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 Bottle openers, keg badges, pallets of out-of-date cans, tarpaulin posters, bar runners, promotional items that defy simple description, all branded London Fields, which was closed by owners Carlsberg Marstons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 arch is being prepared for its next tenant: a new brewery stepping in London Fields’ shoes, called Saint Monday. Earlier this month a deal that had been a year in the making was confirmed, with Grace Land - which owns six pubs around East and North London - buying the assets of the former brewery, including the name, for a price which owners Andreas Akerlund and Anselm Chatwin insist is less than half of the asked £2m.

For that they’ve got not just Mentmore Street but also the brewery and taproom on Warburton Street. On a Friday lunchtime a week after the deal was inked, this space was a cacophony of noise and transformation, of hammering, cutting, sawing. The front area, soon to be an outdoors space, was having the roof removed. A new bar in front of the glass screen that separates bar from brewery will follow.

One thing that won’t be changing is the brewery itself. While many small new breweries have to make do with equipment reminiscent of an elderly Ford - a few miles on the clock, bits cobbled on - Grace Land have landed themselves a Porsche. It’s a 15-hec Kaspar Schulz kit, installed in 2019 and little-used, boasting pretty much anything a small brewer might need. 

Mark Walewski, formerly of Beavertown, Brew By Numbers, Alefarm (in Denmark) and, most recently, Mikkeller’s brewpub in London, is the brewer. He expects to be making beer by the end of June, with the core lineup to include an 5-percent-ish American Pale Ale, a West Coast IPA, and an oat lager - something a bit different, he says, to the Lost & Grounded Helles now on at all of Grace Land’s pubs.

Walewski’s pedigree is one reason why Saint Monday’s chances of success seem reasonably high. Another is the neighbourhood. This corner of Hackney is modern East London in its purest possible distillation: across the way from the brewery is a new development, The Laundry, with flats starting at £595,000, which includes access to an on-site cinema and gym. (On the advertising hoarding around the yet to be completed structure, it reads “A Life in London Fields is a life full of COLOUR and CHARACTER”.) The other arches contain people making delicious & expensive food, from smoked fish to sourdough.

Given that, it’s perhaps odd that both London Fields’ iterations failed - but they were unusual breweries. The first was founded and run by former drug dealer Julian de Vere Whiteway-Wilkinson, who sold out in 2017 to Carlsberg amid an investigation into his tax arrangements. In turn, the Danish macrobrewers appear to have lost interest, given that the money invested in London Fields, while huge by microbrewing standards, was a tiny drop in the ocean for them. But big companies do that, when people change jobs or a new idea comes sweeping through the office.

Akerlund and Chatwin have demonstrated more commitment to London’s brewing scene. Swedish-born Akerlund, 52, is one of the founders and owners of Barworks, born out of the success of Living Room, a coffee shop that opened in Soho in the mid-90s. Barworks grew to encompass a wide variety of (mostly excellent) pubs before COVID-19 arrived in 2019. That led to the sale of many of their best spaces; Akerlund’s entire focus is now on Grace Land.

(It’s not the first time he’s been involved in a new brewery, either - along with the other two founders of Barworks, he was one of the initial investors in Camden Town Brewery.) 

Akerlund met Chatwin, 42, when the latter was working as a bar back at Two Floors, Barworks’ Soho bar, about 20 years’ ago. Grace Land followed, in the form of Camden’s Black Heart, “a dismal failure for many years”, according to Chatwin, but now a staple of London’s music scene. Of their six pubs, it’s the one that represents the pair best: together, they look a bit like the remnants of a late 90s rock band, invariably clad in black jeans, rarely photographed unless you bully them into it (see below).

It’s an odd time to be opening a brewery, some might think, but Grace Land has the comfort of six pubs to sell it to, plus the taproom. There’ll be no sales team. Their pubs have recently opened up three lines by removing Camden & other beers, so there’s room for manoeuvre.

The pair want to get Saint Monday up and running as quickly as possible, not least because of rent (£97,998 per annum for the brewery and bar, according to the sale advert; £41,200 for Mentmore Street, which may become a bottle shop. The arches are owned by The Arch Company). There are still decisions to be made, from whether to use the serving tanks they’ve inherited to what, if anything, Saint Monday’s branding will look like. On the latter point - and on many others - I suspect they won’t be looking for inspiration in the skip outside Mentmore Street.  

