The much-loved Beerblefish Brewery has shut its doors for good. Another victim of a perfect storm that has affected so many breweries.
The name Beerblefish came from the babel fish, which featured in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; a book that the founders, husband and wife James Atherton and Bethany Burrows, have great affection for. This influenced the names of quite a few of their beers, including ‘Infinite Improbability Winter Saison’ and ‘Pan Galactic Pale’, plus their spectacular wall painting.
The pair met at university in Manchester in 1999 but, at that time, Bethany was going out with a housemate of James. Student days at Manchester were also responsible for James getting into brewing. “We ran out of money but wanted to drink then I remembered that my dad was a home brewer. I looked in Yellow Pages and found out that the 192 bus, which stopped outside where I was living, went directly to a home brew shop. I got all the housemates together to start making beer and wine,” said James.
After leaving university, James went into IT, eventually running his own business, and Bethany became a barrister. They subsequently lost touch but got together via Facebook many years later. Both had retained their love of beer. James commented, “Bethany has always liked beer; she was part of the boat race team and could down a pint in 3.6 seconds when she was in practice!” Bethany has other hidden talents too; she was also a professional flamenco dancer.
When they got together, James was still home brewing and friends rated his beer highly, so they decided to up their game and started to brew at UBrew. After a while, they went the whole hog and set up a brewery. They found premises in an arch in Edmonton in 2015 and started brewing the following year on a 4.5 barrel plant. As well as brewing Beerblefish beer they were joined by Glenn Heinzel, who brewed in his garage under the Tankley brand. Glenn did the odd Tankley brew using the Beerblefish kit, as well as acting as Beerblefish’s brewer and sales manager. Beerblefish gradually developed a reputation, particularly for delving into the past and producing a heritage range based on Victorian recipes. These included 1853 ESB, 1892 IPA and 1820 Porter, all of which were available as bottle conditioned beers. The porter was shortlisted for CAMRA’s Champion Bottled Beer Competition (London and southeast).
In due course, they were joined by Michaela White, who had previously brewed at the Clarence & Fredericks brewery and then Alphabeta. As James explained, this allowed Glenn to just concentrate on selling.
In 2021 they had to move because of redevelopment. “We didn’t mind,” said James, “We wanted a tap room and the existing premises were not big enough but it’s ironic that they still haven’t developed the site”. They moved to much larger premises in Blackhorse Lane, Walthamstow where there was plenty of space for a tap room. They also purchased Brew By Numbers old kit from the Bermondsey arches to provide more capacity.
The new location quickly became part of a rival to the Bermondsey Beer Mile, with Hackney, Wild Card, Signature, Exale and Pretty Decent all setting up in the space of a few years to create the Blackhorse Beer Mile.
James was pleased with the move, “The Tap Room has been amazing, even though many people struggled to find us as the postcode takes you to Signature Brew rather than us.” The tap room has become a home for gamers and role players, who meet weekly and have been a useful source of custom, particularly in quiet times such as January. It has however been the unpredictability of trade that became one of the issues. “Some Saturdays we can take £2,000 and another week we struggle to take £800 for the whole weekend,” explained James.
The unpredictability of tap room sales has not been the only source of problems. James continued, “We have been fortunate to have some amazing customers that have stuck with us such as the Little Green Dragon in Winchmore Hill. Our beer can often be experimental and we find that, even with an existing customer, if they get just one beer that isn’t quite right we don’t get an order again from them. But our beer is quality; just look at the number of awards we have won.” He added, “Also, since Covid, people are taking longer to pay and not wanting to pay what we need to get to make a reasonable margin. They are just buying the cheapest beer.”
James was however sympathetic to the plight of pubs. Like the brewery, he understands that they too have been hit by rising costs due to Brexit, Covid and the Ukraine war driving up energy and ingredient costs. He said, “It was becoming harder and harder; it was no longer fun. We thought about giving up at the end of 2023 but we decided to give it another year. Unfortunately, we decided last year that it wasn’t worth it.” The break clause in their lease this year gave them the opportunity to close Beerblefish gracefully.
Michaela left the business at the end of 2024 and Glenn has gone back to working for the Economist Group and has put his brewing equipment up for sale, thereby ‘getting his shed back’.
There was an air of sadness around Beerblefish but, when asked how James felt about the brewery, he said, “It’s been an amazing experience. We have encountered so many people from around the world through the love of beer. We would never have met them if we hadn’t had done it. Bethany and I are now going to have a holiday.”
Christine Cryne
P.S.
Beerblefish Brewery held a ‘Leaving Drinks Mini Beer Festival’ from 6 to 9 March and were ready to close. Then, rather than let good beer to go to waste, they invited thirsty customers for a final session on Tuesday 18 March to finish the cask and keg offerings, all at £3 a pint – or free if they beat the host at dice. A good party with which to celebrate a sad loss.