Villages Brewery Taproom, Deptford, SE8

Just a short walk from Deptford station, down an otherwise easily missed access road, this is yet another London microbrewery operating out of a railway arch. All the usual arch-based aesthetics apply here – bare concrete floor, corrugated iron covering the vaulted brick ceiling in an unsightly manner, cheap wood panels covering the lower sections of wall, and a rickety servery stood at the far end of the arch. Two rows of canteen-style tables and benches, one down each side of the arch, offer limited amounts of seating, so it was handy that I visited in good weather, as many more had been set up outside, flanking the access road, which seemed to have a fair amount of through traffic, to my surprise. Inside, each table had a small potted plant on it, which comprised the sole attempt to beautify the otherwise very industrial feeling room, which had no wall decorations or other such ornamental features. The bar is a squat affair with a counter mounted on casters, suggesting it gets taken out and about, perhaps to festivals or other such events. A beer can display stood at one end of the counter whilst the plain wall bar back had nothing of note except the short row of beer taps from which all the draught beer was poured. Brewing equipment is visible in a dark space to the left which looked like it might be an adjacent arch, partly knocked through. There was a good post-work crowd in when I arrived, with just one table available for me to sit at, and a Latin-style soundtrack played quietly in the background. Since the start of the pandemic, I have refused to use QR codes or apps to check in or order beer, preferring the just as easily achieved option of pen and paper check ins and verbal ordering. However, this place became only the second of over 100 post-Covid pubs where I couldn’t circumvent these intrusions. An admittedly very helpful barman talked me through a web-based alternative to their app, which required me to check-in through their website and then allowed me to place and pay for my order on a secure ordering site. This was a hassle – the barman spent about ten times the amount of time explaining the system than he would’ve if he’d just taken my order verbally – but I eventually got hold of my desired brew, a pint of Villages Rodeo Pale which was one of six Villages beers available alongside guests from Kernel and Brick. It turned out to be a decent, if rather unmemorable, pale ale and was reasonably priced when compared to a lot of these other London brewery taps. This seems like a fairly modest set-up, which can cater for modest crowds but would be likely to get quickly over-run on busier days or when the weather prevents outdoor drinking. I could’ve done without the faff of the online ordering process, but otherwise thought it was a decent enough brewery in a featureless industrial setting, that would be worth calling in again for a quick one in passing.

Open 5-11 Fri 12-11 Sat