March: Bottle Shops, A Slice of Meantime and Cheap Pints on the Old Kent Road
A monthly newsletter about London beer and pubs written by Will Hawkes
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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.
The weather might not agree, but this is a time of celebration for Hop, Burns and Black. This year marks its 10th birthday - to be marked by a series of collaborations with their favourite booze producers - and in that respect it’s not alone. 2014 was a big year for bottle shops in London. Clapton Craft, Mother Kelly’s, We Brought Beer and Bottledog all emerged at much the same time, joining long-established Kris Wines and Utobeer in offering Londoners high-class beer for drinking at home.
It’s hard to imagine now, but this was a time of huge optimism in the beer world. Lots of breweries opened, bars too. There was a sense that beer as we knew it was changing - and it has, although perhaps not in the way that many imagined 10 years ago. “It was a very idealistic time,” says Jen Ferguson, who co-owns HB&B with partner Glenn Williams. “Almost utopian.”
Plenty saw bottle shops as the next step in craft beer’s inevitable takeover of the world. Nigel Owen, founder of Mother Kelly’s, was inspired on a trip to New York; Tom McKim, co-founder of Clapton Craft alongside fellow Kiwi Will Jack, saw how popular beer had become at Borough Wines, where they both worked, and thought the time was ripe for beer-focused shops.
What is interesting about bottle shops - beyond the produce - is the way in which they’ve tracked the evolution of beer in London. The rise and fall of 75cl bottled beer; the domination of hops, then and now; the impact of Covid-19; the gradual demise of growlers, or flagons; the arrival of natural wine; and much more besides. If you want to know how beer has changed since 2014, ask someone who runs one of these places.
In one key sense, HB&B was ahead of the curve. A diverse offering - beer, hot sauce and vinyl - was its offer right from the start. Other bottle shops, from Clapton Craft to Brockley’s Salthouse Bottles, have gradually added other products having started out very much beer-focused. “At the beginning, people would walk in and go ‘this is a strange mix,” laughs Glenn - but the key components remain, even if vinyl was replaced by coffee during Covid. Hot sauce has never been more popular.
The same can’t really be said of beer. As a proportion of HB&B’s turnover, it has fallen from 80 percent in 2014 to 43 percent now. Wine is now about 30 percent of Clapton Craft’s sales, having started at 0. For Mother Kelly’s, which closed its two bottle-shop-only sites in 2022, Covid-19 made a big difference. “We’ve seen our bottled beer, to drink in and takeaway, just disappear,” he says. “We’ve gone from 100 to 150 cases a week to about 10 cases a week now.”
Mother Kelly’s flagship sites always had draught beer to drink on-site; for Clapton Craft, which has nine shops and a significant online offering, that has become a more and more key part of the offering. Its Kentish Town and Finsbury Park sites are currently being updated, meaning six sites will have on-site drinking. “That’s been the biggest pivot for us in the last year or so,” says Tom.
For all three places - and notwithstanding Mother Kelly’s two closed bottle shops - the key thing is they’re still going; thriving, even. Plenty of others aren’t, like Bottledog, Brewdog’s ‘me-too’ bottle-shop concept, abandoned in 2017. It’s hard now to remember the excitement and media attention that greeted Clapton Craft’s opening in 2014, for example. There was a huge buzz, a buzz fuelled (and it seems odd to say this now) at least partly by excitement over its flagon/growler filler.
Flagons are still around, just, but much less prevalent than they were, for taxation and ease-of-use reasons. It’s not the only thing that’s died away: 2014 was a time of beer tourism in London, with bottle shops as key stop-off points. That seems less prevalent now.
But flagons and tourists are not the only endangered species. Part of the excitement in 2014 was a sense that big-format beer, 75cl bottles and the like, pricey and in-demand, a bit like wine, were going to be a big part of the future. It just hasn’t worked out like that.
Covid-19 is obviously one reason, but the culture has shifted away from the idea. Maybe British drinkers are just allergic to high-falutin’ stuff like this? Maybe it could come back, if and when the economy recovers? Who knows? “That has stayed a much smaller part of the market than I would have predicted,” says Tom. “The Pandemic put a massive stop to that,” says Glenn.
Beer culture in London has changed: people want cosy pubs, and reliable, not-too-fancy pints. Mother Kelly’s, says Nigel, sells twice as much pale ale and lager as it did pre-Pandemic.
