Back then there were just 10 breweries, and many of those wouldn’t live to see the craft beer revolution take off. Since reaching its peak of 115 breweries in 1830, this world-famous trading hub had let one of its most famous exports go down the drain. The dockworkers had abandoned their porters, and pale ale breweries were being bought out and closed all over the city. Names like Charringtons and Taylor Walker were consigned to history, just words etched in stone above pubs, while the buildings were left derelict, the tall chimneys blocked up and coppers reclaimed.

By the 1970s most bars’ cellars were full of the dull, mass-produced lagers that had helped ruin real ale, championed by suited men who knew nothing about beer but plenty about profit. As they cashed in, the pubs went into decline, drowning under rising rents and thinning margins. Forced to drink overpriced pseudo-brews, drinkers were forgetting how beer was supposed to taste.

The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) hadn’t given up though. In 1971, over a few drinks in Dunquin, Ireland, four men swore to fight for the survival of traditional cask beer. For the next 30 years they battled to keep real ale alive, running festivals, publishing pamphlets and hounding the government. It became one of the biggest consumer movements in the world, but the British pub and its traditional beers were still in danger. First resigned to bad lager, then bored by it, drinking tins at home became the norm as supermarkets discounted their beer to irresponsible levels in the hope of attracting shoppers. The greatest brewing nation on Earth had become homogenous, bloated and boring.

Thankfully, a nation famous for its complete lack of brewing heritage was bored too, and a revolution had just begun that would change everything. New varieties of aromatic hops, originally developed to be more disease resistant, were falling into the hands of homebrewers in California, Oregon and Washington. Most of these beer nerds were brewing British bitters and historic IPA recipes, but the experimental hops were adding extra dimensions to the beer – they were much more bitter, but the trade-off was hints of pine, resin and grapefruit unheard of in beer before. Excited by what they had discovered, many of these brewers decided to go pro – people like Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. This movement spawned the American pale ale and IPA, two styles that changed the way the world looked at beer.

But while new-fangled ‘craft’ beer spread across the USA in the 80s and 90s, in the UK things were still looking bleak. Tens of pubs were closing across the country every week. Continental lagers were able to market themselves as premium, ripping out real ale lines and the heart of British tradition. Pockets of local, traditional breweries survived in the Black Country and Yorkshire, but in London we celebrated the Millennium with Prosecco and discount cans of Carling. To many it was the darkest hour in the history of British beer.

In a lock-up opposite Charlton Athletic’s stadium a man called Alastair Hook was taking a different view. He’d studied brewing at Heriot-Watt University before heading to Bavaria, where he did an apprenticeship at the oldest brewery in the world, Weihenstephan. As a pupil of German brewing he was never going to be the saviour of real ale, but he did have ambitions to change British beer. To start, he focused on traditional German styles like Helles and Weissbier and back then that was pretty revolutionary – the idea of a London lager was certainly brave. It didn’t take him long to outgrow the garage and move to Greenwich, where he assumed the name Meantime, after the longitude that dissects that part of town. Meantime showed that artisan beer had a place in the UK, but over the next decade only a few new breweries joined the ranks in London while others closed or moved.

It was actually a tiny town near Aberdeen where America’s revolution truly hit our shores. Fraserburgh is just about the least likely place in the world for a modern US-inspired brewery to spring up, but the one that did went on to kick open doors all over the UK. Brash and controversial, BrewDog were exactly the kind of company needed to challenge the powerful corporations that owned the market. Their beer was hoppy as hell, high in alcohol and branded, it seemed, to cause offence. Faced with vocal opposition, the founders Martin Dickie and James Watt were unapologetic, locking horns with anyone who tried to moderate them. Whatever you think of their marketing approach, their beers are regularly cited as an influence by some of the UK’s greatest brewers. One such brewer is Evin O’Riordain of The Kernel, who stands at head of the London craft brewery family tree. Unlike BrewDog though, Evin had no ambitions beyond the walls of his brewery. He simply wanted to brew big-flavoured American craft beer. As it turns out, that was a solid business strategy.

