We thought we were going to be ‘Johnny come lately’, we really did. So to be here now, doing what we’re doing is something we truly appreciate,” explains a humble Ed Mason, the owner and director of The Five Points Brewing Company.

The business, which started brewing commercially in March of 2013 under the shadows of Hackney Downs station, is a sign of how rapidly the London, and wider UK brewing community has come in the last few years.

“The UK beer scene has grown due to a number of factors. There has something of a parallel move with food, an emphasis and desire for provenance, quality, and that drive to recognise independent producers,” he believes.

It is late November and the week before the latest London Brewers’ Market, a successful event held in London’s Old Spitalfields Market, organised by The Five Points Brewing Company to showcase beers from the breweries that call the capital home. For a brewery so committed to its community and camaraderie ethos, it’s somehow fitting that they are regularly called on to help promote its peers.

And Mason believes that the local focus as evidenced at such events is key to the sector’s growth.

“There are these ‘pioneers’ you see in food and then you’ve seen this mirrored in brewing, too. There is a rallying against mass market in both food and drink, it started with food and replicated in beer. Equally, look at the US, we’ve taken a great deal of inspiration from them, and a lot of those guys, they were inspired but Europe and now we are, in turn, taking influence from them. So it’s a very exciting time to be involved in beer,” he explains.

Add to this, the progressive duties introduced by Gordon Brown reduced the barriers to entry. “It’s fascinating, we have an ecosystem of breweries and other industries that support each other, people have camaraderie, they opened their doors to us in the early days, rather than being a closed shop. And we obviously try and reciprocate that now, too,” he says.