Brew//LDN 2024

Brew//LDN, Between The Bridges, Southbank, London SE1 7PB

BrewLDN marks the start of the UK summer Craft Beer festival season, and so is always an event to be anticipated. For the past three years, it was held at the soul-less gargantuan Printworks in Rotherhithe, and it was hard to ignore the fact that BrewLDN occupied a shrinking footprint in the warehouse over the past couple of years.

Therefore a change of venue was to be welcomed, and this year the event moved to the quirky outdoor beer garden known as Between the Bridges, in the shadow of the London Eye on the Southbank of the Thames. Between the Bridges is essentially an outdoor space, with a series of interlinked covered areas containing excellent (permanent) street food vendors, with plenty of space for pop-up brewery bars.

BrewLDN (and it’s precursor Craft Beer Rising) operate a democratic pay-to-play approach to the breweries, which is both a blessing and a curse combined. The great thing about this model is that it allows emerging breweries to back themselves, buy a pitch and launch their beer to the London audience. (One of Reading’s finest Double-Barrelled did exactly that 7 or 8 years ago, when Mike was still brewing in his garage, and look where they are now!)

The downside is that there are always too many macro breweries at BrewLDN, pretending to be “crafty”. I guess if we were going to be charitable, we could speculate that the macros are subsidising the little guys, and helping the overall numbers
to add-up?

This year, due to the smaller venue, several more sessions were added across Wednesday and Thursday, to spread the crowd out across the weekend. We attended on the Friday afternoon, and the event was comfortably busy, without being crowded.

We drank some great beers from friends of TWICB, including Attic, Fierce, Neckstamper, Full Circle, Great Beyond and Turning Point. It was also a pleasure to meet Jack from No Frills Joe based in Dartford, who was pouring some excellent beers, and could well be this year’s Double-Barrelled equivalent!

In summary, it was brilliant to be back in Festival-mode and great to catch-up with so many old friends. Next stop for us is Bristol CBF in just under five week’s time!