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House Party

These are tough times for London’s small breweries, but you wouldn’t know it on a sunny Thursday evening in Herne Hill. At 7pm, the alleyway that connects the Bird House Brewery’s varied railway arches is alive with noise and chatter, its tables almost universally occupied, its clientele notably more female than is typical - a reflection, perhaps, of the brewery’s modern aesthetic and this smart neighbourhood’s demographics. 

England Expects

Oli Carter-Esdale, landlord of Wimbledon’s Trafalgar Ale House, is extremely proud of his handpumps. “That’s my pride and joy,” he says, pulling back on the right-most of five pumps on the main bar, so I can see that it was made by Birmingham company Gaskell & Chambers in 1940. 

On the Buses

Stephen O’Connor, co-owner of the Green Goddess beer cafe and microbrewery in Blackheath, chuckles down the line as he discusses the significant intersection of beer and bus enthusiasm. “There should be a Venn Diagram of people who are into buses, people who are into beer, and people who turn up to events like the one we’re running this Saturday,” says Stephen, who runs the Green Goddess with wife Maryann. “Plenty of people right in the middle.”

Rock and a Hard Place

Less than 200 feet from the front door of Rock Leopard Brewing Co’s home in Thamesmead, South East London, is the neighbourhood’s most famous physical feature. It’s South Mere, an artificial lake - or, as Anthony Burgess had it in his 1962 book, A Clockwork Orange, "Flatblock Marina". When Stanley Kubrick turned the book into a film in 1971, this was the backdrop to one of the key scenes, with chief Droog Alex asserting his dominance with a bit of the old ultraviolence.

Pony Sloaney?

A middle-aged Australian man is standing at the bar at the White Horse in Parsons Green. “Is Asahi available?” No, it’s not. “Can I just have a lager? I want a beer-tasting beer.” He pauses. “Nothing too fruity.”

Trumped

AT ONE stage, you could write most London breweries’ origin stories without actually talking to them. ‘Visited the USA, drank craft beer, wanted to make similar beer in the UK’. Evin O’Riordain was the OG in this respect, but it became a well-worn line in the years between 2009 and 2016.

Happy Tribe

THE beer selection at The Crown and Greyhound in Dulwich is, for the most part, utterly predictable. The same four cask ales, served in varying conditions (Landlord, Sussex Best, London Pride, Doom Bar); Guinness; a wide range of lagers; and quasi-craft made by the likes of Beavertown (Heineken) and Brooklyn (Carlsberg).

What’s Old Is New

Adrian Kinsella carefully extracts a series of nails attaching a sheet to a wall in Stoke Newington’s Coach and Horses. He then lifts the sheet, exposing the wall behind it - and, with it, its remarkable decoration. 

Spread across the dark-wood panelling are a variety of late Victorian alcohol adverts, bold and straightforward, hidden for decades behind modern panels: No 3 Port, 1/- per pint; Brandy Hennessey’s or Martell’s, 2/6 per pint (about a tenner in modern money); and so on. 

Urban Legend

On a cold Wednesday lunchtime in early January, Wanstead’s George & Dragon is attracting a lot of attention. Inside staff are being given an energetic crash course in the beers on offer; outside, a series of customers, fooled perhaps by the crowd at the bar, try the door. They’re too early. As a sign on the window says, the pub doesn’t open until 12pm on the 16th of this month.

A Nice Quiet Local

On a bright November morning, Sekforde Street is London as Richard Curtis imagines it. A steady stream of City University students amble northwards, past the Georgian terraces of Sekforde Street and under the boughs of a slim silver birch that grows at the triangle-shaped intersection with Woodbridge Street. 

Gipsy Wedding

It comes down to kegs, Sam McMeekin says. In an era of spiralling costs and deep-pocketed big-brewery rivals, kegs provide the simplest explanation as to why the brewery he co-founded in 2014, Gipsy Hill, has decided to enter a “strategic partnership” with a group called Sunrise Alliance Beverages. 

Brum Rush

PANDEMONIUM, if press reports can be believed, broke out in the family room at the 1990 Great British Beer Festival. A rabbit leapt from a magician's hat; 20 children, plus organiser Pat Waters, went in increasingly hot pursuit around the family room.

It was “one very lively bunny,” Pat later told reporters, no doubt with a rueful shake of the head.

Is Small Still Beautiful?

Last month’s newsletter drew the usual postbag: thoughts, assertions, random abuse (thanks Mum). But amongst the odds and sods in the LBC inbox, one London brewery worker’s email stood out. It was written in response to the predictable beer lists at London stadia and at Cahoots, a 1940s pub in Soho, and the wider post-Covid problem of bar space being monopolised by multinational beers:

A Gentle Orbit

Change is constant on the Walworth Road, although that’s hard to believe on a lethargic Wednesday morning. Red double-decker buses chug ever so slowly up South London’s central artery, as they always have, but around them things are moving on. The northern end is now home to a large Latin American community and towering blocks of modern flats; Walworth Town Hall, opposite the former Labour Party headquarters, is being converted into a ‘dynamic cultural community and workspace hub’; and, most earth-shakingly of all, Marks & Spencer closed in June, having served the road for 111 years. 

Untied

4 July is Independence Day across the Atlantic, a jamboree (so I’m led to believe) of meat-grillin’, star-spangled caterwaulin’ and random whoopin’. This year, though, our American cousins are not going to have the fun to themselves: there’ll be a degree of joy in Bermondsey, too, albeit in a more restrained form. 

On that day, Anspach and Hobday’s six-month lease of the St James of Bermondsey pub runs out, and - as co-owner Jack Hobday puts it, albeit in not so many words - not a moment too soon.

Contract Hit

Last year Todd Nicolson, beer industry veteran and co-founder of lower-calorie brand Lowrise, was contacted by Trading Standards. “I got a 12-page letter saying we weren't allowed to use the term ‘low-calorie’,” he says with a chuckle. “But right at the end, at the bottom of the last page, it says ‘but you could arguably get away with lower’ - so we just changed all our marketing stuff to lower.” 

Kick Off

Two untidy piles of football scarves sit by the door at The Volley, London’s soon-to-be new football pub. One is a mishmash of colours representing different clubs and nations - Scotland, Rapid Vienna, a silky 1980s Roma effort - and the other is almost entirely green and white, the colours of Celtic FC. 

Mark Hislop, co-founder and Rangers supporter, points to the second pile. “Do you know anybody who might want these?” he says with mock exasperation. “I’m not putting all of them up on the wall.” He pauses. “I’ll put one up.”

Message In A Bottle  

It’s raining in East Dulwich, which seems a bit much given the property prices. At Hop, Burns and Black, the neighbourhood’s excellent bottle shop, manager Nathan Taylor is stationed by the espresso machine, serving up delicious coffee and genial cheer through the shop’s hatch to any Dulwich and Peckham folk brave or foolhardy enough to be out and about on a day like this. 

How London Pubs conquered Facebook

MARK is drinking Thatchers Cider at a pub in Ruislip. Thomas is lamenting the “long gone” Fountain in Lower Clapton Road. Jon has just been to Kensington’s Churchill Arms (“Nice collection of chamber pots”). An anonymous tied-pub landlord is interested to know what people consider an acceptable price for beer. Tom seeks advice on which two or three pubs to visit in Camden on a flying visit to town. Ian is heading to Twickenham for the rugby, and needs a pub that won’t be too mobbed. Nicky just wants to say what a great group this is.