The Beer Mile of London

Just like Edinburgh in Scotland has its Royal Mile, filled with tourist traps but also some serious whisky hot spots, London now sports a "golden mile" of excellent breweries, along the railway line south east of London Bridge in the rapidly developing district of Bermondsey in the Borough of Southwark.

Along the railway line, from 79 Enid Street, near the center of Bermondsey, to 22 Bermondsey Trading Estate in the south east, you'll encounter four relatively young craft breweries, three of them located in the arches below the railway! According to Google Maps, this distance is a 1.3 mile walk, which is close enough to a mile for me to label it The Beer Mile of London.

The Beer Mile of London, starting at Brew By Numbers (A),
with stops at The Kernel (B), Partizan (C) and at Fourpure (D)

At the end of November 2013, I made my first visit to this part of London and I was duly impressed. Here's a brief recount from my visit (thank you Stig, Chris and Ruth for the great company!).

The easiest way to get to Bermondsey is via the Jubilee Line to Bermondsey station (the stop after London Bridge). From there simply follow Jamaica Rd west towards the railway line, after 1/3 mile take left down Abbey St and pass underneath the railway. Take left down Enid St and let the fun begin at No 79.

The best day of the week to make this hike, in fact the only day you should consider, is a Saturday, because that is the day when all of the four breweries are open, allowing you to peek inside and to taste their beer at makeshift bars. But be there early to beat the crowds of locals (and other visiting beer geeks), though on sunny days it's actually pretty nice to stand outside the arches with a beer in your hand.

My own visit on Saturday November 30th was blessed with a clear blue sky and warming sunshine, so I had a lovely walk with a great view back towards The Shard by London Bridge. The nice weather made it possible to enjoy a few beers outside, even though London is fairly cold at this time of the year.

I actually started my trip at The Kernel, but I'll list the breweries as they are shown on the map above.

Brew By Numbers in a railway arch in Bermondsey

Brew By Numbers
Address: 79 Enid St
Open Saturdays from 9 am to 3 pm

Brew By Numbers aka BBNo was founded in March 2012 by the two London homebrewers Dave Seymour and Tom Hutchings, who take their inspiration from US craft beers and the great Belgian beer tradition. They launched their micro brewery in December 2012, using a 1-bbl (160 litre) pilot brewery to brew their beer at home.

In May 2013 they moved to their current location, at 79 Enid Street, where they started constructing a proper 10-bbl capacity brewery. When I visited at the end of November 2013, the brewery was ready and I was told it would go into production mode the following Monday (i.e. December 2). This increased capacity should make the BBNo beers more available in London, and hopefully elsewhere.

In their railway arch, BBNo offer visitors up to seven draught beers and a number of bottled beers. But there is hardly any space to sit down, so be prepared to stand when you taste their beer. I tasted their excellent Saison, made with Saphir and Lemon, and the nicely hopped IPA, made with Amarillo and Mosaic.

The Kernel in railway arch 11 at Dockley Road Industrial Estate

The Kernel
Address: Arch 11, Dockley Road Industrial Estate
Opening Saturdays from 9am to 3 pm

The Kernel, founded by homebrewer Evin O'Riordain, commenced brewing in 2009, which makes them four years old now but already a veteran in the vibrant brewing scene in London. The Kernel has attracted a large following of fans both in and outside England, thanks to the historical stouts and hoppy pale ales. As early as 2011, The Kernel made its first appearance at the prestigious Borefts Bier Festival hosted by Brouwerij de Molen in the Netherlands.

In 2012, when moving his brewing operations to its current location, O'Riordain donated his first commercial brewery kit to Partizan, helping that brewery get started. Thanks to this spirit of camaraderie and the rapid success of The Kernel, more micro breweries seem attracted to this part of London - making the "beer mile" a hot bed for new and exciting English brewing.

In Arch 11 in Dockley Road, a modern brewhouse with a capacity of 3200 litre per batch has been installed. There O'Riordain and his helpers brew three days a week, making The Kernel the largest of the four breweries along the beer mile. The Kernel primarily brew traditional English ales, such as pale ales, india pale ales, brown ales and porters, but they love to experiment with new hops and have made some stunning pale ales with New Zealand, Australian and American hops.

