Tag: Craft Beer London

Looking back at London Beer City

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It’s been a month since the end of all the fun of this year’s London Beer City. We asked Patrick Matthewson, who has been helping out with London Brewers’ Market behind the scenes, to give us a run-down of some of the several events that happened.

London Beer City was an incredible celebration of the vibrant beer scene, a time for brewers and beer enthusiasts to come together and appreciate the mass of unbelievable beer being produced from all across the globe. The festival was a fantastic opportunity to see London’s position in the craft beer revolution with pubs all across the city getting involved and showcasing their commitment to great brews.

Cask is Important at The Duke's Head

The week was jam-packed with exciting events such as a brew day with Clarkshaws, the launch of Redchurch’s barrel-aged saison and a look into label art at Camden Town Brewery. Particularly exciting was Cask Is Important at The Duke’s Head in Highgate, a week long exploration of cask beer and it’s relevance in today’s craft beer scene. The event was curated by beer writer Matt Curtis and the team at The Duke’s Head. They curated a truly outstanding list featuring brews from The Five Points Brewing Company, Moor and Magic Rock amongst others greatly enriched by a tutored tasting from Matt Curtis. The beers all helped to reaffirm cask as a vital part of our brewing culture and showcased unique flavour profiles from well established brews like Beavertown’s Smog Rocket. A particular highlight was the exclusive brew from Weird Beard, Curtis and The Duke’s Head – The Duke of Dank, a big, hoppy red IPA which left a lingering impression on the consumer with rich fruity flavours. The beer is released in bottles and is well worth tasting.

London Beer City highlighted the versatility of beer and in particular it’s powerful relation to food with events such as a Japanese food pairing at Brew By Numbers and a pie and ale session with Fuller’s. During the week Ned Palmer hosted some delicious cheese and beer pairing at some of London’s best breweries. The sessions created some unbelievable taste combinations and showed beer to be a worthy challenger to the more established wine and cheese pairings. These enthralling events really encapsulated the brilliance of London Beer City and shows how beer is beginning to challenge established culinary pairings.

Mad Hatter Tap Takeover at Mother Kelly's

Amongst all of this were tap takeovers from breweries at the forefront of the craft beer scene. These included Derbyshire heavyweights Thornbridge, the consistently inventive Mad Hatter Brewing, Welsh favourites Tiny Rebel and Hackney brewers The Five Points Brewing Company. These events at venues including Mother Kelly’s, Hop & Berry and Hand of Glory offered consumers an insight into the range of brews being made by brewers in different areas of the country.

London Beer City neatly included the Great British Beer Festival and London Craft Beer Festival. Both were excellent examples of how diverse the beer scene is at the moment and delighted fans of both cask and keg no end. They included brilliant brews from Partizan, London Brewing Co and Pressure Drop amongst others and further established London at the forefront of the beer scene.

Ultimately London Beer City was a special week and was something that brought together the disparate elements of the beer scene into one incredible celebration. It created a tangible representation of the community that is developing around beer in London. A big thank you to Will Hawkes, writer of Craft Beer London, for all his hard work and for organising such an unbelievable week. Bring on next year!

Guest Post from Will Hawkes: Why Small Breweries Matter

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Will Hawkes is a freelance journalist and the organiser of London Beer City (@londonbeercity), a week-long celebration of good beer from London and further afield. He’s also the author of Craft Beer London (@craftbeerlondon), a guide to the city’s best pubs, bars and breweries. You can follow him on Twitter at @Will_Hawkes.

It’s hard to avoid the heritage of brewing in this city. A 10-minute stroll from Spitalfields will take you past a number of pubs lavishly decorated in Trumans’ colours, while in other parts of London you can easily spot adverts, pub signs and related, faded ephemera devoted to breweries long-gone and recently-departed. Until the last few years, it must be said, this constant reminder of past glories was rather dispiriting, but things have changed. London’s brewing tradition has been revived – and in some style, too.

The Five Points Brewing CompanyBrixton BreweryBeavertown's Gamma RayPartizan Brewing

But while it’s tempting to draw a direct link between that tradition and what’s happening now, it wouldn’t be entirely honest. Much of the current impetus comes from across the Atlantic rather than the past: plenty of stouts and porters are being brewed, but hoppy pale ales in the American style are a lot more popular. One of the most well-known of the new generation of London brewers told me recently that 75 to 80 per cent of the beer he sells is pale and hoppy.

And there’s another important difference with that 18th/19th century heyday, too. This new movement is not about great brewing families. Ordinary Londoners now are probably more entrepreneurial than at any time in this city’s history. You may have heard about the ‘Flat White Economy’, a term which describes the recent rush of new media, internet and creative businesses in East London, which are soon to be powering the British economy. I think London’s brewing revival, with its creativity and focus on flavour, fits into that bracket.

The beauty of all this, of course, is that its about relatively ordinary people taking things into their own hands. Not just brewers but bakers, cheese makers and distillers, too. Today’s fashion is for the small-batch, homespun, craft product. The humbler the origins, the smaller the producer, the better.

It’s easy to be cynical about this, but consider the alternative. I’ve heard plenty of people say that they don’t care who makes their beer as long as it tastes good. On the most basic level, that’s hard to criticise: but given the context of the past 50 years, during which huge brewing concerns did their best to wipe out smaller rivals and produce beer so inoffensive it became an offense against beer, it seems a little naive. Beer drinkers need small producers, who have the agility and courage to produce more interesting, flavoursome beer than their bigger rivals. When it comes to beer, small really is beautiful.