yorkshire-raised ex-chef has guided Partizan to its tenth birthday based not on social media interaction but a potent recipe of restaurant-world customers, beautiful labels and, of course, excellent beer. 

Andy et al, who began brewing on The Kernel’s old kit in a railway archway close to South Bermondsey Station back in 2012, will be celebrating their first decade at their current home on Raymouth Road on Friday 25th November. I recommend you join them.

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I’m well aware that this newsletter is very white-male heavy (to be fair, so is beer), and I’m keen to include everyone involved in our city’s beer culture. If you have any suitable stories, big or small - particularly those that haven’t featured elsewhere - let me know at londonbeercity@gmail.com.

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Two Pubs, One City 

A regular series about pubs and modern London

The Man of Kent & The Old Nun’s Head, Nunhead, SE15

“She was here a minute ago. I think she’s gone for a fag.”

The Man of Kent, a huge brick-built thirties boozer, is a treat for the traditionalists. Post-War plainness made homely, and scruffy, by the passing of time; clutter; lots of mainstream lager on the bar; ageing male lunchtime clientele; brown wood throughout. Despite the name, The Man of Kent is an Irish pub, so there’s Guinness advertising, too, plus amplifiers in the corner, there in readiness for that evening’s live entertainment.

At 1.20 on a Friday afternoon in October, though, the music comes from the digital jukebox on the wall: The Verve, Martha and the Vandellas, other stuff I can’t identify. There are five people here: three old blokes at the bar, their accents the classic London Irish mix of Cockney and Celt, a younger woman serving, and me. I’m taking a snap of one unusual bit of old Guinness marketing when she appears from the garden. “Like the sign, do you?” 

The Guinness (£4.70) is as good as Guinness ever is: more texture than flavour, pleasant enough, nice to look at. I take a seat in what seems the best spot, with a good view of the main bar, in the largest of three rooms. 

There are two TV screens, muted, showing horse racing. A parade of ruddy-faced, tweed-clad men appear and disappear. 

One mirror is daubed in an advertisement offering five bottles of beer for £10, another with an inducement to try the filled rolls. 

There are a few reminders of The Man of Kent’s previous life as a Truman’s pub; most pleasingly, the word “Mild’ on one of the windows. 

The crisps are Taytos, after Guinness the most symbolic and fiercely defended of Irish comestibles.

Gentle chat ebbs and flows. One of the old lads - the one who warned me the barwoman was having a fag when I arrived - is not sure about his Fosters: “Taste funny, does it Ronnie?” Quickly mollified, he goes back to reading the paper. A man leaves, another arrives. He orders a large bottle of Moretti. They all know each other. They all sit at the bar. 

If The Man of Kent could have existed any time in the last fifty years, then the Old Nun’s Head, 200 feet away across Nunhead Green, is very 2022 (the website, for example, describes it as a ‘multi-functioning safe space’). Although it’s similar to the Man of Kent in some key ways - solid thirties structure, lots of dark wood - in others it’s a world apart. 

When I arrive, the genial bearded barman has his hands full of various foodstuffs, including a huge box of Maldon Salt. “What you after?” Five Points Best (£4.95), which tastes like cask ale often tastes in London pubs: a bit flat, a touch flabby. Disappointing, but not undrinkable. It is very bitter after the Guinness.

There are seven people in this pub - or, to be more accurate, there are seven people using the pub. Three women are outside, two young men are peering at a laptop. I sit in the room on the left as you come in, a gastropub-y space. (There’s no food on at lunchtime, though, which perhaps explains the slim crowd.)

Here the clutter is on the walls. A selection of Britney Spears bits and bobs is displayed behind the bar, close to a sign saying 'Ask us which gender affirming surgery we are supporting this month, and how you can help.’ There are at least two murals featuring nuns, plus a random patch of wallpaper. The doors, in contrast to the Man of Kent, are propped open.

The Nun’s Head’s community is based around progressive values; at The Man of Kent, it’s more a matter of turning up and seeing who’s there to chat to. The fact that they’re so close and yet so far apart, culturally speaking, gives the lie to all the old guff about pubs bringing people together. On the other hand, that they can happily coexist says a lot for modern London.

