Kmflett's Blog

Brewdog’s first London bar. It was the future once (December 2011-July 2025)

Camden was the fourth Brewdog bar to open and the first outside of Scotland, hence the opening on December 11^th 2011 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 15 years ago was that there was no cask, it was all keg. James Watt turned up in a tank which he presumably thought was a great stunt. In reality those familiar with central London in those times will have been aware that the tank, owned from memory by someone in Croydon and leased out for events, was not a hugely unusual sight.

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 rarely ventured into Camden Brewdog in more recent times- after all there are many more convenient craft beer bars now. In fact I’ve hardly been in a Brewdog bar at all in the last few years 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.

Last time I passed a few months ago it had for lease/sale signs up. Tbh since its on a one way road that runs parallel to Camden High St it’s not the best of locations.

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.