For those of you who don't know: the Bermondsey Beer Mile is a loose amalgamation of brewery bars and bottle shops, located along a stretch of railway arch that's closer to two miles long nowadays. The one thing they have in common is that they're all open at roughly the same time on a Saturday afternoon, giving those of you who fancy some exercise the chance to indulge in a rather fine pub crawl. As long as you can find your way between all the bars, of course.
And this is the problem: because the Mile is something that's grown organically over a period of years, and there's no definitive central resource you can consult in order to find out where all the bars are. New ones keep opening, and old ones change location. Virtually all of the documentation of the Mile on the internet consists of one-off blog posts that quickly go out of date. I should know, as I wrote one of those myself back in 2014, and it's full of mistakes now.
(I'm Spank The Monkey, by the way: I've had an arts and entertainment review blog on the internet for over two decades. Most of the words you're going to see on here are mine, with additional contributions and photography by my pal The Belated Birthday Girl. If you're curious to see what the Mile looked like in olden days, here are some pictures The BBG took of it back in 2014.)
In the absence of any official site relating to the Mile, we've decided to start an unofficial one. We'll attempt to document all of the bars currently on the route, and how to get between them all: and whenever we hear about any changes we'll update the site as soon as we can. (You can help with this - feel free to drop us notes in the comments boxes if you find that anything's altered since we wrote about it. We've included links to the official sites of all the bars, which should hopefully have the most up-to-date information.)
Here's the route as it currently stands. (You could start at the other end and work in the opposite direction, but I'll explain why we're doing it this way round in the first post.) Links with distances in them will give you a map of how to get there: links with a bar name in bold will take you to a separate page with more details about it. Bars with an asterisk next to their name also brew beer on the same premises.
- Start at Maltby Street Market (not actually a bar, more of a pre-Mile breakfast location, though there are bars in the market too)
- Walk 170m to Southwark Brewing*, 46 Druid Street
- Walk 170m to The Barrel Project, 80 Druid Street
- Walk 50m to Hawkes Cider*, 92/96 Druid Street
- Walk 150m to Hiver/All Good Beer, 56 Stanworth Street
- Walk 150m to Anspach & Hobday*, 118 Druid Street
- Walk 220m to Moor Beer, 71 Enid Street
- Walk 15m to London Calling Sweden, 72 Enid Street
- Walk 1m to Cloudwater, 73 Enid Street
- Walk 23m to Brew By Numbers*, 75/79 Enid Street
- Walk 61m to Bianca Road*, 83-84 Enid Street
- Walk 300m to Old Jamaica Business Estate, 24 Old Jamaica Road (not actually a bar, but a useful halfway point for stopping to eat something)
- Walk 260m to The Kernel*, Arch 7, Dockley Road Industrial Estate
- Walk 1km to Affinity*, 7 Almond Road
- Walk 140m to Spartan*, 8 Almond Road
- Walk 130m to EeBria, 15 Almond Road
- Walk 210m to Partizan*, 34 Raymouth Road
- Walk 650m to Fourpure*, 22 Bermondsey Trading Estate
In memoriam section:
- The Bottle Shop, 128 Druid Street - closed down March 2019
- uBrew*, 29-30 Old Jamaica Business Estate, 24 Old Jamaica Road - closed down September 2019
News (06/08/2020)
Current status of all the bars, according to their socials. Includes brief news of two actual permanent closures, which will be documented in the In Memoriam section when we've got time.
- Southwark Brewing – open, limited numbers, no bookings, one in one out
- The Barrel Project – open, taking bookings, online shop available
- Hawkes Cider – open, taking bookings, guidelines on website, online shop available via BrewDog
- Hiver/All Good Beer – Hiver are now open and taking bookings for their taproom. All Good Beer, however, aren't coming back - it was only ever intended as a pop-up shop, it just happened to stay popped-up for four years. They're now permanently based in their bigger premises in Hackney, and of course their online shop is still going
- Anspach & Hobday – taproom closed for renovations, but should be back open on August 14th and taking bookings
- Moor Beer – open for table service and takeaway
- London Calling Sweden – still apparently open for takeaway only, online shop available
- Cloudwater – currently closed, online shop available with click and collect option
- Brew By Numbers – taproom open with bookings and reduced capacity, online shop available
- Bianca Road – open with well-documented restrictions, online shop available
- Secret Goldmine (Old Jamaica Business Estate) – re-opened July 4th, deliveries to London area only
- The Kernel – open for takeaway only (“Until we are happy with our set up we won't be open for on-site drinking”), online shop available
- Affinity – moving out of Almond Road and setting up a brewpub. Site soon to be occupied by Three Hills Brewing
- Spartan – open for drinking in and taking out
- EeBria – open with restrictions, online shop available but for trade sales only
- Partizan – open Saturdays only with table service inside and out
- Fourpure – unclear if it's reopened yet, online shop available
Stay safe, behave yourselves, you know the drill by now. You don't want to end up like Aberdeen, do you?
