The brewery
Part of the furniture in East London since the start of the city’s craft beer boom in 2011, Redchurch Brewery occupies two railway arches on a backstreet between Bethnal Green Tube and Cambridge Heath overground station. Since moving the brewing of its core range out to Harlow in Essex, there’s been plenty of space for a two-floor taproom and events space, as well as small-batch site that the brewery uses to create an experimental range of sour beers.
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The beer
The brewery’s core range includes all your classic craft touchstones: a low-ABV pale, a punchy 7.4% IPA, an award-winning lager and a dank 6% NEIPA. But it’s the Urban Farmhouse range of sour brews that really wows. Redchurch brews these with using a wild yeast captured on-site in East London, and any fruit used in the brewing process generally comes seasonally from a heritage site in Kent whenever the trees are dropping. Tapped sours in the past have included rhubarb and Japanese knotweed, plus a deliciously tart saison blend. Urban Farmhouse has almost as much to do with natural wine as it does beer, though: Redchurch has been known to collaborate with Renegade Wine on sours brewed with leftover chardonnay lees, and its 18-month barrel-aged sour has been showcased at RAW Wine Fair, as well as being sold as a food-pairing option to restaurant sommeliers across the city.
What else?
About those pairings: downstairs in the taproom from August 2018, the team behind Rita’s Bar & Dining (formerly of Mare Street in Hackney) will be launching a kitchen serving American and Mexican grub in a proper sit-down setting. There’ll be tons of beer pairings, plus a list of cocktails made using Redchurch beers: think an old fashioned made with East London rum and RB’s export stout, or a spritz made with herb sour and Campari. Word has it a washed-rind cheese made with the brewery’s sour culture might just be making an appearance there, too.
275-276 Poyser Street, E2 9RF; redchurch.beer
