Noticed this earlier today. I am concerned however that this is just a new brand for Sambrooks rather than a New Brewery. Anyone with any information please let me know.
This is made all the more difficult because London postal addresses do not include districts at all and district names in common use are not based on any formal boundaries. Once upon a time the district was included in the postal address on the basis of the name of the sorting office for the postcode area. Those districts are detailed (scroll down to the bottom) at
I suppose those districts could be used as a basis but some of the district names may be archaic, might cover too large an area, don’t help much with the “Head Districts” (E1, EC1,N1, NW1, SE1, SW1, SW11, W1, W2 & WC1) and don’t help one bit with the large parts of London that don’t have a “London” postcode at all - Croydon, Bromley etc (which also include areas that are in Surrey, Kent etc).
London Boroughs are pretty useless for our purposes, especially in the central area, and don’t align with postcode boundaries anyway so allocating places to the correct borough would not be straightforward.
Of course, Gertie Sweet, another of Jack Hanby’s incarnations (he was a brewer for Wem Ales and then started Hanby Brewery in Wem, when Wem Ales got bought out by Greenall Whitley).
It would be great to have some way to group these in the Places section of the website. Your idea is sound albeit with a couple of minor shortcomings, however I can’t think of a better way to do it right now to be honest.
One minor issue with this “bodge job” as you term it would be the terminology in Places might perhaps be confusing to some, with the shops all listed under a “brewer”, and indeed that parent “brewery” could be a little odd to see. Also I would prefer something different to “On Line Beer Merchants UK” if you do go down this route, as there is an actual and well known shop literally called Beer Merchants. Would “Online Bottleshops (UK)” suffice. Other countries where online bottleshops are a big thing (German, Belgium) could follow suit putting their own country name in a similar fashion.
The only other issue with this is it requires an admin for maintenance. Us plebs don’t have the ability to link brewers to places so we’d be unable to assist with the initial workaround, and for any new bottleshop being added the user adding it might not be aware of the practice.
Other than that it seems like it could be a good enough workaround for now.
P.S. since you’re a moderator on the forums too would it be possible for you to pin this topic so it’s always at the top of the UK forum? It can slip down surprisingly far if we go a week without posting anything in here.
Also not to toot my own horn but perhaps pin my bottleshop directory topic too so I don’t have to bump it every time I edit with an update? Cheers.
There appears to be a problem with the Glasshouse Brewery page today as I cannot get anything to save correctly. I will investigate but don’t hold your breath.
Entered a new place in Leicester but the map is showing it in the middle of nowhere. I’m sure I made a mistake (perhaps forgot to add the county or something). Sorry
Looks like there are a lot of places at that location. From the map close to the equator and the greenwich meridian? I’d say system error, not user error!
Now closed in places, such a shame. Interestingly my review for the Bree Louise, from 2010 has disappeared, very strange, I know the score I gave it and the date but definitely not there now. Oh well just another Ratebeer mystery.
The Old Charles Dickens site in Southwark is now an Irish bup, stocking Irish Craft beer. O my yesterday I was discussing Irish Craft beer with an Irish colleague who’s only ever had Guinness and the one Boundary beer I bought him. Will have to take him here: