Established in 2011, Hackney Brewery could be considered something of a veteran of the modern London brewing scene. Starting out as a cask outfit, the company has quietly, and diligently, gone about putting out quality, consistent beers. And like any good business, they’ve changed with the times. With that, it looks like 2019 could the brewery’s biggest year yet.

Every day at Hackney Brewery is a bring your dog to work day. And if that isn’t enough for you to want to visit, or perhaps work there, then I’m afraid I can’t help you. You are, perhaps, beyond saving.

You see, dogs are a big part of the Hackney Brewery family. There’s Bruce (Health and Safety) who belongs to the company’s co-founder Jon Swain, while Peter Hills, the brewery’s other co-founder, is proudly accompanied by Gruff (HR) during working hours. You also have Roddy, an eager, bouncy Golden Retriever who’s the newest member of the canine team and an excellent companion to brewer Simone Christiano.

Like I said, dogs are an important, nay essential, part of life at Hackney Brewery. And it’s all the better for it. 

The first thing that strikes you at Hackney Brewery, located minutes off the borough’s frenetic Kingsland Road, is that the team forms one cohesive unit. Despite the absence (owing to paternity leave) of head brewer Darren Walker, Swain, Hills and Christiano are joined by brewer Steve Lawler. 

This team is completed by Dan Sharp and Kris Kardos in sales, and the brewery’s drivers Reece and Ren. Everyone is playing their role, pulling their weight, and pushing in the same direction. Apart from the dogs, of course. When they’re allowed out, the yard is their stomping ground and who are you to tell them otherwise….

Hackney Brewery is looking to this year with confidence, and a sense of satisfaction. A major refit completed in 2017 saw them move from a 5bbl brewhouse up to a 15bbl system. Perhaps more importantly was the move from open top fermentors to cylindrical vessels. Eight FVs were installed initially and another two followed in subsequent months. It represented a changing of the tides with a move away from open top vessels and with it, a transition from a business that started out in the production of cask beer. The move from having to brew 10 times a week on a 5bbl kit to five times on a 15bbl setup in the same period was welcome, too. 

“We had to pull everything apart,” explains Swain. “The original setup served us well, but when you are producing hoppy pales and relying on open-top fermentors, then you’re losing all of that aroma right off the bat. The change with our new brewhouse and the vessels with it has been all important.”

Swain and Hills designed the brewhouse, equipment that was then fabricated in the UK. Pulling apart the existing 5bbl setup to ascertain what worked, and what new additions were needed from the proceeding investment, was never likely to phase the duo. Nor was handling the water, electrics and plumbing. Hardly surprising considering they’ve had experience turning a disused warehouse into a living space and refurbishing a boat that Hills now calls home.

Swain first met Hills back in 2005 at The Eagle in Farringdon, a resilient and popular spot frequently referred to as the UK’s first Gastropub. What would be Swain’s first shift on the bar was Hills’ last. He wasn’t going to far, though. Just to the kitchen, to be exact, where he’d pursue a career as a chef.

“Like all good ideas, it happened over a few beers. We realised we were both interested in beer and the production of it,” explains Swain. “My dad used to make fruit wines while Peter’s grandad produced those kit beers you’d buy from the high street. So we delved straight into making homebrew and in those early days, YouTube was very much our friend.”

The duo continued in earnest before Hills departed to France to pursue his culinary career. Swain continued brewing and a role change led him to the historic Charles Lamb pub located in the backstreets of Angel in North London. 

Swain and Hills remained in contact and as the latter’s sojourn overseas came to an end, Hills took his culinary skills to the aforementioned Angel hostelry. 

“We still had that passion for beer so we visited breweries such as Brodie’s, Greene king, Sambrook’s and Redemption to get a better idea of the brewing landscape,” says Hills. “While we originally had the idea of finding our own pub, something we could run alongside some ex-colleagues, we simply couldn’t find a suitable site and we eventually went our separate ways.”

Swain adds: “The problem is, one of our old managers had explained how he wanted to setup a brewery in Scotland and retire. We liked that idea. The same day Peter saw a brewery van pass by and we took that as a sign. We needed to pursue this. We wanted a brewery!”

A foot in the door

And by 2011, they had their site, which is located on Laburnum St in E2. Although the Hackney Brewery of 2019 produces hoppy IPAs, Kölsch, fruited stouts and sours, the original iteration of the business was exclusively cask. Other breweries in the area would also have cask in their armoury, such as Beavertown, which opened one week after Hackney flung open its doors. It wasn’t just Beavertown and Hackney, either. At least 18 breweries started business in the months that followed.

“We started somewhat under the radar and you could argue we’ve remained that way,” says Swain. “It is both a good thing and a bad thing. We’ve always been a lean team, funded by ourselves and without a great deal of major investment in heavy equipment. But we’re happy with the progress we’ve made.”

Swain is also amused with talk of how tough the marketplace is in 2019, noting that it was far from a bed of roses in those formative years. 

“People talk about how challenging it is now, but it was hard then!” he laughs. “The thing is, people didn’t know what craft beer was, so we’d have to call up mates, and lean on previous relationships. Without that early support, we wouldn’t have been able to get going.”

And get going, they did. A focus on cask in the early years saw a transition to keg in 2014. The sweeping popularity of keg beer, like many breweries, took Hackney with it. Customers were demanding such beer and the brewery dutifully obliged. Though production on a kit designed for cask made such output taxing, and exhausting. So when it came to refitting the brewery back in 2017, the team needed to look inwards and decide what form they wanted the next chapter of Hackney Brewery’s story to take.

Since their introduction, beers such as the Kölsch and Kapow! have proved incredibly popular, while the brewery’s Golden Ale, Red Ale and Best Bitter have been phased out.

