A day at the Bermondsey Beer Mile

On Saturday I visited the ‘Bermondsey Beer Mile’ in South London which is arguably the best place to go in London right now for beer fans. Okay, so the mile is a bit more than a mile and it’s not quite as easy to navigate as it sounds, but each week five of London’s top ‘craft’ breweries open their doors for the likes of you and I. I had visited one of the breweries before but on this occasion I was aiming to make it to all five; Anspach & Hobday, Brew By Numbers, The Kernel Brewery, Partizan Brewing and Fourpure Brewing Co. and had roped in some friends to join me.


Although most of the breweries open up at 9am that’s a bit early for me, and I arrived at Anspach & Hobday at just past 1 in the afternoon. Saturday marked the ‘official’ opening of A&H and there were plenty of people there when I arrived. I’d heard plenty about their award-winning Porter so that was where my day began. I’ll be reviewing all the beers I drank in separate posts that will follow, but this was absolutely wonderful. The brewery is nicely decked out with plenty of seating. As well as beer there was food and beer matching on offer for a fiver which seemed particularly good value and one of the owners very kindly offered me some fruit cake to go with the porter despite me not paying for it. At the moment the beer is only available bottled here although I’m sure it won’t be too long before it becomes available on draft. My friends started to arrive and following the Porter we tried the Smoked Brown which was also excellent, before heading off for some lunch.

One of the best things about visiting these breweries is their proximity to the excellent Maltby Market and we made a brief stop there for some lunch (a superb Brazilian steak wrap) before heading off toward our next brewery. Our second stop was Brew By Numbers at 79 Enid Street. I tried my first BBNo brew just last week so was eager to get my hands on more and we went for 02|01 Golden Ale Motueka and Pacific Jade and 03|02 Porter Liberty. These were both solid beers, with the golden ale my favourite of the two. Brew By Numbers was also doing a roaring trade and was standing room only but thankfully the sun was shining and we perched outside on a crate to enjoy our beers.

By now it had gone 3pm and we were under the impression that the Kernel would be closed however on arrival the breweries two arches were packed to the rafters. We joined a lengthy queue and to mix things up a bit went for the London Sour and the Oak Aged Saison along with an IPA (Stella Motueka Centennial). I’d had the IPA a couple of weeks ago and it was wonderful drinking it fresh at the brewery. The London Sour was...well, sour, more on that in a future post. The Oak Aged Saison was unlike any Saison I’d previously had and is, as far as I can tell, blended with the sour in production. This was really nice a palate cleanser and thoroughly refreshing with a nice oaky hint.

We left behind the crowds at the Kernel and wandered off towards Partizan Brewing Co. I find it quite remarkable that until Saturday I hadn’t tried a single Partizan beer, poor form for a booze-loving South London dweller. Between my friends and I we ordered the IPA Centennial, the Saison Grisette Lemongrass & Lychee, the 5 grain Porter and the Foreign Export Stout. Again, I’ll review these beers individually but they were all great, particularly the Saison and the Stout. Partizan is the smallest of the four breweries that we made it too with only outdoor standing space available. By now it was pretty chilly and standing around was becoming a challenge, I’d be interested to know what they do when it rains! I also really, really love the Partizan labels, each a work of art in themselves. You can read an excellent interview with Partizan illustrator Alec Doherty over at the Evening Brews.

Alas it was now well gone 5pm and we anticipated that our fifth and final brewery, Fourpure Brewing Co., would be closed. We pressed on regardless but by now I was struggling with both the directions and the cold and after a fruitless wander we gave up. Thankfully Anspach & Hobday were open until 7pm (this may have been down to it being ‘opening day’ rather than their regular hours so please check before you go) so we headed back there in search of more beer. Due to the overwhelming success of the day A&H were down to their last few bottles of porter and some stuff from Bullfinch Brewery. Having tried the porter earlier in the day I went for a Bullfinch American IPA to round off the day.

This was an excellent day of beer drinking and I really couldn’t recommend it more highly. The beer is reasonably priced and more importantly absolutely superb. I was slightly disappointed not to make it to all five breweries and should you plan to do so I recommend starting as early as possible. Whilst an afternoon seems like plenty of time it quite rapidly disappears and besides, who wants to watch the clock?

If you are planning a visit, the excellent London Beer Guide has a ‘technical guide’ to the Bermondsey Beer Mile which you made find of more use than this post. You may also wish to follow this twitter account for updates and please check all opening times before you go!