It wasn’t just Evin’s exciting beers or successful business that encouraged others: it was how he went about creating them. He believed in experimentation: he never brewed the same beer twice and rejected all advertising and marketing. He broke every rule in the start-up book, but the business model he cobbled together has been copied by brewers all over the country. Since he opened The Kernel in 2010, the number of breweries in London has grown from 10 to 100 – a rate of more than one every month. By 2019 there will be more breweries than there have been at any time in the capital’s history.

This book tells the tale of this remarkable revolution. It doesn’t take the form of a history book or novel; it has no beginning and certainly no ending. It’s a collection of short stories about fleeting moments, magical places and incredible people, all of which have come together to create something envied the world over. This is a snapshot of what it is like to live and drink in London today.

What follows isn’t just the tap lists and opening times of the best bars or breweries in London, it’s an account of the people and places that come together to form a counterculture.

Some people think that craft beer is a bubble, set to burst when something new and exciting comes along. But what you’ll find in this book are stories that will be told in a hundred years, backed up by bricks and mortar that have reinvigorated parts of the capital.

Split geographically, we’ve covered every inch of London in search of the places that tell the story of its brewing’s rebirth. The result is a love letter to beer and its place in the greatest city in the world.

NORTH

LONDON

GETTING OUT OF THE NORTH END OF CAMDEN IS LIKE SURFACING FROM UNDERWATER. YOU’VE MADE IT THROUGH THE TOURIST STREETS WHERE NO ONE KNOWS IF THEY ARE PEDESTRIANISED OR JUST TOO CROWDED, TO A MAGICAL PLACE WHERE RED BUSES REACH THEIR FINAL STOP AND HIGH RISES DON’T BLOCK OUT THE SUN.

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In some directions it feels like you’ve gone back in time. Take a trip through Dickensian Primrose Hill and pop into the Princess, or through Highgate Cemetery to the Bull, or across the Heath to the Spaniards Inn. Many of the pubs up here feel different; more like a village pub than a capital’s. Walking in you half expect the bar staff to know your name. I’ve had more conversations with strangers stood at the bar in the Southampton Arms than I have collectively throughout the capital.

The charm of these parts of north London is that they don’t feel like London at all. You can stand in the middle of Hampstead Heath and not even see the city. Yet all the breweries and pubs in this chapter are still in zone two, not twenty minutes’ journey from Euston Station. One, in fact, isn’t even twenty seconds away.

The amount of good pubs north of the Euston Road is epic, and while it’s not the most concentrated area for breweries in London, it is home to two of the most important. The story of the biggest, Camden Town Brewery, is remarkable. Aside from Meantime it is by far the biggest to have come out of the capital’s revolution and is still the only one focused on craft lager. Of course, whether it is still craft after its sale to AB InBev is down to your point of view, but it proved to the world that craft brewing is a legitimate business rather than a bubble set to burst.

Beavertown have achieved the same but in a very different way. Now on their third site and still growing faster than anyone thought possible, they have become an inspiration for hundreds of independent UK breweries by constantly breaking the rules. Not only are their beers big, hoppy monsters, but they were one of the first breweries to go into can, didn’t brew a core IPA for over four years, and have created a brand so far removed from traditional tropes that most people wouldn’t know they were a brewery. Their presence in desperately uncool Tottenham Hale has helped revitalise the area and form a small, creative hub in a former industrial wasteland – a wasteland that now gets thousands of drinkers visiting it every weekend.

THE SOUTHAMPTON ARMS

PUB

THESOUTHAMPTONARMS.CO.UK

THE REAL ALE PUMPS, CASH-ONLY TILL AND RECORD PLAYER MAKE CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF THIS PUB FEEL LIKE STEPPING BACK IN TIME – AND THE AMOUNT OF TIME YOU LOSE IN THERE CAN STACK UP PRETTY QUICKLY.

