{"id":5353,"date":"2025-05-27T07:34:36","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T07:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/?p=5353"},"modified":"2025-05-27T07:34:36","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T07:34:36","slug":"goodbye-to-hackney-brewery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2025\/05\/27\/goodbye-to-hackney-brewery\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye to Hackney Brewery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Walthamstow\u2019s Blackhorse Beer Mile\u2019s bid to rival Bermondsey as the beer centre of London took another hit in April.&nbsp; After Wild Card Brewery\u2019s closure last year and with Beerblefish closing its doors in March, the Hackney Brewery has now followed suit. &nbsp;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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. &nbsp;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. &nbsp;They finally moved into their premises, a railway arch in Hackney, in April 2012. &nbsp;Their backgrounds could not be more diverse; Peter originally worked in IT and Jon has a music industry background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hackney Brewery started with a six barrel brewery and four five-and-a-half barrel fermenters. &nbsp;They had a major expansion after around five years, trebling their brew length and increasing the number of fermenters to eight.&nbsp; This necessitated a move into a second arch. &nbsp;This wasn\u2019t the end of their growth however.&nbsp; With the help of crowd funding and loans they opened a new brewery in Walthamstow in May 2021, in time for their tenth birthday.&nbsp; Pete said at the time, \u201c<em>We did most of it ourselves over about six months.&nbsp; With the aid of friends, we demolished the interior of the two storey building and we ended up filling five 40 foot skips.<\/em>\u201d.&nbsp; This comment explains the ethos of Hackney Brewery, for the partners were definitely a \u2018roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-stuck-in\u2019 pair.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"767\" height=\"612\" src=\"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5354\" srcset=\"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image-2.png 767w, https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image-2-300x239.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 100vw, 767px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Being a brewer post Covid, with ever increasing costs and overheads, is not easy. &nbsp;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Christine Cryne<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Walthamstow\u2019s Blackhorse Beer Mile\u2019s bid to rival Bermondsey as the beer centre of London took another hit in April.&nbsp; After Wild Card Brewery\u2019s closure last year and with Beerblefish closing&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5354,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brewery-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5355,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5353\/revisions\/5355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londondrinker.camra.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}