Beer Guide London Visits – To-Do List Visits November 2024

So with all Guide entries visited I spent a while visiting some of my favourite places and just chilling, enjoying and working my way through their lists. Gradually though I have begun the process of revisiting in earnest, ramping up slowly towards the New Year and concerted effort at the second round of visits.

I’ve been struggling though to think what to do here. It seems pointless just writing the same sorts of things about the same bars. As yet I haven’t come up with an answer, so in an attempt to buy myself a bit more thinking time I’ll give you the write up of the three bars that I visited in November from the To-Do List.

16/11/2024 – Harlem Brewing Company Taproom, Brixton

Originally opened as the Brixton town centre presence of Friendship Adventure Brewery it was mothballed when the brewery started suffering financially. Eventually Supercute bought them out, taking over the brewery, taproom and this market unit. Supercute have close ties with Harlem Brewing Company in New York and branded this unit as their taproom. Draught beers are brewed by Supercute in Loughborough Junction using the original recipes, but they do have an imported beer available in cans. The twelve taps offer beers from Supercute as well as the UK brewed Harlem beer. For a bar in a market unit it is very well done with ample seating across two levels.

30/11/2024 – Pretty Decent Beer Co., Victoria Park

I picked up the information that Pretty Decent had opened what I thought was their third taproom in the Victoria Park area, roughly midway between Bethnal Green and Hackney Wick, but when I was confirming the details on their website I discovered that it was actually their fourth site, I had missed the one in Walthamstow opening. After a twenty minute stroll from Bethnal Green I arrived here and it became clear that it was the original location of the East London Liquor Company. I remembered the interior from an earlier visit to the distillery, but in all honestly it was the original name in 10 foot high letters still painted on the external wall that was the biggest clue! The original bar area remains the same, with a dozen of their beers available, but the removal of the distilling equipment has opened up an additional seating area.

30/11/2024 – Two More Beers (London), Islington

I made the long journey from Victoria Park to Islington to check out this new opening, a new London bar run by a small Latvian brewery, Two More Beers. Although it is clearly more of a restaurant there is a sizeable bar area and the friendly staff were more than happy for me to just drink beer. There are 25 taps which include two of the breweries beers, although the lager is contract brewed in the UK which is clearly indicated on the menu. I ordered the IPA and started to look at the impressive packaged list, which is close to 100 beers, and found a number of interesting beers from around Europe that I wanted to try.

So far, so good.

I then tried to order one of them only to be told that it wasn’t available. Choosing an alternative I was given the same answer. At this point I was introduced to the bar manager who explained that the beer list was drawn up before he started and he proceeded to go through to let me know what they did have. It was pretty much all UK beers, none of the interesting ones. My guess is that they copied the beer list from their Latvian taproom before discovering that a lot of those beers are not available to the UK market.

I’m glad I visited because I at least got a beer from a new, to me, Latvian brewery, but it could have been so much better.