You don’t realise how perfect the Southampton Arms is until you walk into a different pub. Once you have been to this truly wholesome place, every other pub you drink in will be a disappointment in some way. Despite opening in 2009, The Southampton Arms seems ancient. Perhaps it’s the sepia-toned portraits on the walls, or uneven wooden floor, rickety stools and chipped paint. Perhaps it’s that you can’t pay by card and the food menu is childishly scrawled on a tiny blackboard.

Or maybe it’s that, with the exception of two taps, all the beers and ciders are on cask. For all its charms, this is what makes The Southampton Arms unique. Ten pumps of cask ales and six real ciders stretch along the bar, and – unlike in just about every other London pub – you know each one is going to be in perfect condition. Ash the landlord knows how to pick great beers, but even more, he knows how to cellar them. After seven years of looking after the trickiest form of pub booze, he knows exactly how every style should taste and when to get them on the bar. Don’t underestimate how hard that is to achieve.

‘It takes a lot of work, a lot of care and attention and a lot of running up and down stairs checking them’, he says. ‘We turn over a lot here so you have to create new, inventive ways of making sure they are on form at the right time. We started with eight pumps, which was a pretty risky start. Nobody knew if it would work, especially being a little community pub like this. But within a week or two we knew we needed more.’

Put simply, real ale or cask beer is sent out to the pub before it’s ready – it’s put in barrels and shipped while still unconditioned. The benefit is that it means the publican can start serving the second it’s ready – and fresh beer is the best beer. But it also means the brewer is putting a lot of faith in the publican to look after the liquid and serve it at the right time. Sadly most don’t, so you should always ask for a taster before buying a real ale. But in The Southampton I don’t bother. From Redemption’s Big Chief brewed just a few miles away to Magic Rock’s seminal High Wire made up in Huddersfield, I know the beer is going to be good – and even better with a homemade pork pie or crusty roast bap.

Flavour aside, there are loads of other reasons to visit The Southampton Arms. They run what has to be the hardest pub quiz in London – one in which we honestly celebrated getting half marks. It’s hosted by a man usually drunk by the end of the first question and hoarse by the second. If the quizmaster isn’t mouthing off (on one memorable night calling one drinker a c*** for revealing an answer), you might be able to hear the selection of old-school jazz, blues and rock records kept in a dusty corner behind the bar. On other nights you’ll get one of the locals on the piano, giving the pub a Western saloon feel.

In any other bar these events might feel cynically hipster. But completely devoid of hype, pomp and fashion this pub manages to do achingly hip things while making it all completely natural. From the perfectly balanced but unpretentious beer list to the humble attempts to keep drinkers entertained, it’s like the whole place was designed for the benefit of the quiet, cask-loving publican. It just so happens we all love his way of doing things.

I have never felt more instantly at home than at this pub. It is the embodiment of everything that is brilliant about beer, and my number one pub in the world.

TEN CASK, SIX CIDERS, TWO KEG.

BY DAY IT’S ALL CROSSWORDS AND QUIET PINTS, BY NIGHT A ROWDY SATURDAY NIGHT IN A COUNTRY PUB. GET THERE EARLY.

THE DUKE’S HEAD

PUB

THEDUKESHEADHIGHGATE.CO.UK

LOOKING DOWN ON LONDON FROM THE TOP OF HIGHGATE, THE DUKE’S HEAD FEELS A WORLD AWAY FROM THE HUSTLE OF THE CITY, COMBINING A VILLAGE PUB FEEL WITH THE BEST INDEPENDENT BRITISH BEER, CIDER AND GIN.

London has over eight million people living in it. It stretches 20 miles from the Thames Estuary, unbroken until it nearly swallows Slough. But our capital isn’t some giant complex of grey concrete from east to west. It has grown in fits and starts, leaving gaps, green lands and missing connections. Really it is a collection of neighbourhoods all completely distinct from each other.

The great London drinking holes feel like village pubs – and it’s because they are. They absorb all that is vital about an area to create a space that reflects it, and here Highgate is embodied in its softly spoken, almost Church of England-like calm. Well, some of the time.

