London Craft Beer, Compared: Sixteen Hammersmith and Camden Venues

Two posts, one long weekend, and sixteen places with beer in them. The obvious question is which one you actually walk to.

Here is the lot in one table. The Hammersmith post has the full write-ups for the riverside row and the station; the Camden post covers the arches. This is for when you want the answer without the reading.

Read this bit first

This is not every craft beer venue in west and north London. It is the sixteen we went to, walked past, or had a drink in over the August bank holiday weekend — across two neighbourhoods that have almost nothing in common.

There are no scores out of ten here. Durham gets scores because we live seven miles away and have been going for twenty years. London got three days. What you get instead is a verdict — must-visit, worth a stop, if passing — and one line on what each place is actually for.

Three rows say not judged. The Distillers we got into at half past eleven at night with nothing left in us, Werewolf we reached half an hour before closing, and Good Company was shut for the bank holiday. None of those is a criticism. It means we have not earned an opinion.

Blank prices mean we did not write them down properly. We would rather leave a gap than make one up.

The table

Sixteen places, August bank holiday 2026. Verdicts are ours. The full write-ups are in the two posts linked at the foot.

The number of taps predicts almost nothing. That is the whole lesson of the weekend and it is sitting there in column three. Camden Town Brewery has twenty-three taps installed and was the biggest disappointment of the trip. 3 Locks has ten, in a railway arch, and poured the best beer we have had all year.

Prices are the other thing the table flattens. Camden Town Brewery’s board is the clearest in London — pint, half and third against every beer — and it looks reasonable: £6.90 a pint for the Hells or the Eazy Hazy, £7.40 for the stronger IPAs, £2.30 for a third. Then the 12.5% goes on and that £6.90 is £7.76. It is card only, too, so do not turn up with a twenty. 3 Locks sells in thirds and two-thirds rather than pints, which reads cheap and is not: a two-thirds at £6 is £9 a pint. That is not a complaint about 3 Locks, who are worth it. It is a warning about arithmetic.

And one line that belongs in the body rather than a footnote: Camden Town Brewery adds a discretionary 12.5% service charge to tap room bills. You can have it taken off. You have to ask, out loud, to the person serving you.

Where these numbers come from: every price in the table was read off the venue’s own board or printed menu, photographed on the day. Four places publish everything — the Craft Beer Co. prints a dated draught list, Camden Town Brewery prints pint, half and third against each beer, Riverside Studios puts the lot on a screen above the bar, and Werewolf has a card on every table. The rest tell you at the pump or not at all, which is why some cells are still empty. We would rather leave a gap than make one up.

Which one, though

Best beer: 3 Locks Brewing Co., and it is not close. Ten taps, all brewed two arches along, nothing above 6% and nothing silly. Buy the flight of six thirds and work along the board. We went back the next day for the Pale Ale, which is the highest compliment we pay anybody.

Best range: The Craft Beer Co. at Hammersmith station. Their printed list that day ran to twenty-two lines — eight guest draught, eight house, four cask and two ciders — from a 2.5% grapefruit radler to an 8% Amundsen NEIPA, with an alcohol-free pilsner in the middle of it. Add a proper cocktail list and a bottle fridge and nobody in your party has to suffer.

Cheapest pint: The Hop Poles on a Thursday, when every craft beer goes to £5.75 on their Craft & Cocktail night. Any other day of the week it is Werewolf Beer, where all seven house beers are £6.50 — and the awkward part is that Werewolf is one of the three places we never properly drank in. After that the Craft Beer Co., where the cask Field Trip is £6.90 and that, in central London, is close to a bargain.

Best building: three answers. The Blue Anchor has been licensed since 9 June 1722, which makes it older than the United States. The Dove is early eighteenth-century and has the smallest bar room in Britain inside it. The George in Fitzrovia is Grade II listed, green-tiled outside, mahogany and etched glass in.

