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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.

It’s the 28th of February, 1950, and Jean Llante, Resistance hero turned Communist politician, rises to address France’s National Assembly:  

“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.”

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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 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.

‘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.

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.

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.

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. 

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? 

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.