LCBF 2021 Guide: Discover Your New Favourite Brewery (again!)

As the old saying goes, beer festivals are like London buses: an unprecedented global pandemic cancels them all for a year and half, then a whole load come along at once. After BrewLDN only two weeks ago still leaving an imprint on our tastebuds, we are truly being spoilt with London Craft Beer Festival this August 13-14.

This is usually a guide to the best independent craft beer in cities around the world and every neighbourhood in London. This weekend, for the first time in two years, LCBF returns and creates a neighbourhood in London all of its own, right on the banks of the Thames.

Beer in the City will be there on Saturday afternoon with our ridiculously snazzy T-shirts and ridiculously functional coasters, but you don’t care about that.

There are over 100 breweries exhibiting this weekend and you’ll want to sample them all. The UK craft super heavyweights of the last five years are pretty much all here – Brew By Numbers, DEYA, Five Points, Howling Hops, The Kernel, Northern Monk, Signature, Siren and Verdant together make for an entire’s day worth of sipping.

Moderation is an art in beer, however, so this is a guide to those breweries that you may not have heard of, ranging across a variety of beer styles, that you simply cannot miss this weekend (or at least should head to first if you’re very determined). To be clear: there are plenty of incredible breweries pouring, so not being on this list doesn’t mean a brewery isn’t worth pitching up at.

Cheers, and if you see us, say hi and grab a coaster!

Attic Brewing
Where: Birmingham
What: A university homebrew operation that got out of hand. Deliciously out of hand.
Speciality beers: Sour fruity beer, pale ales and stouts dominate – the batches are tiny, the quality is massive.

Beak Brewery
Where: Lewes (which is in Sussex)
What: A brewery that has been collaborating with the big guns for a while that finally set up a permanent home and started churning out their own liquid gold barely a year ago. The small batches mean the quality is extra, extra high.
Speciality beers: It’s an IPA world and Beak are truly living in it. Their brews always feature big, bold tastes and flavours, though most beers clock in around 5-6% which is ideal at a festival.

Braybrooke Beer Co.
Where: Market Harborough
What: A tiny brewery that fill a very important and oft-neglected niche: craft lager.
Speciality beers: Lager! Continental flavours abound, as do beer names like Keller, Helles and Dunkel. Refresh yourself with something that doesn’t taste of hops.

Brew York
Where: York. Old, original York, not New.
What: One of the first new wave craft breweries in York, a trailblazer for the region. You may have heard of them already through their experimental stuff. Legends of the beer festival scene, at events they always bring their A-game.
Speciality beers: Rhubarbra Streisand? The Tonkoko Milk Stout? Go for it. But if they’re pouring Flatpack Fika Fuel, an extraordinary, limited batch festival-only beer, you’re in for a treat. Actually, either way, you’re in for a treat. Go here.

Burnt Mill
Where: A farm near Ipswich
What: Turning into something of a bottleshop powerhouse, Burnt Mill have been a big presence across the craft beer shops of London over the past year or two and are likely to hit the heights of regional hazy IPA rulers DEYA and Verdant some time in the future.
Speciality beers: Creative hop combinations in hazy, foggy IPAs.

Cask International Bar
Equilibrium, Grimm, KCBC
Where: NUUUUU YOIK BABY
What: We are not worthy. The Cask International Bar will be featuring three of the best craft breweries in New York, all specialising in NEIPAs that are dank, murky, sticky and other words that shouldn’t sound good in a beer but hot damn they somehow do.
Speciality beers: Double IPAs are the move here – 8% vibes all round yet drinkable like something much, much less, so pace yourself.

Cigar City
Where: Tampa, Florida, USA
What: Cigar City had been getting creative down in Florida for a few years but finally hit the big time with their era-defining beer, Jai Alai.
Speciality beers: Jai Alai is a beer that nothing else tastes like but you wish everything else tasted like. Once impossible to find outside of Florida, distribution ramped up from around 2018 and it is now a beer found all over the USA. Assuming they are pouring it, linger a while to get your fill. The rest of their beers are ok, too.

Drop Project
Where: Mitcham, London
What: A bunch of wonderful outdoorsy people doing eco-conscious brews, planting trees for each batch made and using solar power. Oh, and the beers taste great.
Speciality beers: A real variety on show here, with a slight trend towards (you guessed it) IPAs. Their sours are potent too, so indulge in those if they’re available.

London Brewer’s Alliance
Goodness, Hammerton, Gravity Well, Solvay Society
Where: LANDAN TAAAAN.
What: A giant collection of the best of London’s smaller craft breweries, all offering something different, many of which have been featured on this very website. Likely to be 1-2 beers from each, a delightful sampler – then use our guides to go visit the breweries!
Speciality beers: Get your pale ales and lagers from Goodness, get your hazy IPAs from Gravity Well, get your innovative stouts from Hammerton and get your Belgian fix from Solvay Society. Something for everyone.

Newtown Park
Where: Bristol
What: Born in 2020 out of the old brewkit of Left Handed Giant and championed by Verdant with a collaborative taproom, Newtown Park are literally foetus age, but brew with the maturity of a brewery with at least five years under their belt, which is basically parent age in the UK craft scene.
Speciality beers: You’ll be stunned, given the above, that they specialise in hazy IPAs. Reeeaaaallly good ones.

Pomona Island
Where: Salford
What: What happens when you take brewers from two establishments that already do incredible beers and they make their own one? This does. And it’s really, really good.
Speciality beers: Pale ales and IPAs abound, though with a fruitier, juicier touch than Burnt Mill.

Suds N Soda Bar
Adroit Theory, Aslin, Drekker
Where: Virginia, Virginia, North Dakota (wtf)
What: We continue to be spoilt with the US imports, as Suds N Soda Bar brings some of the best breweries from parts of the US that, and I mean no offence here, you are highly unlikely to visit.
Speciality beers: Adroit Theory are all about extremes and high alcohol beers – Triple IPAs, chocolate porters and stouts that surpass double figures. Aslin’s beers all taste like orange juice, more so than any other beer that claims to taste like orange juice. Drekker do IPAs but are basically the only craft brewery in the whole of North Dakota, which you will never visit, so have a taste!

Vault City
Where: Edinburgh
What: Committed to one non-hoppy style like Braybrooke and their lagers, Vault City is where you go to get one type of beer done on a level nobody in the UK can match: sours.
Speciality beers: See above.

Wild Card
Where: Blackhorse Road, London
What: Finishing this list is a veteran of the London craft scene, brewing creative and diverse beers for nearly a decade at this point, yet still less of a beer-lovers-household name than they should be.
Speciality beers: Wild Card are about as all-rounder as it gets, which keeps their beers exciting and innovative. You can’t go wrong.

Share and enjoy and remember to be kind to the people giving you beer!