Found near the top of the hill that looms over Archway Station, it is in a wealthy but understated part of north London. With Victorian shop fronts, leafy cemeteries and detached housing, the only clue you’re in London is the red buses that roll down the hill towards the City. Otherwise the high street could be anywhere in the Home Counties.

The pub itself has huge single-glazed windows perfect for people-watching, but also for warming up your pint. That’s OK though, because the focus in The Duke’s Head is on traditional cask ale, so it’s meant to be a more ambient temperature anyway. The owners take great pride in their cellar and with eight carefully chosen, all-British handpulls you’re guaranteed a good pint whenever you go in. Drinking fresh is vital when it comes to living cask beer. If you’re not sure what to have, look at the man at the end of the counter because he’s probably asked the right questions. It’s the kind of place where the locals all sit at the bar and drink their way through a cask of their favourite then somehow walk away sober as a judge.

8 KEG AND CASK, ALL BRITISH AND ALL VERY WELL KEPT INDEED.

OLDER LOCALS DURING THE WEEKDAYS, YOUNG BEER GEEKS BY NIGHT FOR REGULAR BEER EVENTS. BOTH MINGLE AT THE WEEKENDS, WITH THE ODD PRAM THROWN INTO THE MIX.

If the pumps aren’t exciting you there are eight keg lines too, shooting out of a column in the middle of the back bar. You might think that keeping to purely British beers would mean a lot of repetition, but such is the strength of British brewing these days that the daily lists are fascinating, thirst-inducing pieces of literature. Their website is constantly updated with what’s live and what’s waiting in the cellar, so you can make sure it’s up to scratch before you make the trip. You’ll always find something delicious from Burning Sky, BrewDog or Cloudwater but local beers seem to be the main order of the day, with Londoners Five Points and Hammerton almost always on tap. If things get really serious, the regional boozing doesn’t have to stop there – the pub is also home to the Sacred Gin bar, a cocktail menu made exclusively with gin from the Sacred distillery in Highgate.

While some pubs can make non-regulars feel a little out of place, everyone is a local at The Duke’s Head from the moment they walk through the door. Rather than just benefitting the community, it has become one. On the wall opposite the bar is a wooden plaque bearing the names of those who have done the pub great service – usually in the form of spending all their money there. In return for swearing on the horns of a stag that also adorns the walls, the lucky few are given the freedom of the Duke’s Head. I doubt that means they can wander into the kitchens or pour themselves a pint, but it certainly makes you feel special every time you walk in. That said, we’re still waiting for our invite.

EUSTON TAP

PUB

EUSTONTAP.COM

A LONDONER COMMUTER INSTITUTION, THE EUSTON TAP HAS CAUSED MORE MISSED CONNECTIONS THAN SOUTHERN TRAINS THANKS TO THE 47 WELL-CURATED BEERS ON TAP.

As I place my pint on the rickety metal table, it nearly tips. I snatch my drink from the brink and clutch it to my chest instead. The Euston Tap is not really designed for drinking in. Originally the squat gatehouse that formed part of the arch outside Euston Station, the owners have done little to make it more comfortable for punters. The bar staff have more room than the drinkers, the spiral staircase is tight enough to tie you in knots, and anyone over six foot has to stoop where the few tables are. It’s fair to say they have packed it all in though; over 40 taps of great beer and two fridges keep people coming back, and can sometimes leave the queue trailing out the door as people struggle to make their choice. Inside gets cramped so I’m stood leaning against the railing opposite the entrance. In this exposed position you have to be wary of wing mirrors as the buses come close around the corner but it’s the best place to watch the daily phenomenon that happens on this pub’s doorstep. Come five o’clock it’s like a scene from a David Attenborough documentary, as the entire north London commuter belt migrates through Euston Station. You can almost hear Sir David’s voiceover as a herd of suits head around the corner, checking watches and calculating: time for a swifty?