Fourpure [CLOSED]

Location: 25 Bermondsey Trading Estate

Opening hours: Saturday 1200-2200

Other days: Sunday 1200-1800, Friday 1600-2200

Official site: https://www.fourpure.com/

Last updated: 15/09/2024

Walk in the direction of the Bermondsey Trading Estate (look for the Screwfix sign), spend a couple of minutes picking your way through the warren of small businesses located there (watch out for the NO URINATING IN THIS AREA signs), and you'll soon find yourself at the biggest brewery you've seen all day. Enormous tanks outside the building! Two stories of seating space inside! More seating and a barbecue outside! And 20 taps of beer, making this for a while the only brewery on the Mile that needed video screens to keep its tap list up to date! (Craft Beer Junction does that now, too.)

You might think Fourpure doesn’t quite fit in with the couple-of-tanks-squeezed-under-a-railway arch nature of the rest of the Mile. Well, there’s a story behind that. As far back as 2014, it was always a decently sized site, while still having all the trappings of a happily independent brewery. And then in the summer of 2018 - literally a few days before this website went live - Fourpure announced that they'd sold 100% of the company to Australian beer giant Lion, the owners of Castlemaine XXXX. They justified the sale by saying this would give them the money to expand to the degree they'd always dreamed of (and to be fair, the taproom got a spectacular makeover as a result), but it wouldn't have any impact on the beer itself - arguments that sounded fairly hollow when Beavertown had rolled them out a month earlier, following their own buyout by Heineken. The newly expanded taproom now had a few taps dedicated to Fourpure’s labelmates at Lion, such as Magic Rock, Voodoo Ranger and Little Creatures.

Could we still consider Fourpure to be a craft brewery any more, given its change of ownership? The Belated Birthday Girl thought not, and went so far as to suggest that as of that point, the Bermondsey Beer Mile should end at the brewery before, which at the time was Partizan (sob). For my part, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. So when this site launched, both of those viewpoints were aired on this page, leading to a few snotty comments that you can still read below. And those opinions still held all the way up to January 2022, when it was suddenly announced that Lion were selling off the brewery, along with the similarly acquired Magic Rock. Several months of uncertainty followed, until the announcement in August that Lion have sold Fourpure and Magic Rock to Odyssey Inns, a small UK company run by the co-founder of Utopian Brewing in Devon.

So, where does that leave us? Can we stop being sniffy about Fourpure now that they’re not owned by a macro beer company? And, more importantly, what will this do to the beer? We'll monitor the situation and let you know.

UPDATE: it's just been announced that the answer to the above question is "they're closing down the Fourpure brewery and taproom and moving production to Magic Rock in Huddersfield." Last day of trading at the taproom will be around September 19th. Full post-mortem to follow.

Now walk 500m to Small Beer ----->

<----- or go back 550m to EeBria

or return to the home page

Comments

[Cassius]

A few comments...

Firstly, you don’t mention the words independent or craft anywhere in the article, until you use them at the end to describe what, in your opinion, Fourpure aren’t. In addition, as you mention, Hawkes have sold to Brewdog, who have had massive investment from the company who owns Pabst Blue Ribbon. And there are no negatives in your review of them. Just seems a bit contradictory, really.

A&H didn’t take over their arch from The Kernel. It’s a different space. Same street, different number.

Finally - speaking of the Kernel - to call the experience of going to one of the best breweries in the UK, buying bottles and talking to the people who created them, disturbing - well, I don’t think you could possibly have missed the point any more spectacularly.

There’s an embryo of a good idea in what you’ve done, but you need to research better, be consistent - and keep your personal feelings out of it if you’re trying to present it as an information source.

[SpankTM]

Cassius - To give each of your points the attention it deserves:

- There was a mix-up on our part between 98 Druid Street (the old home of The Kernel) and 118 Druid Street (currently home of Anspach & Hobday). That's now been corrected in the post.

-

[James Roberts]

Being a bit harsh here Cassius. I am grateful for the info the writer gives but his opinions made it a lot more of an enjoyable read and he's very welcome to them. When I do the mile I guess i'll form my own.

[Don]

Perhaps Cassius could do a better job and do his own site instead of disparaging this one. As said this is an unofficial site so might have a few mistakes. Thanks to the authors for his and her valuable time taken to write this helpful blog

[Magnus]

Thanks for this site, and please do the mile again to keep us updated on any changes. Will hopefully be going on my third mile this Christmas.

[Danny]

Going to do some of the mile this weekend. Massive thanks to the creators of this website. Very helpful for planning!

[Trevor Lahey]

Really interesting and useful blog - looking forward to following the route once lockdown has finished! I think Cassius has missed the point here - the authors made clear this is an unofficial site and why shouldn't they include their personal opinion - I for one found it made the posts much more interesting...

[Ian]

I agree with Cassius. This is a site about the BBM, Give us the facts and I'll make up my own mind what constitutes 'Craft Beer' and which bars I want to visit/avoid as a result.

[Dave Miller]

Thanks for the site. Did 3/4 of the Bermondsey Mile locations today (24 September 2022) PLUS Hop Kingdom (you should add!). I agree with most of the opinions. Very helpful.

[Mark]

don't listen to the moaners. very grateful for all of your efforts here. thank you.