Riverside Beer Festival, Morden Wharf

Riverside Beer Festival, Morden Wharf, Greenwich Peninsula, London

Like most people in the UK Craft Beer Community, our reaction earlier this year when we saw Brew By Numbers unveil their new Morden Wharf Brewery and Taproom was some variation on WOW!

Morden Wharf is based a few hundred yards southwest of the O2 Arena and North Greenwich Jubilee Line Station, in that part of London where the Thames does a double hair-pin turn, made famous by the Eastenders opening credits.

Brew By Numbers are one of the OG London Craft Brewers, so when they announced that they would be hosting a launch Riverside Festival featuring a lot of their best Brewery friends from across the World, we knew that we couldn’t miss it.

Morden Wharf is a huge multi-stage construction project, which has some way to go, before it looks like the artist’s rendition above.

However, the important parts are in place already. The Brewery is installed and about to be commissioned, and the first phase of the taproom and the beer terrace is up and running.

The best way to get a sense of the outlook from the beer terrace at the front is to refer to the experience that you get sitting outside any of the iconic Wapping High St pubs on the other side of the Thames. In particular, if you have sat outside The Captain Kid, you will know that the sight of the river absolutely dominates your outlook to the point that you can’t take your eyes off it, and the same is true at the BBNo Morden Wharf.

Rob and Steve attended the Friday afternoon session at the Festival, and what was very noticeable was the high percentage of Brewery owners who had turned up to pour their own beer. Even in the midst of a busy summer festival season, this was clearly an event that the top guys wanted to experience for themselves.

Having attended both BrewLDN and LCBF in recent weeks, we appreciated the more intimate nature of this event, and the quality and range of beer styles available from the roughly 40 Breweries in attendance was spectacular, ably backed up by some terrific street food options.

We had an amazing time, and Tom and the whole BBNo Team deserve great credit for pulling off such a fantastic event. Suffice to say that Morden Wharf is now very high on our list of favourite London Taprooms, and it is a MUST-visit for all UK Craft Beer fans, when you next get
the chance.