Its 16 years since I first visited the Jolly Butchers pub in Stoke Newington on Saturday 24th April 2010. It had opened a few days earlier as a cask beer bar, rather different to its previous incarnation, Father Teds, which had a certain if rather different charm to it.
Many readers of the blog will know that the JBs became a craft beer institution, one of a handful of pubs in the Capital selling what at that time was a new wave of cask beers.
They all seem quite familiar now but 16 years ago for example Thornbridge Jaipur on cask was more or less unheard of in London, while Redemption was the first of the now numerous breweries in Tottenham and Walthamstow and I think the JBs was amongst the first if not the first regular outlet.
The staff too, who I won’t embarrass by naming, went on in many cases to be very familiar and much valued faces in the world of craft beer.
Of course the JBs wasn’t without downsides. The toilets were legendary but not in a good way despite several efforts to sort the matter out. The wi-fi was a little dodgy and the seating not always as comfortable as all that.
So what though? The JBs was not the first pub selling craft beer in London but it became rightly famous as one of the best. In 2026 there are lots of pubs and bars selling good beer in London. A reminder that 16 years ago if you wanted anything like a drinkable pint of cask beer in Stoke Newington you might well have headed a few minutes up the road to the Rochester Castle (aka Wetherspoons).
The JBs changed all that and it has stayed changed.
My first ever tweet from the Jolly Butchers
Stopped by newly re-opened Jolly Butchers; two Thornbridge beers; two Dark Star, Brodies, Redemption, Crouch Vale – promising
8:43 PM · Apr 24, 2010
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