The story of Exale Brewing starts with a nightclub with seven owners who decided to supply their own beer and came up with the name Hale. Interest in brewing then waned but Mark Hislop, one of those original owners, was still keen and established Exale in 2019 with Andy Solley. Unfortunately, this was only a few months before Covid hit. Needless to say, the first few years were not easy but, fortunately, they acquired a canning line early on and this saw the brewery through the pandemic. At the time they lacked a head brewer but this was corrected when Josh Walker joined in mid 2022.
Josh is an experienced brewer; he had worked at a number of breweries including Tap East, where his gorgeous East End Mild won the Champion Mild of London in 2017. Brewing at Exale brought some different challenges. Josh explained, “We have a very mixed clientele. Lunchtimes we get a lot of families but the tap room has a late licence, which means we can open until 2am. There is live music and DJs. My role is to ensure we have a beer offering that suits all drinkers and this includes low/no alcohol beer.” The latest version of the latter was a collaboration with Bath based Lo Tide, who specialise in alcohol-free beer.
The brewery
Josh also thought that it was also important to have a lager; “The original beer was more like a Dunkel and used speciality malts. I pestered the owners to allow me to produce something a little less ‘weird’ and that’s how I got to make our gluten free Pilsner, called Ping. It’s our gateway beer and it always accounts for two of our tanks.”
The best selling beer however is a 4.2% ABV beer called Skoosh, which is described as a session pale ale. This fruity, golden ale is double brewed and they use their single 40 hectolitre fermenter (24 barrels) for this purpose. All the other beers use one of the other five 12hl fermenters.
Josh likes to continually improve his beer; “I am super critical about the beer and how we can improve. Every batch, I do something to tweak it and make it better so we improve a beer over a period of time.” Josh likes to involve the whole team with the brewing process. The team isn’t big, just six including his assistant brewer, Bruno Credidio, and sales and marketing staff, but he feels that it is important that people get the sense of direction. New staff, including the tap room staff, are encouraged to help with brewing so that they can understand what is entailed.
Exale regularly do collaboration brews. The most recent were with Howling Hops; a roasty 5.9% ABV black IPA called Hati (named after a giant wolf in Norse mythology) and a 6% ABV sour called Pompadour Paloma Sour, based on the cocktail of the same name. Exale also conduct their own ‘experiments’ e.g. Garden Parti, a 3.8% ABV hazy, straw coloured beer using Belgian yeast with added botanicals, and Spiky Boi (4.5% ABV), a prickly pear and strawberry beer based on a Berliner Weisse.
Exale’s cans are very striking, being the work of a local designer. Cans currently represent about 15% of their sales, with 84% being draught keg. Josh said, “We do cask beer sporadically, such as the Hati we produced for the Pig’s Ear Beer Festival. I’d like to a bit more cask in 2024, maybe increasing it from the current 1% to 3%.” So, cask beer drinkers, watch this space. With Josh’s pedigree in making cask beer, these are likely to be something to keep an eye out for!
For tasting notes produced by the London Tasting Panel, go here. For more information on the brewery and their tap room, see https://exalebrew.co.uk/. The tap room is in Walthamstow (Unit 2C Uplands Business Park, off Blackhorse Lane).
Christine Cryne