Signature Brew, E17

The last of the various brewery taps on my crawl was perhaps the most unusual of them all, as the taproom only forms a small part of the overall set-up here. The main taproom space has a bar to the left of a roughly square room, with a large beer board behind it and taps along the back wall. Decent seating options can be found in here, with high tables and a few fixed benches making this the obvious place to bag a seat. However, the brewery complex spreads out over much wider area, including a live music venue to the rear, in line with brewery's music ethos, which was hosting a DJ when I visited. Canteen style benches filled a narrow space opposite their decks and huge brewing vessels were visible to the rear, although I suspect a very different layout is used when bands are playing on stage. There's also a fenced off seating area outside with more benches and then across the road there's another bar with even more seating in a space fenced by some Signature Brew branded panels. The main bar had eight Signature Brew beers plus cider and alcohol free options. I tried the Black Vinyl Nitro Stout (£6.20 a pint), which was a pretty good drop to round out this crawl with. The barman was friendly and efficient and a quick look at the other bar suggested a doubling up of brews rather than there being anything not available in the main taproom. I like this brewery and their support for the live music industry and thought this was a decent enough place to showcase their beer. It's a bit of a disjointed space that maybe works best when the weather allows you to use the outdoor space or if attending for a gig, and overall, I think I prefer their Haggerston venue over this one, but it was a good enough spot to finish the crawl nonetheless. Date of visit - 4th May 2024

Signature Brew Brewer's Bar felt more like a proper bar than other brewery setups in this trading estate. Whilst the brewery itself is set up in a warehouse, there is a separate indoor taproom and a large outdoor drinking space which was undercover. Unusually, there was a handpull with a cask ale in here. This was Signature Bells End. Craft beers were Signature Roadie, Backstage IPA, Rewind, Equaliser, Anthology Imperial Stout, Progressive Bitter, Lo Fi, Low Frequency Effect, Black Vinyl, Polyphonic Peach Sour & Piercing Tea Pilsner. They also had Gosnell's Wild Flower Mead. The taproom was quite busy, but we were lucky to grab a table from somebody just departing. We were soon sharing this with others. This felt much more of a commercial experience than many of the other taprooms on the Blackhorse Mile.

Official site of Signature Brew - www.signaturebrew.co.uk

Official site of Signature Brew - www.signaturebrew.co.uk

Signature Brew now brew in two locations in East London with this second site in an industrial estate just off Black Horse Lane joining the original location in the railway arches at Haggerston. It’s a fairly typical industrial unit site a short walk around the corner from the Truman’s Social Club, with bench type seating inside the brewery alongside the tanks, an outside seating underneath a gazebo structure and then further room where additional bench seating is put on fine weekend or when they have live music events. The bar room has a twelve tap wall at the back, one solitary hand pump ( not in use for out visit) and a limited amount of spirits and wines. But the Signature Brew craft range is the draw here and nine of their beers were available on tap with a couple of guests from Hackney Brewery. We has already tried a few of their standard beers earlier at their other outlet, The Collab in central Walthamstow so decided to try their new German festival beer Luftballon, and it wasn’t a bad attempt at a Bavarian session lager. This one opens a 4pm during the week and then at lunchtime on Saturday and Sunday. It wasn’t too busy for our late afternoon visit and we probably didn’t catch it at its best. From its publicity photos it looks much better in the evening when there are a few in and the brewing equipment is imaginatively lit to provide ambiance, or when there is live music. Music does seem to be a theme here as demonstrated by the fact that the beer tap pulls were actually vocal microphones. One thing it did have going for it was that the general consensus of the group was that the Signature Brew beers were some of the best we tried during this crawl of the so called Blackhorse Beer Mile.