Hello Cleveland! Or wherever you may be reading this from...
It was actually on the train I started making some notes for this post, yet over a month later I finally get it written up! Therefore a few details may be missing, but hopefully from my ramblings you get the jist of the day! And looking back, it's been about two and a half months since my last post. It genuinely doesn't feel that long, but that's just life I guess. It is flying by! So what have I been up to in this time I hear you asking?...
Well, I've been to my old university housemates' beautiful wedding in Derby, planned some summer beer and music festival adventures, discovered the great We Brought Beer in Balham and attended for the first time the Late Knights' Beer Rebellion pub quiz (losing gloriously in the process). All whilst drinking some fine beer!
Well, I've been to my old university housemates' beautiful wedding in Derby, planned some summer beer and music festival adventures, discovered the great We Brought Beer in Balham and attended for the first time the Late Knights' Beer Rebellion pub quiz (losing gloriously in the process). All whilst drinking some fine beer!
But this post isn't about any of those things in great detail. As you might of inferred from the title, this post is about the Bermondsey Beer Mile! For those of you who haven't heard of this, it is a well-recognised bar crawl of tap rooms and brewery bars in the just over a mile stretch between and London Bridge in South East London. For whatever reason, this area of the city has become a haven for craft and micro breweries to locate themselves ever since The Kernel opened its doors in 2009. Back then, when the craft beer world was just beginning to come into its own, these fledgling breweries had to set up wherever they could afford the rent, and the Bermondsey railway arches were as good a place as any. Now, there are no less than 8 separate breweries in the area, all of whom throw open their doors on a Saturday afternoon for the beer geeks, casual drinkers, birthday parties and fellow brewers to come and sample their brews fresh from the tanks.
So, on Saturday 9th May, my girlfriend and I jumped on a train and made our way to sunny Bermondsey. First stop, Fourpure.
I have only recently discovered Fourpure and their adventure-inspired beer, but they are fast becoming one of my favourite London breweries. I really like the fact that they have embraced cans from the start, and plenty more breweries are taking this route now, for many reasons (Beavertown are a big one, and I've also seen cans from Wild Beer and Weird Beard popping up recently). Fourpure's brewery and tap room are located on an industrial estate just round the corner from South Bermondsey station, and on arrival I treated myself to their new West Coast Saison. Sweet and sharp with zingy citrus, this beer brought out the sun (literally) and was a great start to the Beer Mile. This was obviously the start point for a lot of beer aficionados that day, as by the time we had got through beer number one, the bar and the outside seating were all full. I would have happily stayed for longer, but breweries to visit with beers to drink were calling!
Stop number two was Partizan. Probably the longest walk between breweries of the whole day, this took about 15 minutes and as we arrived under the railway arches on Almond Road, I could already see a lot of the same faces who had been at the bar at Fourpure. The Beer Mile really is taking off with so many different people. With a penchant for interesting saisons, there were a number on tap and in bottle, so we opted for a Raspberry, Plum and Ginger for the girlfriend and a Le Moyne for me. Crisp, tart and refreshing, these really take over the palette, and although not really my thing usually, a welcome change from the pales, porters and reds that frequent my glass most of the time! So we obviously couldn't just have the one...!
Interestingly, it was at this brewery I heard a different view on the Beer Mile and its popularity. For some, it seems that the Beer Mile is just a 'Let's Do It to Say I've Done It' kind of thing, with a real detachment from the actual appreciation and enjoyment of the beer. Too many people viewing it as a standard pub crawl, with every other customer at the bar asking for directions to the next place, can take away from the actual craftmanship and passion behind the beer itself. I, however, would argue that this 'Beer Mile' can only be a good thing. Not that I don't understand this view, and agree that it would be a shame to see the route clogged with stag parties and birthday bar crawls, it seems counter-intuitive to be frustrated by the 'event's' popularity. Craft beer, like it or not, IS becoming a trend across the world, and London is one of the cities at the forefront of this post-American, new wave of craft brewing. This should be something to be proud of, and if there are multiple breweries all open on a Saturday afternoon in the space of a couple of kilometres of each other all inviting you to come and drink their excellent beer, you can't blame people for wanting to sample as much as possible in that short window.
Yes, there may be a some people coming just for the status of doing it, but I'd say from my experience there are 3 or 4 times as many coming for the love of the beers. These generally small tap rooms for the most part have little or no furniture, so this isn't your normal pub crawl, so those expecting that will soon be put off, or at the very least not come back for seconds. There were also plenty of people more than happy to sit at their favourite one or two breweries for the whole afternoon, and how best to decide that without finding your favourite first? And you know what, if just one of that hen party or that gang of lads out for a session decide that they actually ARE enjoying this new-fangled craft beer over their standard bland lager, then that's surely a win, right?
