Local beer finds lots of drinkers in London

Would you like a pint of London Porter or a glass of London Stout, sir? How about a bottle of Wandle Ale, madam? Local beers are back in London's pubs and they're being helped by a concept called "food miles". The distance food is transported from the time it's produced until it reaches the consumer is one way of measuring the environmental impact of what we eat and drink and "food miles" mean that local things, like beer brewed in London, are popular with "ethical" drinkers.  

Duncan Sambrook gave up his £85,000-a-year job at accountancy firm Deloitte to set up Sambrook's Brewery in Battersea, in south-west London last August. "We brew Wandle Ale using traditional methods and materials from English producers," Sambrook's site says. Meanwhile, the Meantime Brewing Company produces 12,000 hectolitres, or 2.1 million pints, in Greenwich in south-east London. Its London Porter is made from a recipe from 1750.

"We're trying to remind people that that London was once the brewing capital of the world," Alastair Hook, who founded Meantime, told the Financial Times. London was home to 140 breweries in the 1890's, Holt says. In March next year, Meantime will reopen the original brewery build for retired seamen in the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich.