First Brewdog bar outside of Scotland- in Camden Town-to shut (Dec 2011- July 2025)
Camden was the fourth Brewdog bar to open and the first outside of Scotland, hence the opening was something of a landmark at the time. The pub itself is not a huge- a ground floor and lower ground- a far cry from some of Brewdog’s more recent openings.
At the time Brewdog still produced cask beer (it was soon to stop) so a talking point 14 years ago was that there was no cask, it was all keg. This is hardly remarkable in 2025 but then it was at best rare.
I have memories of drinking in there with people still well known in the Indy Beer world, when it was the only Brewdog bar in London and Brewdog was the benchmark for what was then called craft beer, both its own brews and guest beers.
I haven’t been in Camden Brewdog for quite a while- after all there are many more convenient craft beer bars now. In fact I haven’t been in a Brewdog bar at all in 2025 because of the employment and cultural issues at the brewer that still seem to me unresolved. In 2011 this would I think have surprised us, even if we were no fans of James Watts’ style.
The pub, well before it was a Brewdog, also featured in the never ending Spycops inquiry into police infiltration into left and radical campaigns. It was a meeting place for the Camden left in the late 1960s and hence undercover police officers were also to be found at the bar.
Brewdog of course have other London bars- including a rebadged Draft House not far from the Camden site- but in recent times, the Waterloo monolith notwithstanding- they seem to close more than they open. A long way from the path breaking times when Camden Brewdog opened.
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