During my visit to The Kernel, they offered eight beers on draught at their tap room, which can easily seat 50-60 guests. I was also fortunate to be taken on a short tour of the brewery, by the assistant brewer from Sweden, and was particularly impressed by their barrel aging program and their focus on exciting new hop varietals.

The Kernel looks set to continue their growth and cement their position as one of the leading English craft breweries.

Partizan Christmas Stout and Andy Smith

Partizan Brewing
Address: 8 Almond Rd
Open Saturdays from 11 am to 5 pm

Located in a railway arch along Almond Road, Partizan is the smallest of the four craft breweries along the "beer mile", both in brewing capacity and in physical size of location. But I still found it to be the most varied of the four breweries, making beer in a number of styles, from a hoppy pale ale and IPA, to an excellent porter, a spiced sour ale, Belgian dubbel and Quadrupel.

Partizan Brewing is the brainchild of Andy Smith, a former brewer at Redemption Brewing, who decided to give it a go on his own in 2012. He was given for free the old 4-bbl (about 600 litre) brewing kit from The Kernel, when that brewery moved to its current location just up the railway line from where Partizan is. And Andy Smith has put that brew kit to great use, I could see the top fermting yeast bubbling over in the open fermenter.

During my visit, Andy Smith was at the brewery, serving beer to visitors. Unlike at the other three breweries, the Partizan beers are only available by the bottle, either to take home or enjoy on site, but the beers I tried were all amazing, in particular the 8.9% Christmas Stout which was brewed with sour cherries, spices and brettanomyces and aged for 6 months on oak! The Partizan 6 Grain Porter was also impressive, smooth and rich.

Fourpure Brewing Co has just opened its tap room

Fourpure Brewing Co.
Address: 22 Bermondsey Trading Estate
Open Saturdays from 11 am to 5 pm

Founded in March 2013, this young brewery is located in a big industrial warehouse not far from the railway line in South Bermondsey, with plenty of space to expand (unlike those breweries stuck in a railway arch). Even though the brewery just started up, it has secured a fairly experienced Dutch brewmaster in Hidde John Driebergen. Driebergen came straight from the job as brewer at Meantime Brewing in London, where he was responsible for some of the more adventurous Meantime beers such as the Cali-Belgian IPA. Before Meantime, he even put in some work at Brooklyn Brewery in the US.

The Fourpure brewhouse was bought used from Purity Brewing in Alcester, Warwickshire, England, and can brew both 30 and 60 hectolitre batches, and their current location can take many more fermentors and storage tanks, when that becomes necessary, placing Fourpure in a great position to expand when the demand goes up.

The Fourpure tap room officially opened to the public on the day of my visit, November 30th, with Daniel Lowe, one of the owners, serving beer with help from his sister-in-law. In the spacious tap room you can sit down at wooden benches and taste the Fourpure beers while enjoying the view of the brewhouse and storage tanks. The tap room has seven beer taps in all, but two of them were not used during my visit - they will be used for seasonal and special beers.

Fourpure Brewing Co claim to be inspired by adventure, but to me the beers on offer proved rather traditional (pale and amber ale, oatmeal stout, ipa) though of a high quality for such a young brewery. Their Amber Ale, a style that was popular in the 1990s but is now hardly brewed anymore, was really well made. However, my favorite that night was the tasty 4.2% abv Session IPA - rich in hops for such a low ABV brew but still balanced and very drinkable.

View along the railway arches in Bermondsey

For more photos from this trip please visit this Flickr set.

Inns and outs in London

After a long, bitter slumber where the essential question was whether you were a fan of beer served without the addition of gas ("real ale", mind you) or with (lagers), the British beer scene and in particular London has made a remarkable recovery,  in terms of exciting new craft breweries, over the last few years.

The success of BrewDog may have helped, kicking in a few mental doors, because now new breweries are founded all over the United Kingdom. Even in Wales. According to a recent article in The Guardian, the number of breweries in the UK has more than doubled in ten years - Britain is now home to more than a thousand breweries!

This post is a brief recount of my trip to London in May 2013, my first in more than two years.