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London’s Burning 

The purchase of London Fields is a timely reminder that one of the most disastrous and - retrospectively, at least - comic events in London’s modern beer history took place there just over 10 years ago. This was 2013’s ‘London’s Brewing’, the London Brewers Alliance’s second celebration of the city’s brewing revival, held in the ‘The Brewhouse’, a pair of railway arches that, confusingly, weren’t actually a brewhouse (and which are not part of the package bought by Grace Land). Everything went wrong. 

I remember it vividly. I was scheduled to give a talk at 12pm on Saturday but by then things were already falling apart, so - 20 minutes after my allotted time, with no-one apparently in charge and tetchy crowds growing at the understaffed bars in front of the stage - I cut my losses and went to The Cock Tavern on Mare Street, which had recently been re-opened by Peter Holt, the man behind Kentish Town’s Southampton Arms. When I got there, I realised plenty of others had already had the same idea.

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Desi Pub of the Month: The Terrace, Southall

In his latest column, David Jesudason, author of Desi Pubs, finds a taste of the Black Country in West London

Now that my book’s officially out and I’m spending my time watching it rise in the charts it’s probably time to share the secret of its success. The big reveal is it’s popular because I’m telling other people’s stories. So instead of this book spending thousands and thousands of words describing mixed grills and curries, it delves into the stories of the Indian diaspora and how they changed this country for the better. This was a rewarding process and, ultimately, one that required a lot of legwork as every interview - bar one, due to a publican being ill - was done in person. 

Towards the end of the book I discovered The Terrace in Southall and didn’t have time to speak to the landlord due to this labour-intensive process. What I can tell you is this part of West London has been crying out for a modern desi pub which offers comfortable surroundings and provides a retreat from one of the most vibrant - and brash - high streets in the country. It’s a different vibe to Southall’s Scotsman - one of the desi pubs that inspired my book - and is London’s answer to the modern desi pubs well known in West Bromwich.

Desi Pubs is out now.

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Kings of the Hill

It had to happen eventually. Antic, the South London-based pubco that has taken charge of dozens of transpontine boozers over the past few decades, is opening a pub virtually next door to a pub they used to run until fairly recently - or across the road, at least. 

The Falconer, as it will be, or the Bird in Hand, as it currently is, is just over Dartmouth Road in Forest Hill from the Sylvan Post, a Post Office turned into a pub by Antic in 2012. Antic’s former financial backers handed it - and around a dozen other pubs - to Portobello post-Pandemic, and they still run it. 

There was understandable frustration from Antic when they lost the Post, which raises the question: will that manifest itself in some sort of pub-based rivalry, now they’ve got a new boozer across the road? South-east Londoners await with bated breath.   

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Firkin Refreshed

Firkin, a chain of brewpubs which transformed London brwing (and to an extent, British beer) when it emerged in the late 1970s, is back - after a fashion. I’m told that Didier Autard, the owner of the Fox and Firkin in Lewisham, this week installed a 12-hectolitre brewhouse (to be named named Firkin Brewery), in a former Sainsbury's warehouse at the back of the pub. Brewer Hugo Anderson, who worked for many years at Ab INBev’s Stag Brewery in Mortlake, is consulting on the project. 

The Fox was the second original Firkin pub, opened in 1980. It’s a large pub with a 3am licence on Fridays and Saturdays, plus a huge garden - certainly the most impressive in the neighbourhood. Updates on the beer once I’ve tasted it.  

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Beaver Bus

If you’ve been in town recently you’ll have struggled to avoid Heineken’s Summer marketing blitz, with billboards exhorting drinkers to ‘Get a Taste of Brixton’ and grammatically infuriating Beavertown ads all over the gaff. Far be it from me to give Heineken any extra help, but I did quite like this Beavertown-branded bus. 

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Your Schloss

There’s nothing Mancunians enjoy more than going on about how marvellous their city is, and now London will get to judge for itself. Next year, it’s been confirmed, will see a London branch of Albert’s Schloss, the Manchester-founded Germanic/Mittel European beer hall chain, open in the former Rainforest Cafe on Shaftesbury Avenue. 