Anyway, back to the Beer Mile! Sadly The Kernel, which was the next brewery on the route, closes its doors at 2pm, so we were straight on to the next one: Brew By Numbers. Sitting pretty much bang in the middle of the Mile, this bar was operating a one in, one out policy by the time we got there. Admittedly, I did feel a bit sorry for the guy on the gate who really only wanted to be there talking about and drinking his brewery's beer, but all in the name of licensing, there wasn't really another choice. So we joined the queue, and were in really quickly anyway. I had myself a nutty brown ale whilst Steph got a hazy golden, and we managed to claim a palette outside in the sun to enjoy them on. I'd never had anything from BBNo before, and really enjoyed the Brown. Maybe a heavy choice for such a sunny afternoon, but the malty ale with its hints of chocolate, dark fruit and earth easily made this a minor concern!
By now, it wasn't just the beers that were getting hazy. The sun was low in the late Spring sky and the beer was starting to cloud our heads just a tad! So around 5pm, we found ourselves on Druid Street. This final stretch of the walk has 3 breweries all in close proximity to one another. We knew we would probably already be missing last orders at one of the newest additions to the mile, Southwark Brewing, so instead settled in at the joint brewery bar shared by Anspach & Hobday and Bullfinch Brewery. Now I'm not sure if it was just my beery goggles, but I couldn't find anything from Bullfinch, which is a shame as I've heard some great things about them. Instead I opted for a couple of tasting boards from A & H, consisting of their Pale Ale, IPA, Best Bitter, Noble Ale, Sour Ale and Cream Ale. Particular favourite there was the Sour, a real palette-cleanser at that time of the day!
So as the day was drawing to a close, there was one final treat in store for us, in the form of a place close to my hoppy heart, The Bottle Shop. This gem began life in The Goods Shed in Canterbury where I went to uni and worked for a couple of years before upping sticks to London, and along with a couple of fantastic pubs and individuals in the city, helped provide my first real venture into new and exciting beers. I remember being blown away by the artwork, taste and accessibility of a Beavertown Gamma Ray (back when it was still in bottles) from the original Canterbury store, so it was apt that the Bermondsey site was hosting the Beavertown tap takeover the day we visited. Again, our reasonably late arrival saw us confronted with empty kegs of some exciting beers like their DIPA Skull King (which I have since tried... and it's amazing!) and some interesting collaborations.
That said, their are very few things about Beavertown and their beers that could be described as 'unexciting', so we grabbed ourselves some halves of the Bloody 'Ell Blood Orange IPA and savoured our last stop on the Mile.
Ultimately, this was a genuinely great day with good weather, good friends and some top notch beers. Yes, it was really busy at some points and yes, in some ways queuing out the door at the makeshift brewery bar of a micro brewery seems slightly against the ethos of what many of them are trying to do. But realistically, craft beer is commercialising; Sambrooks, Camden Town and Thornbridge are all now available in some form in chain superstores and it's even making appearances on cookery programmes and breakfast TV. Maybe some people would lead you to believe that the spirit behind the beer has gone, but as I said before, I don't believe this. Don't be that guy/girl who revels in being the only one drinking something different at the bar, like you are in some kind of secret club that becomes uncool the moment you let too many people in. The term 'hipster' is something papers and the internet love to casually stick on to any new-ish movement at the moment, no matter if it is prefixed with music, fashion, craft beer or numerous other terms. Instead, be that person who buys the rounds in specifically to get your friends or colleagues drinking better beer. In my opinion, there is no bar crawl better than one when you are drinking beer fresh from the brewery with like-minded people, where you know your are putting money back into helping these breweries do what they do.
So the next Saturday you have an afternoon free... I'll meet you in Bermondsey!
Stop number two was Partizan. Probably the longest walk between breweries of the whole day, this took about 15 minutes and as we arrived under the railway arches on Almond Road, I could already see a lot of the same faces who had been at the bar at Fourpure. The Beer Mile really is taking off with so many different people. With a penchant for interesting saisons, there were a number on tap and in bottle, so we opted for a Raspberry, Plum and Ginger for the girlfriend and a Le Moyne for me. Crisp, tart and refreshing, these really take over the palette, and although not really my thing usually, a welcome change from the pales, porters and reds that frequent my glass most of the time! So we obviously couldn't just have the one...!
Interestingly, it was at this brewery I heard a different view on the Beer Mile and its popularity. For some, it seems that the Beer Mile is just a 'Let's Do It to Say I've Done It' kind of thing, with a real detachment from the actual appreciation and enjoyment of the beer. Too many people viewing it as a standard pub crawl, with every other customer at the bar asking for directions to the next place, can take away from the actual craftmanship and passion behind the beer itself. I, however, would argue that this 'Beer Mile' can only be a good thing. Not that I don't understand this view, and agree that it would be a shame to see the route clogged with stag parties and birthday bar crawls, it seems counter-intuitive to be frustrated by the 'event's' popularity. Craft beer, like it or not, IS becoming a trend across the world, and London is one of the cities at the forefront of this post-American, new wave of craft brewing. This should be something to be proud of, and if there are multiple breweries all open on a Saturday afternoon in the space of a couple of kilometres of each other all inviting you to come and drink their excellent beer, you can't blame people for wanting to sample as much as possible in that short window.