Best if it is sunny: the upstairs terrace at Lock Tavern, or the pedestrianised stretch by the canal outside 3 Locks, which is simply a nice place to stand about.

Best if it is raining: the front bar of The Dove. Four or five seats, almost everyone in it lives within a few streets, and nobody is going anywhere.

Closest to the bridge: Riverside Studios, which is the nearest thing to a bar at the foot of Hammersmith Bridge, and a working film studio besides. One brewery, chosen properly, plus a couple of taps to look after everyone else. It shuts at eleven, mind — several of the riverside pubs go on later, so this is not the late option.

Best when it is not about the beer: The Hawley Arms — the actual Amy Winehouse pub, and to its enormous credit not themed around her at all. Or The Black Lion, which we would not cross town for a drink in, but which is the right place for a family gathering: the fire inside on a cold day, the garden on a sunny one.

Best food: The Waterman’s Arms at Barnes. They were not doing a Sunday roast on the day we walked nine miles to get one, and the lamb shoulder for two made up for it completely.

If you only have one afternoon: 3 Locks for the flight, then ten minutes along the canal to Lock Tavern for a proper pint on the terrace. That is the whole trip, condensed.

One to go into with your eyes open: Camden Town Brewery. Go for the scale of the room and the brewing kit sitting in it with you — then notice that the best thing on the bar was the Easy Hazy, which is in every supermarket in Britain. And check your bill.

Where they all are

Sixteen pins, four clusters and three on their own. If you are standing somewhere in London and want to know what is within a few minutes’ walk, this is the useful bit.

Every pin is clickable. Open the map full size — it works on a phone, so you can carry it round with you.

The Hammersmith riverside row — over the A4 and down through the side streets to the Thames path. The Black Lion (2 South Black Lion Lane) · The Dove (19 Upper Mall) · The Rutland Arms (15 Lower Mall) · The Blue Anchor (13 Lower Mall). Four pubs inside 250 metres, benches the whole way along the river.

The Hammersmith station end. The Craft Beer Co. (17–18 The Broadway, inside the station foyer) · The Hop Poles (17–19 King Street, a hundred metres on) · The Distillers (64 Fulham Palace Road) · Riverside Studios (101 Queen Caroline Street). All within a twenty-minute walk of the tube.

Camden Lock. 3 Locks Brewing Co. (Arch S14/15, Hawley Wharf) · Lock Tavern (35 Chalk Farm Road, two minutes north) · The Hawley Arms (2 Castlehaven Road, five minutes from the lock) · Werewolf Beer (Arch 87, Randolph Street, a few minutes east — closed Mondays and Tuesdays, opens at four the rest of the week).

Kentish Town. Camden Town Brewery’s beer hall (55–59 Wilkin Street Mews). Worth repeating, because the name misleads: this is about twenty minutes’ walk north-west of Camden Lock, not in the market with the others.

And three on their own. The George (55 Great Portland Street, Fitzrovia) · Good Company (17–19 Triton Street, Regent’s Place, at the foot of the glass towers you can see from Primrose Hill) · The Waterman’s Arms (375 Lonsdale Road, Barnes — a long river walk from Hammersmith rather than a Camden thing at all).

Full addresses and opening hours are at the foot of both posts.

And the honest caveat

Three days is not enough to judge a city, and London is not one place. This is sixteen venues in two neighbourhoods over one bank holiday weekend — bank holiday ranges, bank holiday hours and bank holiday crowds. Several of the places we walked to were shut when we got there.

Beer condition moves faster than anything else in the table. The Gypsy Hill that was harsh at lunchtime in the Hop Poles was fresh and good at the Blue Anchor the same evening — same brewery, same day, different cellar. Take the verdicts as a starting point, not gospel.

If something has changed, tell us. We are going back for the Pale Ale anyway.

The two posts in full: the Hammersmith riverside and the Camden arches. Olesia’s side of the same weekend is in Walking London, Part One and Part Two.