With the exception of The Delauney, which is more upmarket, there’s nothing in the West End like it - although Bierschenke opens in Covent Garden this summer. We could be entering a Deutsch decade. Let’s hope so.

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Two Pubs, One City - 

Big John’s Biltong Bar & The Bird’s Nest, both Deptford

A small man at the bar is pointing at me and laughing. “Look at this egg!” he says, indicating my head. I am rather egg-like, particularly after a haircut, but this is nonetheless not the sort of welcome a man of my age expects when he steps across the threshold of licensed premises. Perhaps sensing this, his pal steps in. “Don’t worry mate, he can’t handle his drink,” before complimenting me on my new coat. (It is a nice coat.)

I don’t think it’s overly misty-eyed to suggest that London pubs have lost a little of the unpredictable energy they once had. Most of the more ungoverned pubs have shut, of course, and lots of those that remain are focused on getting bourgeois bores like me to part with £8 for a glass of fizzy hop juice. Much easier to do that when you’ve ensured the experience will be safe, that there’s no chance of random violence.

Violence is not unknown in Deptford, while its High Street is a graveyard of old pubs. If you walk from top to bottom, you'll see the remains of a dozen or more, built to serve beer to some of the biggest drinkers in the city. (That might make you melancholy, if you’re that way inclined, although the best antidote is reading about this sort of thing.)  

But while (most of) the pubs have gone, Deptford retains the feel of somewhere where unexpected things might happen. Big John’s Biltong Bar fizzes with this sort of energy, even early on a Wednesday evening. When I and a friend arrive at about 8pm, a group of four pals are well into a lively session, occupying both a table at the front and making frequent visits to the bar (where the unfortunate egg comparison occurs).

There are five keg beers available, of which the most appealing is Guinness (£4.80). It’s a very tight little place - the width of a slim shop-front - with tables squeezed in next to each other and all manner of junk, from old maps of London to beermats, on the walls. You can’t help but chat to people, especially when they’re keen to chat to you - and Pete (not his real name) is keen to speak to us.

He’s the man who complimented me on my coat, and he has a lot to say - about how he lost his job after an unfortunate incident involving throwing hamburgers in McDonalds, about how he was sleeping rough on Blackheath, about how he’d paid £80 for a coat that doesn’t have a zip. He asks us to inspect the coat. He’s right, it doesn’t have a zip. 

After he repeats the story about how he lost his job, we finish up and wander over to The Bird’s Nest, a pub with a similarly unvarnished appeal. 

Inside a band is setting up. The bar, I believe, has recently been moved to the side of the room, to make space for the small stage and so that beer can be served through hatches to the tables in front, by the side of the four-lane A2209. 

Not many pubs in London look like this any more. Little has been spent on the decor, there’s a pool table at the back and the gents’ loo is a grimy classic of the genre. There’s no cask ale, or, as it turns out, the beer (Forest Road) we ask for initially. In the end we go for Brixton Lager (£5.60), which is nice enough.

The band preparing to play is led by a chubby, North American young man in a smart shirt. His look suggests something along the lines of REM or The Smiths, but it’s more like garage rock. I’ve had enough after two tunes. Outside is calmer: there are three or four groups sitting around picnic tables, a man cooking jerk chicken/pork, a bar called The Snake Pit with an old double-decker bus attached, and a man with one of those huge dribbling dogs. 

We can still hear the band, who play Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” as their encore.

As we’re chatting, Pete wanders down the A2209 and spots us. He sits down. He’s in even more ebullient form, even more bullish, gently mocking me and my pal in order, I suspect, to appeal to the latter’s girlfriend, who’s joined us. He’s the sort of character that makes pubs what they are, or were, and he’s sleeping rough on Blackheath. It’s a touch glib to say ‘That’s modern London’ but it does sometimes feel that way.

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LBA Delay

The London Brewers Alliance festival, which was scheduled for Saturday 17 June, has been postponed to Saturday 16 September “because of unforeseen circumstances beyond the organisers’ control.” More details here. 

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London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. If you’ve got a story or an observation, contact me on londonbeercity@gmail.com. If you like what you’ve read, please share it with your friends; if you’ve been forwarded this email and enjoyed it, you can sign up here. Thanks for reading.