And the craft-beer drinker changed, too - although perhaps it’s better to say, he or she got older. At Hop, Burns and Black, Jen says, they’ve always worked with an imaginary customer, 'Quinton', in mind. “He’s not that Pokemon, gotta catch them all character any more,” Jen says. “It’s more rounded. Everyone has grown and matured a bit.”
Some things don’t change. Hops are still central, even if the arrival of hazy beer marked a seismic shift and the big brands have changed, thanks to takeovers: from Beavertown to Brick to whoever comes next, in the case of HB&B. American beer has virtually disappeared.
Despite the challenges - and the rain falling increasingly insistently outside the shop on that February morning - there’s plenty of optimism at HB&B. They’re not alone in that. Last year was difficult, but there’s still lots to be optimistic about. “There’s not the same obsessiveness with beer [as we used to see],” says Jen, “but there’s still plenty of interest out there.”
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Celebrate Mother Kelly’s Birthday (with me)
Mother Kelly’s birthday celebrations next month take in a Q&A and bottle share at their Tottenham stronghold. I’ll be chatting to head honcho Nigel Owen and taking questions from the audience. Tickets are only £10; get yours here.
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Pizza Bad News
We learnt on Wednesday that Meantime was leaving Greenwich, and the brand will now be brewed at Fuller’s in Chiswick. It’s a sad end for a brewery that kick-started London beer's new era in 1999, operating out of a tram shed in one of South-east London’s less glamorous neighbourhoods. At its best - when it was producing delicious Porter in 75cl bottles - it was one of the city’s essential breweries, even if it didn’t quite ever live up to its potential. It never seems to establish a satisfactory brand. (Founder Alastair Hook, btw, remains a director at Gipsy Hill).
More on Meantime later, except for one tasty morsel: my mole at the meeting when the closure was announced tells me Asahi bosses softened the blow by serving staff pizza before breaking the news.
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Charlton Tussle
A row over The White Swan, a pub in Charlton, rumbles on. Developers want to turn it into a Tesco; locals want it to be a pub. More here.
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Bermo Beano
Another 10th birthday! Anspach and Hobday will be celebrating its first decade with a party at the Arch House, its original home in Bermondsey, on Friday 22 March. Expect lots of London Black, and look out for the latest iteration of Brother Sean, the brewery’s Belgian Stout.
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New Pubs (And Bars)
Venues continue to emerge (and re-emerge) despite the economic gloom. Yeastie Boys has opened a bar in Hanbury Street; The Greyhound in Peckham will re-open this month after being taken on by some clubbers; and the Roebuck, which has perhaps the best view in all of London, has been renovated and reopened by owners Greene King.
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Good Tenants
North London’s redoubtable Redemption brewery has taken on the tenancy of the Antwerp Arms, a 170-year-old pub in N17. Redemption - one of modern London brewing’s pioneers having started out in 2010 - has been served at the pub for years. It looks a good fit: a community-focused brewery in a community-owned pub.
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Flying In
Canopy’s former site in Herne Hill is about to be revived as Bird House Brewing. According to Des De Moor, the venue will reopen this month as part of Bird House London, a bar group which operates three venues in the capital. William Hiscocks, trained at Heriot-Watt, will be the brewer.
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Live Fast, Buy Youngs
Youngs has bought the City Pub Group for £162m. The acquisition includes a motley selection of London pubs, including The Cat and Mutton in Broadway Market, The Nell Gwyne (just off Strand) and Temple Brew House.
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Two Pubs, One City
Lord Nelson and Windsor Hotel, Old Kent Road
I was recently taken to task on twitter. South London’s Deserter mentioned January’s newsletter, in which I bravely and provocatively suggested London’s best pubs were quite good - and The Eagle Ale House was not happy. Not happy at all.
Ha, “nothing to see here, look over there!” The Eagle scoffed.
“38 Pubs on the Old Kent Rd have closed, but the good news is there’s one left!” #beerbloggergetsexercisedaboutverylittle, it added.
(I was particularly upset about the hashtag.)
But, it did make me think. Just one pub left? How has it managed it?
And also - I’m sure there are actually two pubs left.
Which is how I found myself descending from the upper deck of the 172 bus outside the former Thomas a'Becket, perhaps the OKR’s most iconic dead pub, just after lunch on a grey Tuesday afternoon.
I peered through the windows. Inside it’s been cleared away, creating a huge space full of tables, empty, waiting for punters to enjoy what is probably very tasty Thai grub courtesy of the current residents, Viet Quan. Outside, the old pub sign remains, and there’s a plaque devoted to Henry Cooper, the South London boxer who knocked out Cassius Clay and who trained upstairs.
