We’ve always been fans of local brewed beers here at SAMA Bankside, especially craft beers and microbreweries.
Over the past few years London has seen a rise in microbreweries with many choosing to house their businesses in railway arches just like ours.
From these local breweries there have been many rags to riches stories including the likes of Camden Brewery, Hackney Brewery, Brewdog and London Fields to name a few.
Along with these success stories was one such local brewery that recently caught our eye, and these guys were coincidently on our doorstep, literally a few miles away…
Please welcome Brixton Brewery who’ve been going strong since 2013 and run by 2 couples, each with a burning passion for locally brewed craft beers.
Jez, & Libby and Mike & Xochiti confess that 7 years later they still operate very much as a family business with everyone pitching in including their relatives and even their parents!
Their inspiration comes from all over the world including the States and Europe and they love experimenting with flavours and different hop aromas, although they confess to having a very British appreciation of ale.
All of this experimenting has lead to them making their brews unpasteurized and unfiltered to give maximum freshness and flavour.
Ingredients are sourced as locally as possible to help reduce their carbon footprint and from suppliers who share their ethos to quality and naturally grown produce - so local in fact that one particular ale uses hops from Brixton’s Urban Hop Growers, which is less than a mile away.
Their Lavarush Stout uses fair trade coffee beans from a local coffee supplier called Volcano Coffee Works and other ingredients are sourced from nearby Brixton Market.
As for the names of the beers, the quartet take inspiration from the surrounding area, it’s history, street names and local factories.
Coldharbour is named after Coldharbour Lane; Electric is named after Electric Avenue, Effra from the local river, Reliance from the local factory arcade and Windrush – well that’s obvious enough.
As for Low Voltage, the inspiration here was taken from their Electric IPA and being a lower strength they added the word ‘Low’ with Voltage still being related to electricity.
Low Voltage is a Session IPA but lighter and much smoother to drinks.
Having an ABV of just 4.3% it’s also very moreish, with subtle flavours of passion fruit, Satsuma and papaya and is made from magnum, simcoe, Columbus and mosaic new world hops.
This brew is available on draft and also in cans, we chose to go for the cans having already got Lagunitas IPA on draft and we wanted to offer something different to our range of bottled beers, plus we loved the design of the can.
It’s also proving to be a very popular with our beer pong customers, we feel it maybe because we’re one of the newest beer pong venues in London and attracting a lot of females who are choosing to play beer pong with this instead of larger, but who knows…
Either way, whether it’s a game of beer pong, drinking with friends or with a meal or brunch, people are liking it.