Walthamstow’s Blackhorse Beer Mile’s bid to rival Bermondsey as the beer centre of London took another hit in April. After Wild Card Brewery’s closure last year and with Beerblefish closing its doors in March, the Hackney Brewery has now followed suit. After announcing that they had decided to close their tap room, the High Hill Tap Room, because of a dispute with the Council, a few weeks later they decided that without it their situation was untenable.
The brewery came into being when the two owners, Jon Swain and Peter Hills, met two decades ago while working at the Eagle in Farringdon Road. They then moved on to the Charles Lamb in Islington for a few years and were home brewing until, in 2011, they decided to put together plans for a brewery. They finally moved into their premises, a railway arch in Hackney, in April 2012. Their backgrounds could not be more diverse; Peter originally worked in IT and Jon has a music industry background.
Hackney Brewery started with a six barrel brewery and four five-and-a-half barrel fermenters. They had a major expansion after around five years, trebling their brew length and increasing the number of fermenters to eight. This necessitated a move into a second arch. This wasn’t the end of their growth however. With the help of crowd funding and loans they opened a new brewery in Walthamstow in May 2021, in time for their tenth birthday. Pete said at the time, “We did most of it ourselves over about six months. With the aid of friends, we demolished the interior of the two storey building and we ended up filling five 40 foot skips.”. This comment explains the ethos of Hackney Brewery, for the partners were definitely a ‘roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-stuck-in’ pair.
Being a brewer post Covid, with ever increasing costs and overheads, is not easy. Statistics say that 73% of small businesses close within 15 years of their formation but it is such a shame that Hackney Brewery has added to that statistic.
Christine Cryne