Good Company, London

From journalist Will Hawkes of London Beer City on-line magazine to which you can subscribe at https://www.willhawkes.net/london-beer-city-newsletter We also thank Will for his fine pictures.

"Good Company does not feel like a brewery taproom. It looks more like an art gallery café, with its angles and exposed pipes and bold, blocky colours on the wall. At 11am in the morning, gentle elevator jazz is playing - tinkling piano and the strum of acoustic guitar - and the whole place smells like coffee.

But then Toast, the brewing company that runs this space alongside Change Please Coffee, is not like most breweries. It’s explicitly ‘mission-focused’, determined to highlight the global scandal of food waste, and has always existed at a slight remove from mainstream beer, be that craft or otherwise.

Their four core beers (Lager, Pale Ale, Session IPA, American Pale Ale) are joined on the bar by collaborations and beers brewed by producers like Oxford’s Tap Social, for example. On this visit there were two delicious, elegant beers (a grapefruit pale ale and a 6.2% blonde) brewed alongside Gebrouwen Door Vrouwen, a Dutch brewery run by sisters Tessel and Do De Heij that is 100% female-staffed."

Good Company will serve breakfasts and cakes by Breadwinners, a social enterprise helping refugees. Lunch and dinner service will include a selection of sandwiches and salads, plus hot pies by the B Corp Pieminster. Thye will also be bringing food collaborations for Taproom evenings (Wednesdays and Thursdays).