40ft Taproom, Higham Hill, E17

This one looks more like a plain two-storey block rather than the typical industrial-estate units occupied by most other taprooms along the Blackhorse Beer Mile. However, the bar occupies the area under the first-floor offices along the frontage, with a full-height ceiling above the main seating area and brewing vessels. A good number of outdoor tables and also be found outside in the former car park to one side. With most of the 20 keg taps on the back wall in use, there was a wide selection in different styles, although I opted for one of the core beers: Dalston Sunrise (£3.00, half).

Decided to pay this northern end of the Blackhorse Mile a revisit as since my last time here both this unit and the one across the road have changed brewers. This one was the site for the Hackney Brewery until they had a run in with the local council who were demanding the paying up of unpaid rents and decided to close the operation in April last year. The 40ft Brewery took over the premises in August last year to make it their second tap room and have come a long way since their humble beginnings in a shipping container brewery in a Dalston car park some ten years ago. The inside space looks like it’s been remodelled a bit since the Hackney Brewery time but it’s still a large open plan space with the brewing kit at one end and long bench seating in the rest and is quite soulless and needs a few in to give it any kind of atmosphere. The outside space, also with a large collection of bench seating, seemed smaller than I remember but that could be because the outer walls had a collection of food concession trucks and huts and storage for barrels along them and one section was being used for what looked like a private birthday party. No cask here but a tap wall with mostly their own brews and then a couple of collabs from what I could see. I went for something called Dalston Sunset, a 6% New England Hazy IPA and it was a decent version of the style. Its OK as tap rooms go but just like the former brewery incarnation, I didn’t get any great vibe from drinking here and I much preferred what ELB are doing with the former Wild Card Space opposite.

Visited 23/04/26 No cask. Keg offering of mostly their own and comprising the Disco Pils lager, the Dalston Sunrise hazy pale, the Main Squeeze hazy IPA, the Rewind West Coast IPA, the Jam raspberry sour, the Liquid Gold cream ale, the Lockwood pale ale, the Deep nitro stout, the Swift Irish coffee stout as a collab with the Swift chain of bars (ok there are three of them, is that enough to be a chain) and then speciality away beers, the Nirvana AF pils, the raspberry hibiscus and the apple cater both from Gosnells, the Crafty Apple cider, the Birdbarker cider and the Dusty's alcoholic ginger beer. Another large industrial brewing premises. No seating out the front, indeed the frontage looks like a two story 70's small office block. The bar counter is on the right-hand side of the large interior, concrete flooring with the bar counter against the rear wall. A few rows of trestle style tables and benches in front of the bar counter and a good few more rows of the same to the left-hand side of the bar counter, to the side of a mass of brewing equipment. There is a yard like outside seating area with the same tables and benches, and this is where most punters based themselves on my visit. There are a few small TV's in the bar area switched off on my visit and a very large projector screen on the rear wall. A very poppy soundtrack was playing on my visit. A taco-based food wagon was perched in the outside seating space.

Official site of 40ft Taproom - 40ftbrewery.com

Official site of 40ft Taproom - 40ftbrewery.com