It’s a move that’s worked for the business, too. Its keg output has continued to grow in quality, consistency and visibility. The 4.7% Kölsch and 4.5% Kapow! Lead the charge, while the imminent launch of its new XPA builds upon the success of one of 2018’s standout beers, Unicorn Rodeo.

Unicorn Rodeo, a DDH XPA was the perfect tonic to the sweltering heat at the London Brewers Alliance festival, hosted by Fuller’s at its West London brewery back in June 2018. The beer was part of a release programme that marked a new dawn at Hackney. Settled on their new kit, and armed with additional capacity, the team were able to engage in collaborations and seasonal beers for the first time in their history.

Expansion and experimentation

The year kicked off with Sleeping Giants, a 5% New England style produced in collaboration with Brooklyn’s KCBC. Calypso, Huell Melon and Citra were added to the kettle followed by a dry hop of Calypso, Huell Melon, Citra and Mosaic.

The company then brought back its popular peach and basil sour in the form of Millions of Peaches, a 4.0% number that left bars and bottle shops as soon as it was delivered. Elsewhere in 2018, the brewery worked with Finback and Barrier Brewing, both from New York, on IPAs and fruited stouts. 

However, it was Underground, a Passion Fruit Sour produced in collaboration with Ozone Coffee that really challenged drinkers’ tastebuds and tasked the brewery with the idea of how far they could push coffee as an ingredient in beer.

“In the hunt for flavours and quality in every aspect of the brewery, we wanted to dive into the deep dark water of our morning ritual and see how far we can go. Coffee is the fuel of the brewery,” says Swain. “Both the beer and coffee industries have progressed further into the science and understanding of the raw ingredients. Methods of production have advanced to present the subtle and nuanced flavours they hold. It seemed a bit crass to just throw some finely roasted coffee into a dark stout.”

With that mission statement in mind, the brewery immersed itself in various events, festivals and the expertise of industry pros such as renowned coffee expert Freda Yuan.

“She guided me through the growing process of the trees and harvesting of the fruit, to the three types of processing. Natural processed coffee, where they leave it out in the sun to ferment and dry, washed where they crush the fruit and wash off the fruit flesh before drying and Honeyed which is not as vigorously washed,” he says. “Each containing different flavour profiles form the same seeds.”

With knowledge of what coffee is and having seen what is on offer. the next phase was working out what they can do at the brewery. Swain, and head brewer Darren Walker imbibed a variety of different coffee beers at last year’s popular Uppers and Downers event in London.

Swain says: “From stouts to kvass, everything was on show here from the UK’s finest breweries. If anywhere would layout the possibilities of what could be done, it would be here! This was where we finally pieced together some ideas of how we could use coffee as a flavour alongside other ingredients.”

So in stepped the gang at Ozone. The independent company’s roaster is in the basement and stepping in through the door you are met with waves of fresh roasted and ground coffee aromas. Hackney Brewery met with the team and were presented with an array of what they can do with their coffee creations. A cold brew coffee and tonic and coffee served with passion fruit and honey infused milk were the highlights. 

Then came the lightbulb moment, something that tied together Passion Fruit, Coffee and Sour. Using the sour base from the aforementioned ‘Millions Of Peaches’, the brewery added 100Kg of passion fruit and then we were faced with the coffee… 

Ozone came to the brewery armed with a grinder and 100Kg of fresh roasted coffee and set to work prepping the grounds. A newly acquired hopinator was repurposed as a large coffee percolator. The central post was lined with multiple layers of filter paper, the fresh grinds were poured in with some hot water, then pushed it into the fermenter. It took three full loads to get all the fresh brew into the beer, Swain recalls.

The result is a truly unique beer, and one well worth tracking down. Though pretty hard to come by, it will be worth the effort as it’s a beer that’s unlikely to see the light of day again anytime soon.

“2018 was a year of change for us. For the first time, it was possible, and made sense to experiment more and work with other breweries, which was a real privilege,” Swain says. “We spent 2017 getting the grips with the new setup but with that achieved, we were able to push ourselves more.”

And that will continue this year, with at least 12 specials planned for release over 2019. Those beers, coupled with an established core, will enable the brewery to continue growing in its segment, because as Hills explains, “we’re not looking for world domination”.

“With the slice of the pie that we operate within, it’s a case of the quality of the outlets. And with that, there’s a finite amount,” says Swain. “At our core, we are very local. We don’t sell into big national operators, so it’s a case of focusing on existing and new relationships to grow.”

Growing as a team

For Hills and Swain, growing external relationships is only part of the picture. They are particularly proud of the working culture that exists at Hackney, and that’s one of self-improvement. 

Every brewer is working towards their IBD diploma as part of their employment, a move that benefits both brewer and business.  

“We always want to improve, we just want to get better,” says Hills. “If you’re part of the Hackney team, your opinion and your voice is as important as anyone else’s. We attract great people but we also know that not every brewer is in that job for life.”

He adds: “Who knows where we’re all going? But if we can hold on to these people, and look after them, for as long as possible, then that’s good news for everyone.”

Such a diplomatic, though optimistic, approach is one the duo have taken in 2019.

“We’ve achieved our three year plan, so now we can stop and think,” Swain explains. “We need to work out what’s going on with the future. But for the moment, we can be introspective, focus on dialling-in more recipes, specifications, and to make more of the beer we want. We want improved quality and consistency in every beer we make.”

Hills adds: “We just want to get better and better, growing organically and on own terms. 

“We are not trying to take over the world. We just want to make excellent beer, underpinned with the right ethics, the right attitude and the right culture.”