Bird's eye view of London from The Shard

London
This famous city needs no introduction so instead I'll say a few words about another topic that greatly interests me: History. London is famous for its historical sites and museums, in particular the British Museum, and one of the points on my agenda this year was to visit its Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition. I also wanted to see an exhibition from a more recent historical period, the life and art of David Bowie at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Alas, they both fell through. The David Bowie exhibition because it was sold out until the end of June and the Pompeii exhibition because it was so popular that when I finally got inside there was no way I could see the displays and much less read the display texts because people were literary standing on top of them. So, museums in London are out of the question for me.

However, I did get to experience one great thing not related to beer, and I mean great as in impressively large - or rather tall. The Shard or Shard of Glass is a skyscraper built near London Bridge in Southwark from 2009 to 2012. At 306 meter it is the tallest building in the European Union. Like most tall buildings it has an observation deck, The View, on the 72nd floor - some 244 meter above the waters of River Thames! This deck opened up to the public in February 2013, just in time for my trip. Like the earlier mentioned museums, the observation deck at The Shard is very popular but in this case I was willing to spend close to an hour in line to use my £25 ticket.

When I finally got up there I knew it was worth the wait, the view from The Shard is absolutely stunning. From such a height you'll see how the Thames twists and turns its way through London and you'll get a better understanding of the layout of the city, from the Docklands in the east, via Tower, the City, Westminster and Southwark. I would recommend going in the morning, for two reasons. The first is that the queues won't be that long (they tend to accumulate, especially if there has been a technical problem), the second is that the sun (if the sky is clear, and that's a big IF in England) will be in the east or south east, allowing you to capture great photos towards the west (Southwark, Westminister) and north (City, Tower).

Tickets to The Shard can be bought in advance from their website or on-site, if not sold out.

The Shard seen from Borough High Street

London pubs and inns
There is no way anyone can do justice to the rich beer culture in London in a single post, based on a brief 2-day visit to the British capital, so this is just my pick of places with a focus on the new ones that didn't exist when I last was in London or that I didn't know about earlier. While Euston Tap was the hottest thing back in 2010, now you've got BrewDog Camden and the two pubs of the Craft Beer Co, at Clerkenwell and Islington. This time, I also visited an old inn and the site of what was once the largest brewery in the world.

BrewDog Camden - the first outside Scotland

BrewDog Camden
Located at the intersection of Greenland St and Bayham St, a block from Camden Town tube station, BrewDog Camden opened its doors to the public in December 2011. It was the fourth BrewDog pub to open up and the first one outside Scotland.

As all the other BrewDog pubs, the one in Camden shares a youthful, modern design with bare brick walls, simple furniture and a large, dominating bar. It offers around ten BrewDog beers and some 4-6 guest beers on draft, in addition to a good selection of bottled beer from craft breweries around the world.

During my visit, BrewDog Camden offered the rare Dana + Eldorado blend of IPA is Dead on draft, it was a strange blend that I found hard to drink. I much better liked their Bracken's Porter, named in honor of the BrewDog mascot, the Labrador Bracken, which passed away last October. There was two other new beers from BrewDog on draft, 10 Heads High and Punk Monk. The former is a tasty imperial amber ale of 7.8% and the latter a special version of their regular Punk IPA, brewed with a Belgian yeast-strain and dry-hopped with Chinook, that I found really captivating. Among the guest beers, De Molen Lentehop and Saison Dupont, the modern benchmark for saison, were the two highlights for me.

I found the atmosphere in BrewDog Camden really nice and got enganged in beer discussions with several locals on both of my visits to the pub, including a long one about the merits of English bitter.

After having visited the BrewDog Aberdeen and Edinburgh pubs in Scotland, I feel I can conclude that this is a concept that seems to work equally well in London. Well done, BrewDog.

Craft Beer Co. Clerkenwell, the highest rated pub in London

Craft Beer Co, Clerkenwell
The original Craft Beer Co pub opened up June 2011 in 82 Leather Lane in Clerkenwell, it is currently (July 2013) rated slightly higher on RateBeer than the second Craft Beer Co pub, which opened up in Islington last year. I had heard much praise about this place and knew that former BrewDog-employee Tom Cadden was involved, so I had high expectations when I walked in their front door a couple of hours after the noon opening.

