#pale-ale

Some customers will have been fortunate enough to receive a few bottles of One Mile End’s Salvation Pale in their boxes recently. We were excited to finally send this beer out, and decided to find out a little more about the brewery that produced it.

Simon McCabe, Head Brewer at One Mile End, was kind enough to take a call with me to answer a few questions and give a little background on One Mile End - the brewery in the cellar beneath the White Hart pub on Mile End Road.

Like many in the London brew-scene, Simon got into home-brewing after visiting the USA. He was seduced by the hop-forward style of brewing that was becoming popular in the States and, on returning home, Simon took to home-brewing in order to create beers in this style. Eventually Simon wound up in a job at Redemption in Tottenham, where he brewed and learned the trade under Redemption’s Andy Moffat.

When the opportunity to use the kit at the White Hart presented itself, the chance to take control and experiment for himself was an appealing one. Simon jumped at it.

The White Hart has long been known as a brewpub, but the kit in the cellar was mostly used to produce beer for those drinkers seated above the floorboards. Nine “lovely stainless steel tanks” in the cellar belied the potential for a larger scale operation. Simon set about re-branding the brewery in order to enter the wider craft beer market.

Initially Simon worked alone, experimenting and developing the recipes that would become the core range of the new One Mile End brewery. A few months later, the re-branded brewery was launched to the world in October, 2014. Since then, the brewery has gone from strength to strength, and now is brewing consistently at full capacity. Every brew is sold out, and it’s everything the team of three can do to keep on top of things in that small space beneath the pub. I asked Simon how running a full-scale brewery from a London pub cellar was going:

“Working with that amount of beer in such a small space takes a lot of getting used to. Everyone has got to be on the ball - everything has to move in and move out at precise times otherwise there's no room for anything!”

It seems like the brewery is busting at the seams right now, and to that end the hunt is on for a larger premises. But don’t fear, the White Hart will still remain a brewpub, and One Mile End will still remain beneath it. The plan is to move production of the core range, including that wonderful Salvation Pale Ale, out to a new, bigger site. Doing so would free up the kit under the pub to do what it’s always done - experiment, and brew for the patrons drinking upstairs.