A monthly newsletter about London beer and pubs written by Will Hawkes

Enjoy London Beer City? Support it here 

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.” 

Impressive flexibility - and just the sort of thing Lowrise will need to be a success in the increasingly crowded ‘lifestyle beer’ market. They have plenty of rivals, from well-known brands like Lucky Saint and Wolfpack to upstarts such as Prime Time and Lost In Town. 

Most follow an increasingly worn playbook. The beer is contract-brewed, with a general vagueness about where it’s made (although not in the case of Lowrise); social media presence is everything; and the companies themselves tend to be based in West London. Shall we call it beer’s ‘Made In Chelsea’ era?

Lowrise stands out in this respect, too, because it was launched in East London, where three of the four Kiwi founders live (although not Nicolson (he's south-west London) and inspired by the demand for ‘low-carb’ beers in their homeland. Nicolson, 48, has been involved in beer for the past dozen years, having arrived in London in 2001, most notably as the man behind the New Zealand Beer Collective, which imported Kiwi beers into Europe and also dabbled in contract brewing too.

Contract brewing is arguably the key element of the new lifestyle beer market, which makes sense when you look at the beleaguered state of British brewing. It’s a buyers/contractors market, because lots of breweries have unused brewing capacity. “I’ve never had so many [brewery] people cold-calling, contacting us about spare capacity,” says Nicolson, who also works for Kiwi hop producers Freestyle Hops. “It’s a good time in that sense, but it’s still hard. We brewed our first batch with Round Corner Brewing [in Melton Mowbray] but they didn’t have enough capacity, so we’re brewing with [Devon lager specialists] Utopian now.”

Changing where beer is brewed can, as regular drinkers of Neck Oil over the years will attest, radically change the taste. Nicolson relates an incident from Lowrise’s pop-up bar at Netil Market, when on one particular evening bar staff replaced a finished Round Corner-brewed keg with one made at Utopian. “It tasted completely different - still awesome, but different,” he says. “One person came up to the bar and asked if they could swap it for the beer they’d had before!”

The sole beer, a lager, is made with Nelson Sauvin, a New Zealand hop. The key is the use of two enzymes: Glucoamylase, which strips out all the residual sugars and makes for a really dry, crisp beer, and Clarex, which removes the Gluten, allowing it to be sold as Gluten-free. That latter health claim has proven more compelling to customers than the low-calorie aspect thus far, says Nicolson.

And then there’s branding, a fundamental feature of any lifestyle beer. Lowrise’s peering sunshine face was dreamt up by Tom Delamore, one of the founders and - in his professional life - a creative director. It appears to be working: from Monday, Lowrise will be available in Waitrose stores, the end result, apparently, of a guerrilla campaign that saw founders place their beers on supermarket chain’s shelves, take pictures and send them to the buying team.

What’s next? A pale ale (“not murky”) and a shandy, according to Nicolson, although the focus for the moment is on fulfilling Waitrose’s order, which will mean doubling production. The next few years could be interesting for Lowrise and ‘the category’ - but whether they’re conceived in New Zealand or Chelsea, contract-brewed lifestyle beers appear to be here to stay.

………………………

Three Sheets

Do you like both literature and beer? You’re in luck. Next Friday sees The Tate Modern host Pages, an event taking in three breweries (Verdant, Beak, Track) and talks by three authors, Eliza Clarke, David Keenan and Rose Boyt. Pricey, yes - but authors have to eat too.

………………………

Hertz of Oak

I’d always had McMullen’s pegged as one of those sleepy regional breweries, pumping out classic easy-going cask ale for a gradually dwindling local audience. I was wrong! The Hertfordshire brewery has long run The Nag’s Head, a prime boozer next to the tube in Covent Garden, but of late they’ve been on the move in the capital, snapping up all sorts of interesting sites, including The Duke of York in Fitzrovia and The Lock Tavern in Camden (the latter was run until recently by the East London Pub Company, which went belly-up last year). One to watch. 

………………………

Poorly Pony

Parsons Green’s White Horse, for so long an essential address in London beer, appears to have taken a turn for the mediocre. On a recent visit big-name keg beers proliferated and half the cask ales were off half-way through Saturday afternoon.  

………………………

NEW MINI SERIES!

Tavern Tales

THE Downham Tavern is not much to look at. On Tuesday this week, the first warm afternoon of the year, you could have walked past without a second glance were it not for the boisterous gaggle of drinkers, complete with muzzled XL Bully, sitting at the picnic tables in front. It’s a nondescript nineties building, a beefed-up Barrett Home of a boozer next to a large Co-op. Perhaps the only notable thing about it is it’s a resolutely working-class pub in a city where they’ve become a relative rarity. 