The pub offers 21 (3x7) taps with draft beer and, as far as I could count, 15 beer engines serving real ale from cask. Personally, I'm not a big fan of real ale since so many English bitters, the most common type of real ale, taste so similar to me. However, at Craft Beer Co they had real ales from some of the new English craft breweries, including Dark Star and Tiny Rebel, so I did try a couple. The pub also offers some 400 types of bottled beer, so there is plenty to choose from for a beer tourist.

Because I arrived early in the afternoon, it was fairly quiet in the bar and I found a good spot to sit down, but I suspect the place can get a bit packed at night as there really isn't that many places to sit. Thus, I would recommend going early, both for the seating and to be able to ask the bartender about beer.

Harbour Imperial Chocolate Stout No 1

Because of the high number of taps I decided to focus on the draft and cask beers, many of them from small craft breweries in the UK. There were three new breweries that caught my attention, two of them with beer on draft:

• Weird Beard Five O’clock Shadow is an interesting take on an IPA, at 7% abv it's more malty and sweet than most American IPAs. Weird Beard Brew Company is a fairly new craft brewery, founded in 2012 by two award-winning homebrewers, Bryan Spooner and Gregg Irwin. They started out borrowing brewing time until they opened up their own small brewery in Boston Business Park in Hanwell, London, early 2013.

• Harbour Imperial Chocolate Stout No 1 is an 8.7% abv imperial stout aged on bourbon barrel, a smooth, rich and well-balanced beer that impressed me more than any other English beer I had on this visit to London. Harbour Brewing is another young craft brewery, located in North Cornwall in the south west of England and launched in 2012 by brewer Rhys Powell and his friend Eddie Lofthouse.

The third brewery was from Wales and had a real ale on cask:

• Tiny Rebel The Vader Shuffle is a 6.3% abv oak-aged Belgian-style porter(!) It was a sweet fruity beer, very flavorful, and it really impressed me as a good cask ale. Tiny Rebel is a small 16 hl craft brewery launched in early 2012 by the brothers-in-laws Gareth Williams and Bradley Cummings. Originally a hobby in a garage they opened their commercial plant in a 3,000 square foot industrial building in Maesglas, Newport, becoming the first micro brewery in this city.

Enjoying the Anarchy Citra Star at The Rake

The Rake
Whenever I'm in London I always visit Borough Market near London Bridge in Southwark, home to the brewpub-cum-restaurant Brew Wharf, to the traditional real ale pub The Market Porter, to Utobeer beer shop and last, but not the least, The Rake. The Rake is a really tiny pub owned by the people behind Utobeer, it has a small "beer garden" area in the back and what it lacks in floor space it gains in selection of quality beer. There is always something good on draft, usually from up and coming English craft breweries, so The Rake is a great place to explore new English breweries.

During my May visit, The Rake was running a campaign for a new craft brewery called Anarchy Brew Co from Morpeth, Northumberland, in the north of England. Four Anarchy beers were offered on draft, Short Fuse, Citra Star, Crime Scene and Grin & Bare It. I tried Citra Star, which was an excellent hoppy blond ale (hopped with Citra, I would assume) and Crime Scene, a tasty 5.5% amber ale. Both were excellent brews, especially for such a young brewery which came into operation as recently as January 2012. I expect to see more great beers from Anarchy Brew Co in the future.

The George Inn - the last coaching inn in London

The George Inn
In November 2012, English beer writer Pete Brown published his latest book "Shakespeare's Local" in which he describes the bygone era of coaching inns in general and The George Inn in particular. It's a well written book that inspired me to do a pilgrimage to the last remaining coaching inn in London. But first a few words about London's coaching inns.

From medieval times and well into the 19th century, people or goods going to London would travel by horse, first by horse and carriage and later on the fast stagecoaches that we know so well from cowboy movies. But you could only enter London during daytime, when night fell the city gates would close to keep peace and quiet in the city. If you came from the south, the road to London went through Southwark which in those days were outside the city (the gate was on London Bridge). If you came late or brought goods to be sold at the markets in London the next day, you wanted to stay at an inn as close to London as possible so that you could get into the city as soon as the gates opened the next morning. Thus, Borough High Street in Southwark, which leads straight onto London Bridge, was lined with inns from medieval times.

