uBrew [CLOSED]

Location: 29-30 Old Jamaica Business Estate, 24 Old Jamaica Road

Opening hours: closed down in September 2019

Other days: n/a

Official site: https://ubrew.cc/

Last updated: 30/12/2019

Back when it used to exist, uBrew was our first industrial estate bar on the route, which presumably explained why there was a sign warning people that there are lorries running in and out, and it may be a good idea to avoid drunkenly walking under them. It was a more prominent sign than the one that used to tell you you were in the right place - at the time of our July 2018 visit, the only thing identifying uBrew was the name written in chalk on the fag end bin by the door. This may have been an omen of some sort.

Another example of the blurring of the lines here: was uBrew a brewery tap? Well, it certainly smelled like one, more so than any of the other places on the Mile. There was a large brewing area you can wander around, and a series of beers labelled uBrew available both on tap and in the fridge. But the main business - ha! - of uBrew, as the name kind of suggests, was that they rented their equipment out to anyone who fancied making their own beer. As a result, it was sometimes a little uncertain as to who was responsible for a uBrew beer - was it one of their own, or made by one of their clients? Either way, there was usually a pretty good range on offer, with ten taps (including a couple of guests) as well as a fridge full of bottles. (The latter was where you sometimes found Responsibly, their amusingly-named alcohol-free beer.)

As uBrew's ambitions grew, they removed a lot of the indoor seating space and replaced it with a large refrigeration unit. This was good for their brewers, but bad for drinkers, who on our last visit in December 2018 could be seen huddled outside trying to balance their pints on top of the dustbins. Sadly, it seems like it ultimately wasn't that good for their brewers either. In June 2019 they closed the bar for a couple of weeks due to financial difficulties, and then carried on in a rather wobbly fashion until they finally went into liquidation three months later. Their website is an abandoned wreck of unsecured pages, so the only real evidence that they ever existed is a Facebook page that's becoming increasingly full of disgruntled creditors shouting into the void. uBrew was a lovely idea, and it feels right for the Mile to have a business like this on it: it's a shame it couldn't have been managed better.

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Comments

[Simon Rowley]

U-brew closed for refurb. No notice on when they will reopen.

[SpankTM]

Press release from uBrew, dated yesterday. So it wasn't *exactly* a refurb, then...

http://ubrew.cc/SOP/UBREW%20-%20PRESS%20RELEASE%20.pdf