London
Styles galore coming out of Beerblefish Brewing Co.
It might be operating out of a very modest industrial unit in North London but Beerblefish Brewing Co. pumps out an incredible array of regular beers and seasonals straddling myriad styles from around the globe. Having initially experimented with making a barley wine at the former Ubrew facility in Bermondsey the brewing bug took hold…
Read MoreRental demands holding pubs back from reopening
Rental demands from landlords to leisure and hospitality businesses is causing grief for many including The Queen’s Head in King’s Cross that is in the eye of the storm as it is suffering from a severe loss of tourists and office workers. Many pubs and bars along with other hospitality businesses are frustrated by the…
Read MorePioneer craft brewer Sambrook’s looking backwards and forwards
When Duncan Sambrook opened his eponymous brewery in London’s Battersea he was the first of the new wave of brewers to set up shop in the capital that would be collectively described as craft brewers. Nobody was bandying that term around in August 2008 when he took on the site, nor in November when…
Read MoreBeer Hawk (B2B) created on foundations of The Bottle Shop
From the remnants of the sadly failed The Bottle Shop business has emerged a new ABI-owned operation, Beer Hawk (B2B), which has the objective of bringing some professionalism to the craft beer industry in the UK. This is the aim of The Bottle Shop founder Andrew Morgan who is now head of Beer Hawk (B2B)…
Read MoreCask Beer Co. celebrates 10 years since finding the craft formula
He’d rather drink Foster’s in a pub that has heart and soul than sup the latest supposed craft brews in a specialist beer bar with 20 taps but where the bar staff talk down to him and make him feel small. It’s this lack of basic hospitality that Martin Hayes, founder of The Craft Beer…
Read MoreStools are cool
I had the privilege of being asked my views last year on what elements I’d like to incorporate into my local pub. London brewer Fuller’s had recently acquired a lovely Victorian boozer, The Great Northern Railway Tavern, which it intended to restore to its former glory. Rather than rushing into anything, Fuller’s sensibly canvassed some…
Read MoreCamden Town sitting comfortably with brewery takeovers
The days of big brewers taking over smaller ones and ruining them are over because there is now too much at stake, argues Jasper Cuppaidge, founder of Camden Town Brewery, which is owned by AB InBev. Many beer drinkers will disagree with this view but I suspect they will simply have to put up with…
Read MoreNorth London brewing scene continues its ascendency with Gorgeous Brewery
Gorgeous Brewery stepped into The Bull in Highgate to replace the London Brewing Company and has installed a significantly more serious brewing operation in this North London outpost. On my previous visit some years ago when Dan Fox had taken on the dishevelled pub the small brewery was positioned in the kitchen but under its…
Read MoreDon’t change Draft House
For some people among the beer cognoscenti, the Draft House chain of craft beer bars would never be regarded as the coolest places in town because they would always be able to point to quirkier places with more esoteric beer selections. This does these bars a great disservice because when they…
Read MoreEver get the feeling you’ve been cheated? – No Fun in beer-land
Beer is fun. Yes, of course it is. Chief among the reasons for consuming the liquid are for its pleasurable, fun, attributes. But let’s be clear, we’re all fooling ourselves if we take the view that beer is just about fun because running much more deeply in the beer world is business. Beer is money.…
Read More