Yes, there may be a some people coming just for the status of doing it, but I'd say from my experience there are 3 or 4 times as many coming for the love of the beers. These generally small tap rooms for the most part have little or no furniture, so this isn't your normal pub crawl, so those expecting that will soon be put off, or at the very least not come back for seconds. There were also plenty of people more than happy to sit at their favourite one or two breweries for the whole afternoon, and how best to decide that without finding your favourite first? And you know what, if just one of that hen party or that gang of lads out for a session decide that they actually ARE enjoying this new-fangled craft beer over their standard bland lager, then that's surely a win, right?
Anyway, back to the Beer Mile! Sadly The Kernel, which was the next brewery on the route, closes its doors at 2pm, so we were straight on to the next one: Brew By Numbers. Sitting pretty much bang in the middle of the Mile, this bar was operating a one in, one out policy by the time we got there. Admittedly, I did feel a bit sorry for the guy on the gate who really only wanted to be there talking about and drinking his brewery's beer, but all in the name of licensing, there wasn't really another choice. So we joined the queue, and were in really quickly anyway. I had myself a nutty brown ale whilst Steph got a hazy golden, and we managed to claim a palette outside in the sun to enjoy them on. I'd never had anything from BBNo before, and really enjoyed the Brown. Maybe a heavy choice for such a sunny afternoon, but the malty ale with its hints of chocolate, dark fruit and earth easily made this a minor concern!
By now, it wasn't just the beers that were getting hazy. The sun was low in the late Spring sky and the beer was starting to cloud our heads just a tad! So around 5pm, we found ourselves on Druid Street. This final stretch of the walk has 3 breweries all in close proximity to one another. We knew we would probably already be missing last orders at one of the newest additions to the mile, Southwark Brewing, so instead settled in at the joint brewery bar shared by Anspach & Hobday and Bullfinch Brewery. Now I'm not sure if it was just my beery goggles, but I couldn't find anything from Bullfinch, which is a shame as I've heard some great things about them. Instead I opted for a couple of tasting boards from A & H, consisting of their Pale Ale, IPA, Best Bitter, Noble Ale, Sour Ale and Cream Ale. Particular favourite there was the Sour, a real palette-cleanser at that time of the day!
So as the day was drawing to a close, there was one final treat in store for us, in the form of a place close to my hoppy heart, The Bottle Shop. This gem began life in The Goods Shed in Canterbury where I went to uni and worked for a couple of years before upping sticks to London, and along with a couple of fantastic pubs and individuals in the city, helped provide my first real venture into new and exciting beers. I remember being blown away by the artwork, taste and accessibility of a Beavertown Gamma Ray (back when it was still in bottles) from the original Canterbury store, so it was apt that the Bermondsey site was hosting the Beavertown tap takeover the day we visited. Again, our reasonably late arrival saw us confronted with empty kegs of some exciting beers like their DIPA Skull King (which I have since tried... and it's amazing!) and some interesting collaborations.
That said, their are very few things about Beavertown and their beers that could be described as 'unexciting', so we grabbed ourselves some halves of the Bloody 'Ell Blood Orange IPA and savoured our last stop on the Mile.
Ultimately, this was a genuinely great day with good weather, good friends and some top notch beers. Yes, it was really busy at some points and yes, in some ways queuing out the door at the makeshift brewery bar of a micro brewery seems slightly against the ethos of what many of them are trying to do. But realistically, craft beer is commercialising; Sambrooks, Camden Town and Thornbridge are all now available in some form in chain superstores and it's even making appearances on cookery programmes and breakfast TV. Maybe some people would lead you to believe that the spirit behind the beer has gone, but as I said before, I don't believe this. Don't be that guy/girl who revels in being the only one drinking something different at the bar, like you are in some kind of secret club that becomes uncool the moment you let too many people in. The term 'hipster' is something papers and the internet love to casually stick on to any new-ish movement at the moment, no matter if it is prefixed with music, fashion, craft beer or numerous other terms. Instead, be that person who buys the rounds in specifically to get your friends or colleagues drinking better beer. In my opinion, there is no bar crawl better than one when you are drinking beer fresh from the brewery with like-minded people, where you know your are putting money back into helping these breweries do what they do.
So the next Saturday you have an afternoon free... I'll meet you in Bermondsey!
This post was written to the tune of: The Bohicas – Where You At