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Desi Desire

Here’s something to look forward to. South London’s very own David Jesudason is publishing a book about Desi pubs, those centres of British-Asian culture where Chicken Tikka is as important as Best Bitter. It’ll feature over 200 pubs around the UK, including a number of excellent examples in the capital, such as The Gladstone Arms in Borough. Out in May 2023.

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Covent Garden Beer Exhibition

Cask ale is having a bad time of it, with small breweries switching to keg and can. Anecdotally, too, it seems like a lot of pubs which, pre-Covid, served cask ale more out of a sense of duty than passion have cut back or stopped since, which is bad news for producers if not for unsuspecting drinkers. One well-informed cask-ale insider told me recently that sales ‘have fallen off a cliff’. 

In tourist London, where pubs are geared up for one-time visitors, cask ale is still hugely important. Visitors to our delightful city expect to see handpumps on the bar. A recent stroll around Covent Garden, the throbbing heart of tourist London and the home of Camra’s first ever national beer festival back in 1975, found that all visited pubs were serving cask, and plenty of it. Please enjoy this informative table:

I was interested to see that The Freemason’s, a Shepherd Neame pub, had Whitstable Bay on three of the pumps, and Spitfire on two, so there were only actually two cask beers available. The Prince of Wales, owned by Greene King, had five pumps - but three offered IPA and the other two Abbott. 

Cask is a fundamental part of the English pub’s global reputation, and our family breweries understand this enough to make sure it’s prominent in their tourist boozers. But too much can be too much. In Covent Garden and elsewhere, it’s well past time to put quality above quantity (except for at The Harp. The Harp can have 20 handpumps). 

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They Wear It Well

One way modern breweries differentiate themselves from traditional producers is merchandise: t-shirts, hoodies, keyrings, glasses, jockstraps, etc, all emblazoned with key messaging & branding. Look at Camden Town and Beavertown, for example: these places were planned with merch in mind. No surprise that they’re now supermarket fodder, having been rapidly picked off by the big boys.

Of London’s still-independent breweries, few do it better than Signature - naturally enough given that, like Beavertown, their founders’ background is in the sweaty world of gigs and guitars, where merch has long reigned. A recent dispatch from the Walthamstow brewery - intended to promote Piercing Pils, a recent collaboration made with American behemoth Dogfish Head - resulted in a clatter of heavily-branded clutter, including pin badges, stickers and a lanyard, landing on my kitchen floor. Most intriguing of all, the package included a wallet-friendly card emblazoned with the beatific smiles of founders Tom Bott and Sam McGregor. A bold move. Could the multinationals be in touch soon?

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All Quiet on the Westbourne Front

This is a city of optimists. At a time when pubs are facing the toughest winter since the last one, there are still operators investing considerable sums in opening new places. One worth considering is the Quiet Night Inn, which opened in the former Metropolitan in Westbourne Park last week. 

The owner is Forest Road, a brewery that is now contemplative where it was once combative. Founded in 2015 by Pete Brown, a Bostonian brewer who honed his skills at Camden Town, they spent a few years getting into a series of ill-advised online beefs. Those days seem to be behind them: they’ve bought a brewhouse previously owned by Californian giants Russian River, sailed it through the Panama Canal, and installed it in the remnants of an old tea factory in SE14. American beer legend Doug Odell is a regular visitor, so perhaps it’s no surprise that the beer is tasting good. Judge for yourself at the Quiet Night Inn. 

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Rare Scot

What’s the rarest beer available in London? My bet is on an unexpected contender: Scotland’s behemoth, Tennent’s Lager. I’ve been told it’s only available at the Scottish Stores on the Caledonian Road, where I enjoyed it recently (dry, clean, bitter on the finish; very decent for a multinational lager). Is this right? Does anyone know of another outlet for ‘Big Juicy’?

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Dark Days

Two seasonably-appropriate beer events in the next few weeks: Dark and Heavy (Nov 16-19) at the King’s Arms in Bethnal Green, and Domestock (Nov 16) at Anspach & Hobday’s Bermondsey archway, featuring a host of Nitro-poured beers. 

