American Craft Beer Goes to London

When we started ACB back in 2012, our goal was to cover the American craft beer scene like it never had been done before and have some fun doing it. Our early growth was in many of the cities you’d expect. West Coast cities like San Diego, LA, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle found us early, as did Denver in the West and Chicago in the Midwest. Our home office is in Washington, DC, so we’ve friends who turn to us regularly in the mid-Atlantic. And Boston, NYC, and Atlanta always show up as some of our Top 5 cities that check in with us daily.

But the last thing we expected was to attract an international audience – and we couldn’t believe it when that started happening…

We never anticipated any kind of following abroad…It just never occurred to us, especially since we primarily cover the craft beer scene in North America. But starting in 2013, we began noticing regular visits from Europe and the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, and it finally dawned on us that the interest in craft beer clearly didn’t stop at our shores.

By 2014, London had become a Top 3 city for us, right behind New York and Los Angeles and we decided that a visit to London was both necessary and long overdue.

In 2015, I spent three fantastic days and nights exploring London’s beer scene and hanging out with some of the remarkable people doing it. Needless to say, it was a blast and so much more than I was ready for.

Sophie Atherton was my point person in London and I couldn’t have been in better hands. I first met Sophie in Denver at last year’s CBC. She’s a respected beer writer whose been covering the UK beer scene for over half a decade and the first women in Britain to be accredited as a Beer Sommelier. Sophie was in Denver as one of the World Beer Cup judges – we ended up spending the evening drinking together and now she covers the UK beer scene for us at ACB.

This week (and next) I’ll be hitting on London and introducing you to some of the people who are making exciting things happen in this truly international city. You’ll meet the players (all amazing – all completely different), tour their digs, and hopefully get a better feel (as I did) for what’s going on with beer in England’s capital.

Here are a few of my initial takeaways from our jaunt “across the pond.”

London’s A Massive International Center

London is a huge, sprawling, and very diverse city that encompasses a multitude of distinct village-centers. Each brewery that we visited was located in a completely different kind of neighborhood – and every location spoke volumes about that brewery’s vibe and vision.

Pub Culture Matters Greatly

Pub culture is an intrinsic part of the UK’s beer scene and I’ve been struggling trying to explain just how different it is from how we drink in the states. Sophie reminded me of the obvious fact that pub is short for a “public house” – a home away from home, where its patrons feel belonging and take ownership. Pubs in England are places where friends and family have historically spent a lifetime drinking together.

I know what you’re thinking – we’ve places like this in the states. And while that might be true to a certain extent, culturally it’s not even close to the influence and legacy that the pub has in Britain.

When we’d visit with brewers, many would ask us about what pubs we’d planned to drop in on later…And they had active opinions on our pub choices and experiences that extended well beyond the beers that might be on tap. It’s so different from in the states.

London Brewers Own the Session Beer

London brewers excel at brewing lower alcohol beers – beers crafted for evenings spent drinking with friends. Again this is a reflection of the legacy of pub culture, where no one has just one beer. I drank excellent session IPAs at both Beavertown and The Kernel and enjoyed a wonderful 3.3% ABV Bitter at Fullers that I could drink all day long. And that’s kind of the point. Again, pub culture looms large in the UK and its importance colors the kinds of beers that are so much a part of London’s new beer scene.

More “London Calling” Coming

Keep checking in with us this week (and next) as we drop in on our friend Logan Plant’s brilliant Beavertown Brewery, talk beer with Fuller’s brewing legend, John Keeling, and sample audacious plum sours at The Kernel.