But this South-East London pub is remarkable - or at least its predecessor, which existed for over 60 years until its mid-90s demolition, was. It was, at different times and for different people, ‘the most up-to-date tavern in Britain’, ‘the only tavern where you needn't drink’, ‘England’s biggest pub’, home to ‘the longest bar in England’, and ‘Britain’s toughest pub’. It hosted table service, music hall, acid house, cowboys, David Bowie, gangsters, multiple punch-ups and misdemeanours, and much more besides. It was a dream and a nightmare and now it’s a memory - and a fading one at that. 

It deserves better than to be forgotten. The Downham Tavern was a truly significant establishment, easily as significant as any of the tourist places in Town and much bigger: twice the size of the nearby (and still standing, albeit closed) Fellowship in Bellingham, capable of accomodating 1000 customers in the pub and another 1000 in the concert hall behind, and still serving an average of 2,500 pints a day in the early 1980s. It covered the space taken by the modern Tavern, and the Co-op supermarket. It was a huge community pub at a time when pubs really were - with respect to London’s many excellent modern pubs - the heart of city life, when London was a pub city. It was built for the new Downham Estate, which began construction 100 years ago this year, and as such was part of the most dramatic geographical change that London has ever seen. 

That seems as good an excuse as any to write about it. Over the next few months I’m going to take a look at this remarkable lost pub, hopefully teasing out some of the ways in which it reflected the evolving nature of London life, and how the gradual ebbing of our need for pubs has changed their value and meaning to subsequent generations. We’ll see. 

There are lots of places to begin this story - from a muddy field at the very edge of London to County Hall - but perhaps the best is in Bromley’s Magistrates Court.

‘The Social Life of the Estate will be Centred on Licensed Premises’

By 1927, the residents of the Downham estate were getting tetchy. They were glad to have left behind decay and squalor in Bermondsey and Deptford and Rotherhithe, and to have found space and light and a view of open country. But they missed one thing: pubs. A huge one, The Fellowship, had opened in 1924 on the nearby estate at Bellingham, and the London County Council had promised them one, too. So where was it?

Sir Coles Child, Baronet, Lord of the Manors of Bromley, East Farleigh and East Peckham, was unmoved. As Bromley’s presiding justice, he denied Barclay Perkins’ 1927 application to build a new pub, the Welcome Tavern, on a site adjoining Burnt Ash Lane, at the southern tip of the new estate. By this time there were more than 1800 homes on the estate, with 1400 in the process of going up and a further 2000+ to follow, but it made no difference. There was no welcome here for the Welcome Tavern.

This was presumably not a complete surprise for Barclay Perkins, then one of London’s biggest breweries. A year before they had been told there were not enough people to justify a pub in Downham; now they were being told it wasn’t in the right place (it’s perhaps not coincidental that Bromley’s ‘class wall’, dividing leafy Bromley from working-class Downham, went up nearby in 1926). 

In 1928, they got all their ducks in a row. In the era of the improved pub (for more on this, see/buy Boak & Bailey’s 20th Century Pub), this was to be the most improved of the lot. Crucially, it was not in Bromley, but at the heart of the estate to the north, and therefore under the auspices of Blackheath’s Justices. Cecil Whiteley, King’s Counsel, speaking for Barclay Perkins, set out the prospectus: an acre site was to include huge saloon and public bars, a concert hall, a tea room and creche, a garden and a separate off-licence, where “wines would be sold by bottle only.” The focus was on selling food and non-alcoholic drinks as much as beer. To that end, there would be no counters and no bar in the pub section. Drinks would be poured out of public view and served to the customer at their table.

Not everyone was convinced by Barclay Perkins’ efforts to appease respectable sentiment. The Reverend EF Edge-Partington, Vicar of nearby St John’s, spoke against the application. “The social life of this estate has hardly begun,” he pleaded, “and Barclay Perkins [are already aiming] to control it. If the premises are accepted the social life of the estate will be centred on [these] licensed premises. This is distinctly unwise.” 

Unwise or not, the plans were approved and, by June 1930, local worthies were sitting down with brewery bigwigs at the pub’s official launch to congratulate themselves on a job well done. The local paper, the Lewisham Borough News, reported that “An ideal public house was in the minds of Messrs Barclay, Perkins & Co when they built the Downham Tavern, and how near they have come was shown on Thursday.” 

Multiple speeches were made, but perhaps it was Councillor Beatrice Drapper, Deptford’s socialist mayor, who (having praised the affordability of food at the Downham Tavern: pies and chops, fish and chips, Welsh rarebit, even roast chicken or steak) summed up the general feeling. “I am satisfied,” she said, “that here [people] can come and spend their evenings on equality with the London clubs.” The future of the Downham Tavern looked very bright indeed.