From the street a coaching inn would not look very impressive, as it was just a large gap in the wall, large enough for a stagecoach to pass through, but once inside in the cobblestone yard the galleried inn would stretch out on both sides, with stables for horses and rooms for rent.

With the advent of the railway in the mid 19th century, the coaching inns went into decline as fewer and finally no travelers or goods came through Southwark on coaches. By the 1870s only one inn remained, The George, and even this one was facing extinction when its north range was pulled down in 1874, to make space for Guy's Hospital. Fortunately, the south range survived and is now protected by the National Trust.

Nobody, not even Pete Brown, knows for sure how old The George is or whether the famous bard used to frequent it (The Globe is located in Southwark, so Shakespeare must surely have been a guest at some of the inns) but historical records show that The George existed at least as early as 1542 in what is now 77 Borough High Street in Southwark. The current building dates from 1667, when it was rebuilt after the Great Fire of London the year before.

Though most of the guests at The George are tourists, at least when I was there (heck, I'm a tourist too), I found the atmosphere charming. The old and crooked facade of the galleries, the secluded yard which reduced the noise from the busy street outside and the old interior, it really gave me a sense of pre-Industrial era England.

The George also serves a decent fish and chips dish and offers five real ales on tap (all from Greene King, unfortunately), so it's a nice place to go for lunch. If you come for lunch you'll also beat most of the crowd, since The George only opens at 11 am (except for noon on Sundays), making it easier to find a table in the yard, when that is open during the summer, or in one of the rooms inside the inn.

The former Truman Black Eagle Brewery in Brick Lane

Old Truman Brewery
Feeling inspired, by the visit to The George and a blog post by beer writer Martyn Cornell, I decided to check out some more beer, or rather brewing, history in London. This time in Brick Lane in the East End, near Spitalfields, where the buildings of the former Truman Black Eagle Brewery can still be found.

The history of Truman's Brewery goes back to 1666, the year of the Great Fire of London, when the Black Eagle Brewery was established on a plot of land next to what is now Brick Lane. It grew steadily until the 18th century when demand for Porter led it to expand more rapidly, becoming one of the largest porter breweries in London. Its growth continued into and through the 19th century, in 1873 it purchased the Philips Brewery in Burton and became the largest brewery in the world. This was a clever move since porter was losing popularity to the pale ales of Burton.

After three centuries of successful growth, the second half of the 20th century brought more difficult challenges for Truman, now known as Truman, Hanbury & Buxton. One thing was the stiffer competition from big national and international beer groups, but just as serious was the lager craze that swept across England in the 1970s and 80s. Truman had its heart in British ales, not in lagers, so this was a disturbing trend to the management of the brewery. Just as it was to serious British beer lovers, who went on to found CAMRA in 1971, in defense of British cask ales. Unfortunately, Truman's Brewery had no similar tactics to play and struggled on until 1989, when the management gave up the fight and closed down the brewery in Brick Lane.

The former Truman's Brewery

Some 25 years later, the old brewery chimney with the letters "TRUMAN" can still be seen, the gate with the black eagle is still there and references to Truman, Hanbury & Buxton can be found on many buildings along Brick Lane and adjoining streets. The former brewery buildings now houses shops, night clubs, pubs, restaurants and art galleries, so they're kept alive, sort of, but I still felt sad knowing that a brewery that had been successful for 300 years had been closed down so recently.

Shoreditch High St is the closest tube station and if you decide to go there are two other tings to check out. The first thing is food, if you like curry you've come to the right place since Brick Lane is at the heart of the city's Bangladeshi-Sylheti community, giving it the nickname Banglatown. Brick Lane is lined with excellent curry houses. The other thing to check out is the Old Spitalfields Market, it lies on the other side of Commercial St and is one of the top markets in London, offering fashion, food, vintage and general market. It's open seven days a week.

When in Rome ...

More photos from this visit to London can be found at Flickr: The Shard and London beer.