The politics of drinking
             January 23, 2025

How brewery taprooms have changed the way we drink

This article first appeared in the Propel Info newsletter on May 12, 2023

It’s a constant source of dismay for me that I moved out of Walthamstow before the breweries came. Once most famous for its eponymous boy band, E17 has become, over the past few years, home to an exciting craft beer scene – and thanks to on-site brewery tap rooms a compelling drinking destination.

In particular, a straggle of run-down industrial units along the western edge of Blackhorse Road has been transformed into an unlikely oasis of good beer and lively company, and a year ago the businesses here, taking inspiration from the original Bermondsey Beer Mile, south of the river, got together to brand themselves the Blackhorse Beer Mile.

A couple of weeks ago I joined the celebrations for its first birthday, along with hundreds of others who chose to spend their Sunday afternoon wandering around an industrial estate.

There’s a map showing the locations of six brewers. Going from north to south there’s Signature, the largest and most easily found with its tall, gleaming, conditioning vessels and live music; Pretty Decent, recently arrived after expanding out of its original base in nearby Forest Gate; Beerblefish; Exale and Wild Card, which has a second tap room on the other side of the Stow (as we call it).

(Sadly, Wild Card and its taprooms are now closed.)

And at either end, two non-brewing venues. Big Penny Social, formerly part of Truman’s Brewery, is a cavernous space with an expansive beer garden that’s a magnet for families and larger groups, while Renegade is an urban winery that had put on a couple of beer taps for the party.

Get your card stamped at all eight and you could claim a free commemorative glass. I already have more glasses than I have room for at home, but I was proud to come away with this one.

Brewery tap rooms have changed the way we drink. While we have gazed, horrified, at the mounting closure of traditional pubs, these new drinking places have emerged, in the interstices of industrial decay, under railway arches amid the oily aromas of vehicle repair shops, and on remote farms.

I’ve written a chapter about it in an academic textbook, Researching Craft Beer (Emerald, £70, ahem…), after noticing how important selling beer on-site has become to the success of craft breweries.

With no distribution costs, not only is it more profitable but there are marketing benefits, helping to establish a direct relationship with drinkers and developing an identity for the brand rooted in a specific locality.

And consumers enjoy the sense of discovery, the proximity to production and the opportunity to meet artisan producers, improve their knowledge of beer and perform connoisseurship.

Less easy to explain is the way tap rooms are perceived as safer, more inclusive, than regular pubs and bars. Walking the Blackhorse Beer Mile, you’re struck by how young these people are and how many women there are.

Uncomfortable seating, or standing, inside and out, is not an issue. Nor is having to queue, and there is lots of queuing, not only at the bars but at the vans and shacks of the street food vendors that attach themselves to the breweries, serving gourmet pizzas and burgers to soak up the double IPAs.

It’s a relaxed kind of adventure with, as a tap room manager once confided, “no arseholes”.

Brewers have also seized the chance to get closer to their local communities by opening their doors. Families are often welcomed, and one tap room has even hosted daytime ‘hops and tots’ sessions for the parents of young children. A brewery often has more space to manoeuvre dodgem prams. But mind that hot liquor tank.

Tap rooms continue to open. I see Attic Brew Co is launching its second one, at its barrel store in central Birmingham, this weekend. But there is a certain fragility to the phenomenon, in cities at any rate.

Rents are rising fast under the railway arches, and it seems the vibrant life of Blackhorse Beer Mile may be disappointingly brief.

American developer BlackRock Real Assets, which bought the 11-acre site in 2017, has plans to flatten the industrial estate and replace it with a complex offering housing, industry and entertainment including eight tower blocks, one of them half the height of the Shard.

It promises restaurants and cafes, and is working with existing tenants on the scheme, but it’s stretching the imagination to hope this kind of gentrification can accommodate the spontaneous, informal kind of drinking culture that the breweries and their tap rooms have brought to this previously neglected corner of east London.

Work is set to start towards the end of 2024.

Phil Mellows, May 12, 2023

Previously:

How brewery taprooms have changed the way we drink

Whatever happened to the J-shaped curve?

No beef, but….   

Folk devils and nitrous oxide

The joy of loitering

The return to the local

Larry Nelson and the challenge of trade journalism

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