A dark porter brewed close to the tracks of the Croydon tram network has been named Beer of the Year.
Top of the pops: Anspach and Hobday’s London Black porter, brewed by the Croydon tram tracks
Anspach and Hobday’s London Black has been voted the No1 British Beer of 2025 in the Top 50 UK Beer Awards.
The London Black is brewed at Anspach and Hobday’s Croydon brewery on the Valley Point Industrial Estate, a short amble from Therapia Lane tram stop.
“The whole team is incredibly proud and grateful for this award,” said Paul Anspach, the brewers’ co-founder.
“London Black is the lifeblood of Anspach and Hobday, and is a distillation of who we are as a brewery and a business.
“As our contribution to London’s rich and diverse brewing scene, we are proud to be reaffirming porter as the original beer of London.”
Porters and stouts, such as Guinness and “ghost brand” Mackeson milk stout, are dark, malty beers. Stouts tend to have a heavier body than porters. In Victorian England, London was known for its porters, which tended to be sweeter than stouts, with chocolate and caramel flavours.
The Top 50 UK Beer Awards is in its second year, promoting the best-selling, best-made and most influential beers currently available, as the expansion of craft beers continues at pace.
Beer of the Year: the award is a huge achievement for the young company
High-quality cask beers dominated this year’s top 10, with Landlord the runner-up to London Black, Five Points Best ranked fifth and St Austell Proper Job seventh.
Anspach and Hobday raised £500,000 in 2019 to develop their brewery in Croydon, only to have the grand opening of their taphouse halted by the first covid lockdown in 2020. The brewers struggled on and have thrived, pivoting to promote online sales across south London.
Anspach and Hobday, who started out with a smaller craft ale brewery in Bermondsey, have since expanded their business by rescuing the St James of Bermondsey pub from the threat of closure by pubco Stonegate.
When it opened in 2020, the Croydon brewery increased the firm’s capacity to 100,000 gallons per year, as well as introducing a canning line and creating several new jobs.
Next month, Anspach and Hobday are staging an Oktoberfest at the taphouse, which they say “will bring a taste of Bavaria to Croydon, with Lederhosen, traditional music and decorations combined with the launch of Anspach and Hobday’s Trio of Oktoberfest specials”.
- Oktoberfest tickets are £5 each and can be booked by clicking here
- Find out more about the London Black by clicking here
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