A revolution has poured around the globe. A revolution in beer.

Craft brewers have sprung up everywhere, using novel ingredients and ingenious techniques.

There are more than 120 in London alone. But while neighbouring Hackney and Waltham Forest have enough of them to become, before the virus bit, unlikely beer tourism destinations, the trend has barely touched Newham.

We do have three new breweries, though, so far surviving the pandemic. Tap East, a microbrewery and bar in Westfield came first in 2011, Husk Brewing in Docklands in 2016 and Pretty Decent Beer, Forest Gate in 2018.

For Newham, that’s a brewing boom! You have to go back a century to find the last commercial brewery. Savill Brothers, founded in Maryland Road, Stratford in 1856 was taken over, along with its 111 pubs, and closed in 1925 by Mile End’s Charrington, which would go on to dominate East London.

Its merger with Bass in 1976 created one of the country’s ‘Big Six’ brewers, eventually broken up by the 1989 Beer Orders.

Today, only about 20% of pubs are owned by breweries, compared to around 80 per cent before the Beer Orders. One local example is the Golden Fleece in Manor Park, part of Suffolk’s Greene King, which now has more pubs than any other brewer in the country.

Most, though, are owned by large non-brewing firms leasing to tenants who are usually contracted to buy their beer through the company, plus a plethora of groups that directly manage their pubs and often have a policy of selling locally-brewed beers.

J D Wetherspoon is the most famous and operates the Golden Grove in Stratford and the Miller’s Well on Barking Road, while a couple of East Ham’s landmark hostelries have recently been taken on by smaller firms.

Antic was in the middle of refurbishing the Denmark Arms when lockdown stalled reopening, and Remarkable Pubs has similar plans for the Boleyn Tavern.

Newham is also home to one of the capital’s rare independent freehouses, Plaistow’s Black Lion.

Add the on-site tap rooms at Tap East, Husk and Pretty Decent, surely just the beginning of an exciting new wave of brewing in the Borough.

No news is bad news

Independent news outlets like ours – reporting for the community without rich backers – are under threat of closure, turning British towns into news deserts.

The audiences they serve know less, understand less, and can do less.

If our coverage has helped you understand our community a little bit better, please consider supporting us with a monthly, yearly or one-off donation.

Choose the news. Don’t lose the news.

Monthly direct debit

Annual direct debit

£5 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else, £10 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else and a print copy posted to them each month. £50 annual supporters get a digital copy of each month's paper before anyone else.