Your guide to finding independent craft beer and local breweries.

Drink craft beer made locally, while being entertained and learning a bit about it – whether it’s your first brew or your 1000th. Guides to cities worldwide, immersive beer-themed events in London and articles that simply tell beer like it is.

To get started, we recommend you Sign Up To Our Monthly Newsletter and Follow Us On Instagram if you are so inclined. We’re all about getting together in person, too, so Join A Beer Quiz Experience that take place in breweries and independent bars all over London.

To explore the best of London’s indie beer scene, our Brewery Guides For Every Area Of London will quench your thirst immediately. And if you arrive at a brewery and are overwhelmed by the ridiculous amount of choice and unintelligible beer names, simply refer to our Beer Styles And What They Really Mean For Anyone Who Wants To Order Craft Beer Without It Being Unnecessarily Stressful glossary.

Share and enjoy – and if you have any recommendations, praise or want to get something off your chest, just Say Hi!

Our Mission

Beer in the City provides guides on beer basics, recommends great breweries and highlights delicious independent beer all around London and in countless cities worldwide while having some fun. We run immersive beer quiz and tasting events that showcase the inclusive, entertaining side of breweries. Our goal is to provide an accessible entry point into the world of craft beer, because beer is for everyone.

Our guides are regularly updated with every new experience so should be up to date. Every image on this site was taken by us (or a friend in tow, helping out for the sake of “research”) – no stock images here.

Our Generic Origin Story

Hey, I’m Joey, I founded this whole thing and am having a great time with it etc etc. My beer journey started in 2014 when I quit my job as a London tour guide and arrived in Colombia for a six month stint in South America. I quickly realised that a) I couldn’t handle infinite shots of their 40% local spirit Aguardiente and b) I therefore needed something to drink that was a better refreshment than the beer-flavoured water they kept serving me. I started to seek out craft beer as I moved around the continent, yet I didn’t write about the beers, I only drank them, so they aren’t featured here and this origin story now seems like a mistake.

On my return to the UK, I went on a mission to find good beer in London (still not too easy at that point) and identified a few bars and breweries that became my go-to’s, not that anyone wanted to join me. In late 2014, I downloaded a young Untappd. This beer-logging app allowed me to spread my wings and fly into a hop-soaked cloud of beer choice and more importantly, substituted in for my hazy memory of what was good or not and where I’d had it. It is much-maligned, but does serve as an indispensable beer diary of sorts.

Since 2015, I have had the opportunity to travel far and wide: for work, which is totally unrelated to beer, and for fun, which is often Very related to beer. I started noting down details of the best places to go wherever I visited so I could provide recommendations for my friends whenever they travelled. They probably ignored me and went to Irish pubs, but it’s the thought that counts.

I went to countless beer festivals, hop farms and SO. MANY. BREWERIES (this journey is still continuing). In 2020, the old ‘Rona popped up and with time on my hands, I made this website and started publishing my guides, ready for the end of lockdown. I also started brewing my own beer to give to my friends because it’s fun to create and share, even if sometimes it was absolutely disgusting.

By mid-2021, the website was rolling, the events were running and the Insta was lining Mark Zuckerberg’s pockets. In late 2022 I was shortlisted for a British Guild of Beer Writers award, and in 2023 I won one. I have since been published in Good Beer Hunting, Ferment Magazine and Pellicle Magazine, and to date have hosted nearly 50 events in London.

I want others to have the opportunity to experience what I have – enjoying breweries and the world of independent beer with a sense of community, inclusivity and warmth. To preserve accuracy and integrity, every single establishment we have a guide to is somewhere that I personally have visited, occasionally even sober. Breweries and bars come and go, so it is possible you will stumble across the occasional recommendation that no longer exists, although I will do my best to keep things up to date.

I don’t rating or ranking establishments, nor do I claim one or another beer is the best, because everyone has different taste (except milkshake IPA – needs to stop). I’m also not saying I have been to EVERY establishment that does craft/indie beer in each city or area I review, but I’ve been to most, and work with locals who show me around – and I know they are worth the visit if I put them here.

Here’s the thing: Ultimately, I leave out the shit bars because nobody has time to read a review about a “craft beer place” that only sells Neck Oil that honestly tastes like when you wake up after a house party at 9am sweating out the booze and feeling like death and you see someone’s beer that they opened at 4am and took one sip of before passing out and you think, damn that could do the trick, so you take a sip, and then it doesn’t do the trick at all and it’s the worst decision of your day. So not those bars.

And finally, Why Me?

1. I like beer a lot…
2. I am a London tour guide so I know the city inside out and want to show you a good time.
3. I have visited over 300 cities worldwide and drank local craft beer in all of them, except Dubai.
4. I have rated over 4000 unique beers on the beer logging app Untappd, some of them full pints.
5. I’m good at maps and finding things to the extent I have even been paid to do so – if it exists, I will find it. Not in a creepy way.
6. I brew my own beer that around 12 of my friends have called “very enjoyable”.
7. Every single recommendation and picture on this site is from my personal experience and I want to showcase the wonderful world of craft beer to as many people as possible.

Share and Enjoy!

Joey Leskin, Founder of Beer In The City