(Cooper’s pubs have not had a good time of it lately. The other that he’s associated with, The Fellowship in Bellingham, is closed again after the latest pubco failed to make it work UPDATE: NOW REOPENED).
The Lord Nelson is two minutes’ walk south-east along the OKR. Inside it’s remarkable. If you google it, you’ll read about the various Victorian elements, from the odd-shaped bar - like the Stones tongue logo laid flat, projecting into the main room - to the decrepit original mirrors and the screen above the bar, advertising long-gone drinks: champagnes, liquers (sic), ports and sherries.
But they’re just part of the overall scene. There’s also a handful of cabinets filled with Nelson paraphernalia, a fruit machine, a couple of those £1 sweetie machines, a large and almost full bottle on the bar emblazoned “Southwark Irish Pensioners Project”, a floral red carpet, a faux road sign reading “Old Kent Road”, a mish-mash of odd and mostly uncomfortable furniture, a pool table and darts board in the back room, and some silver tinsel behind what looks like a stage area. It’s lived in.
Around the lip-section of the bar sit seven or eight older geezers, chuckling and wheezing, sipping a variety of beers and ciders: lager of one type or another, John Smith’s, Guinness, Strongbow. There’s no cask ale, but the Guinness (£4.50) is - to my uneducated palate - pretty good. Heart FM offers an incongruous soundtrack. It’s like drinking in the nineties.
Being a nosy sort, I'd like to hear what’s being said but there’s work going on upstairs. The high, incessant whine of a drill, then bang bang bang with a hammer, then the drill again. A snippet of chat. “If I’m going to die, I’d rather be fucking warm.” A cackle of laughter from around the pool table at the back.
The old lads occasionally get up for a piss or a fag.
On the bar is a selection of food: crisps, chips, big chunks of pale beige cheese. Three women are serving behind the bar, and the elder one comes over at one point to put some vinegar on the chips and to have a chat with the customers, who she clearly knows well. I presume she’s Patricia, the landlady, named in a notice on the front window appealing for cash to keep the pub in business. “This has been my home for 50 years,” it reads. “We are in jeopardy of losing the pub due to loss of funds during Covid.” (You can contribute here).
As I leave, the younger woman from behind the bar is on her way out for chat on the phone. We almost run into a customer, another old guy. “Sorry, Alan,” she says. He doesn’t seem to mind.
Between The Lord Nelson and the Windsor, my next port-of-call, is one of the most depressing bits of urban landscape in London, and probably Britain. What’s really dispiriting about this central chunk of the OKR is how ugliness has infected even those structures which aren’t ugly, like the former North Peckham Civic Centre, a stout sixties block on the corner of Peckham Park Road. Imagine the optimism when it opened, and look at it now.
And what’s not ugly is decrepit. The former Kentish Drovers, with its rather timeworn but nonetheless charming tiled exterior depicting some Kentish droving, looks awful. Its most recent occupant, another restaurant, appears to have shut; now it’s just peeling paint, rain-stained awnings and an incongruous Caffrey’s sign.
It’s a relief to get inside The Windsor. Victorian from the outside, the interior has been stripped bare, so it’s a big, square, somewhat antiseptic room, with seating around the edge, a pool table, lots of TV screens showing horseracing and Sky Sports News. At the far end from the entrance is the bar, at which five men - from middle-aged to quite old, white and black - are sitting and chatting to a friendly woman behind the bar. A Millwall scarf - ‘No One Likes Us’ - hangs behind said bar, close to a sign that reads ‘Pizza and a Pint, £10 all day every day’.
There are three handpumps, unexpectedly, all of them bearing Doom Bar clips of varying ages. I order a pint (£3.50; in decent nick, malty) and retreat to a corner of the room.
As I sit down, a Scotsman in a hi-vis jacket enters. He immediately enlivens things, moaning about a shared acquaintance (“It’s bad enough watching cycle racing …”) confirming the details for a forthcoming funeral, concluding an anecdote with the phrase, “He did a big belly flop, fucking soaked every cunt.”
Like the Lord Nelson, the Windsor is very different to a lot of modern London pubs. The prices are low, the beer is resolutely mainstream, the customers are mostly white and exclusively working-class. The other pubs on the Old Kent Road might have shut - and there were lots of them - but their culture survives, just about.
About 3pm, most of the other drinkers leave and it’s just the Scotsman and the woman behind the bar. “I’m knackered,” he tells her.
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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!