Brixton Brewery was founded in 2013 by two couples, Jez and Libby Galaun and Mike Ross and Xochitl Benjamin, who met accidentally in 2010 in a local bar in Brixton. Its beer is hand-crafted in small batches drawing on traditional British techniques, flavours and ingredients, with some American and European influence. All of its brews are unfiltered and unpasteurised and some are made with locally sourced ingredients, such as its limited edition Effra Ale, which was brewed using hops grown less than a kilometre from our door by Brixton’s Urban Hop Growers and its collaboration with award-winning chef Tim Anderson to produce Market Saison using ingredients from Brixton Market.
The current brewery is just 600 metres from the brand’s original archway home and allowed Brixton to increase its production capacity from 8,000 litres a week (about 14,000 pints) to 17,500 litres a week (about 30,000 pints) with potential to brew up to 60,000 litres a week (about 100,000 pints). The brewhouse is a three-vessel, steam-fired kit that was supplied and installed by UK company Gravity Systems, and a canning line which can produce 6,000 cans an hour was also installed in the new site.
Heineken UK invested in the south London brewery in 2017, although its founders remained the majority shareholders and continued to manage the business.