Beer Merchants Tap, Hackney Wick, E9

Hidden away down an unpromising looking road around the back of Hackney Wick station, this is a large craft beer bar set in a decent old warehouse building. You enter via a courtyard to the side of the building, filled with picnic benches, before reaching the large front room which has a bare concrete floor, iron girders running across the ceiling, bare brick walls and a few pillars to break up the large, open-plan space. The servery is over on the right-hand side of the room with a nice counter front made from old barrel staves, keg taps along the bar back wall and some useful beer boards above. Canteen-style tables and benches run in rows through the centre of the room, with a few more slightly hidden up on a raised space to the front, whilst old upturned barrels have been used as leaning posts in various gaps around the pub. There's plenty of standing room too, although I'm not sure exactly when this place would start to get over-crowded, with the only other space-consuming items of note comprising beer fridges along the back wall filled with all sorts of tempting bottles and cans, and a table football game nearer the front. A corridor decorated with all sorts of cool artwork, leads through to a quieter and smaller rear room with the pub's 'cellar' visible through a large window to the right. More canteen benches and tables have been set-up to the left in front of lots of old barrels stacked along the wall. It's a much plainer room than the main bar area, enlivened only with a few brewery enamel signs and some decorative low wattage light bulbs. A chilled-out soundtrack played quietly in the background on my Saturday evening visit and there was a modest crowd in, with most seats taken but no-one standing. I spent an eternity perusing the 18 craft keg beers listed on the blackboards, trying to figure out what I would enjoy the most without bankrupting myself, only to pick something, attract the barman's attention and then spot two handpulls dispensing Cloudwater and The Magnet's A Local Attraction and Buxton Low Tor. I plumped for the Low Tor and despite pretty much everyone else seemingly going for the craft keg, it was actually in decent nick and slipped down quite nicely. The keg range included the usual UK micros like Siren, Cloudwater and Fierce Beer, many with 8%+ abv's, plus some continental brews such as Paulaner. The extensive bottle list included no less than 74 lambics, should that be your tipple of choice. Of course, none of it comes cheaply and I had to laugh at a woman who walked up to the bar, scanned the beer board, found something she liked and then very loudly exclaimed "Six quid??!" in an incredulous tone when she spotted how much a half pint would set her back! This is quite a nicely put together bar, set in an interesting old building which has been well converted. Whilst it can't match the comforts and cosiness of a proper pub, it does at least manage to generate a decent atmosphere when moderately busy and is far more conducive to a longer visit that most industrial estate or railway arch craft beer bars. There are a few other interesting bars around this area, some of which can get extremely over-crowded at times, so it's good to have somewhere like this in reserve should you need it.

Definitly on the industrial side but not to my liking.Beer factory sort of place with lots of bottles and can from this distributor.Think they had two cask beers on from Arbor or Tiny Rebel.Not cheap but this is the reality of drinking in one of the most deprived and run down parts of London

In an industrial area the other side of the canal from West Ham's London Stadium and walkable from Hackney Wick Overground, this is a bar / bottle shop which offers up to 20 keg taps as well as a couple of casks (Redemption's Big Chief and Trinity on my visit). The usual semi-industrial space inside as per many of the establishments in this area, this perhaps slightly more 'done-up' than the others: a semi-raised area to the right (dining?), bottle fridges ahead and to the right, marked with beer styles (Pale+Hoppy, Dark+Strong, etc.), merchandise (T-shirts) to the right and an entrance-facing, barrel-slatted bar against the rear wall. £4.50 for a pint of the Big Chief which was in good nick. This is slightly cosier than some of its nearby cousins, but equally as trendy.

Official site of Beer Merchants Tap - beermerchantstap.com

Official site of Beer Merchants Tap - beermerchantstap.com