Do you remember the original Downham Tavern? Get in touch at londonbeercity@gmail.com

………………………

Bridges to Babylon

I was a bit cynical about Brew LDN’s move to Between The Bridges on the South Bank from Printworks, and for good reason: it was clearly a downgrade size-wise, despite being sold as “the UK’s largest beer festival”. (There seemed to be plenty of competition tickets going around in the week or two before the event, as well.) That said, though, the smaller site suited the festival, ensuring a much better atmosphere than cavernous Printworks, even if a lot of the breweries there were not quite A-List.

………………………

New Brews, Please

Next weekend sees the first Spring Beer Festival at Wimbledon Brewery, with plenty of interesting and rare beers on offer - including some made by Cantillon, 3 Fonteinen, Schneider and Cloudwater. There’ll also be Wimbledon’s own 2019 Vintage Ale, matured for 2 years in Speyside whisky barrels before being blended with running beer and bottle-conditioned for five years.

………………………

Summer of Schloss

Manchester’s Germanic behemoth Albert’s Schloss will land in the West End this July, it’s been revealed. Also soon to open in the West End - if Twitter is to be believed - is a new site from Bloomsbury Leisure, The Stranded Bear. 

………………………

Two Pubs, One City

The Parakeet, Kentish Town, and The Tamil Crown, Islington

A dog is sniffing my leg. I’m standing at the bar at the Parakeet, a gastropub in Kentish Town, in brief beer-related discussion with the bar-lady, and I can feel its cold nose through my trouser leg. I turn and look. It’s an XL Bully.

I didn’t intend to turn this edition of London Beer City into an XL Bully Special, but here we are. Honestly, there are loads of them about. I see them in the street. I avoid them in the park. I take an involuntary leap back when one sniffs my leg in the pub.

I can’t say, though, that I wasn’t warned. When Jay Rayner, London king of restaurant grub, reviewed The Parakeet for The Observer recently, he commented on the potential issues of allowing dogs into a place where people are eating. I was on the fence about that - I like dogs AND eating - but I was imagining something a bit more bourgeois, like a Jack Russell. I genuinely think it would put me off my steak if an XL Bully was staring at me (‘ruff ruff you’re next’).

Anyway, on this occasion I avoid getting eaten. Having paid for my pint, I retire to a seat significantly distant from the dog to give me a reasonable head start, should it be needed. I take in my surroundings. They’re nice surroundings. The Parakeet is very green - many shades of green - and it has a delightful etched glass back bar. Chefs, preparing themselves for that night’s service, buzz here and there with big metal dishes, looking purposeful and tattooed. 

In the corner a group of three friends are chatting about the value of stress in terms of having a successful life. They all agree you need it to achieve anything, and the way they’re discussing the topic suggests to me they’re trying to demonstrate to each other just how successful/stress-ridden each of them is. They welcome the stress! They love it!

As gastros go, this is a pretty drinker-friendly boozer. The dining room is tucked away at the back, leaving a big chunk for liquid lunchers. And the beer (Hammerton N1, £5.50) is pretty good. Not superb, but very drinkable. Gastropubs have become quite decent places for cask beer - especially when, as here, the keg is so unimaginative.

There’s a bus between me and my next pub, The Tamil Crown, and I’m looking forward to the experience. ‘No better way to get to know London than on the bus!’ is the sort of thing I say to tourists, or would if I ever spoke to them. 

It’s the 214, and it arrives quickly. Onboard, it’s the usual scene of amusement, aggravation and begrudgery. A couple of schoolgirls give up their standing space in the buggy section when a mum gets on with a screaming tot. At the back of the bus, a dad is trying to explain to two boys the potential title race ramifications after Arsenal’s huge victory over Chelsea the night before. ‘But what if City lose every game 5-0?’ ‘I just explained that a minute ago, were you not listening?’ he responds, tetchily. I know the feeling.

I get off at the Angel and a short walk takes me to the Tamil Crown. This used to be the Charles Lamb, a beauty of a back-streeter, a great place to escape the hubbub of Islington. Did it have French food? I think maybe it did.

Now it’s Indian grub, which - having visited before - I can recommend, particularly the Bhaji (see image). Trust me. Today I’m just having a pint, Purity Gold (£6.20; a bit uppish even if, like black cabs, ale in gastropubs doesn't seem so expensive now everything is expensive), which is about as good as Purity beer ever is - ie decent but not life-changing. Boring but not in a nice traditional way. 

It’s a decent place for a sit-down, what with its shabby-chic, plants and armchairs vibe, but I do think it was nicer before. Oh well - at least it’s still a pub. Better gastro than flats.

There’s a couple of groups in the restaurant, and one of them has a dog, a spaniel-cross. It keeps barking, sharp little woofs every minute or so; eventually its exasperated owner says, ‘stop it or I’ll take you home.’ As if it gives a shit! I don’t either. I fancy my chances should this particular hound try it on. 

………………………

London Beer City is written by journalist Will Hawkes. Feel free to 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. Unsubscribe here.  Help me keep the newsletter free here. Thanks for reading!