In London town

Ted Bruning picks out a few pubs in the Borough

Great place for pubs, London. Not so great for beer, though. But before sundry London brewers (sorry, Mr Keeling) get apoplexy, let’s qualify that.

Yes, London has Fuller’s. It used to have Young’s, too, although that belongs to Bedford now. And lots of other regional brewers also maintain a presence in London: Greene King is well-represented (but then it’s probably well represented on Mars); so is Shepherd Neame.

There’s loads of Adnams, a bit of Badger, and (get down on your knees, you worshippers of ale) even some Harvey’s. Sam Smith, by a coup de main many years ago, snaffled a hefty parcel of some of the most historic pubs in the capital, but not all of them serve ‘real ale’.

Stick to the bottles, but be prepared to pay.

But London is not microbrewery territory and never really has been. There used to be Pitfield, of course, the first micro ever to win the Champion Beer of Britain competition (Dark Star, 1987 – I worked round the corner from the Beer Shop then, and oh how I wish I still did); but that has moved to Essex. And there used to be the Blessed Bruce’s Firkin brewpubs, but they have passed into legend.

For high property prices and a more or less total lack of genuine free trade stifled the development of micros in Old London Town: today it has eight, four wholesale and four boutique – less than half the number of micros in Staffordshire. Or Cumbria. Or Devon. Or… I think you get the picture.

Using the 2007 Good Beer Guide, I tried to put together a crawl o.....

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By Ted Bruning

Section : Beer Journeys

Page number : 56