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Beer of the Month: Fight Like Hell

A double IPA, Fight Like Hell has been brewed by Queer Brewing - which has recently put down roots, taking on warehouse and office space in London - to mark Trans Day of Remembrance on the 20th of November. Proceeds will go to Transmissions, a trans community space based downstairs at East London’s Dalston Superstore. The beer itself is 8% ABV, hopped with Citra and Simcoe, and fermented with Voss Kveik yeast. Find it at all good retailers.

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London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. If you’ve got a story or an observation, contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you’ve been forwarded this email and you enjoyed it, you can sign up here. Thanks for reading. 

A few years ago I went to the western-most part of West Flanders, or the Westhoek as it’s known in Belgium. It was a trip organised by Paul Walsh, publisher of the late, lamented Belgian Beer & Food magazine; we visited breweries and bars, and stared wistfully at cemeteries and battlefields preserved for the benefit of the many tourists who visit each year. It was 90 percent fun, ten percent solemnity, about the same ratio as Paul himself.

What is really striking about the Westhoek are its strong links with Britain. Take beer, for example. Belgium’s most significant hop-growing region is centred around the Westhoek town of Poperinge, and most of the hops grown there are English varieties: Golding, Pilgrim, Fuggle, Phoenix, Challenger, and so on. It’s like Kent, except rather flatter, but with the same North Sea drizzle.

Rodenbach, one of the region’s most famous breweries, ages beer in a way that, it seems likely, was borrowed from England’s 18th/19th-century Porter brewers. A brewery in Ieper (Ypres), Kazematten, co-founded by Rodenbach head brewer Rudi Ghequire’s son Maarten, makes ‘Wipers Times’, named for the newspaper produced by British soldiers in the town during the First World War.

The visitors who continue to stream towards Ieper from Britain maintain the link. We spent an afternoon with Jacques Ryckebosch, a local man who has been leading battlefield tours for decades. The depth of his affection for Britain - from his country-gent clothes to his passion for pubs and his memories of long-gone Tommies (‘I miss them so much’) - was clear. 

In one sense, it’s banal to point out that Britain and West Flanders have a strong connection. In another, it’s timely; Brexit is happening, and we will be a bit more distant when it has finally run its course. Or we may only seem to be. Whatever the chancers in Downing Street achieve in terms of pissing everyone off, this country’s links to Europe will remain strong. They invariably have been, even before wool exports to Flanders made Medieval England rich and the first barrel of claret reached London in the 12th century.

What is the point of this? It’s a convoluted way of promoting a talk I’m doing this Saturday, as part of Context Conversations. I’m going to be focusing on the four countries generally regarded as the home of modern beer: Britain, Belgium, Germany and Czechia. But another way to see it is that beer as we know it is a creation of northern Europe in its entirety. 

Low Countries traders brought hops to England. The first Pilsner was produced in Bohemia by a Bavarian brewer using English malting techniques. Alsace, France’s most easterly region, is 100 percent German in terms of beer (except for the odd drop of maize). Danes identified the flavour that made British ales taste British, although we associate that flavour with Belgium now. An early 20th-century Belgian beer style - Speciale Belge - was developed as a riposte to English pale ale and German Pils, incorporating the best of both. London invented Stout but Ireland owns it now. The most forward-looking modern European brewers, wherever they might be, are inspired by Belgium’s Lambic tradition.

Of course there are local differences, although perhaps not as much as we might assume. The best traditional bars anywhere in this part of the world hew close to a singular vision: dark wood, bits of old junk/trinkets as decoration, a pervasive sense of happiness and well-being. British and Irish pubs, Belgian and Dutch Brown Cafes, Franconian and Czech inns; the best of them fit the bill.

So, anyway - if you’re at a loose end on Saturday, please join me at 6pm (1pm EST) for 75 minutes of my voice, slides of Dusseldorf breweries and Czech hop gardens, occasional gags and a few glasses of beer. I promise not to mention Brexit more often than I can avoid.