13 beers to try at London Craft Beer Festival 2024
Beer, beer everywhere. And these are the drops you should drink.
One of the UK’s biggest craft beer festivals is back for another year. If you’re heading to Tobacco Dock for the London Craft Beer Festival 2024, you’re in for a treat. However, with more than 800 beers from over 170 breweries to choose from - all included with your ticket - the choice can be overwhelming.
We’re here to help. We’ve trawled the beer list to bring you our top picks to seek out at the festival - from England, Scotland, the USA and Europe. We have picked a variety of styles and ABVs, and focused on the more unusual, rare, special and funky brews rather than ones you can find in the supermarket any time.
Note that beers may not be available at all sessions due to limited quantities but these breweries will have plenty of other delicious beers to try if these kegs have kicked.
13 beers to try at London Craft Beer Festival 2024
1. Fierce Beer - Beer Coolers
4.5%
A three-in-one entry here as Fierce has just launched what it calls "Beer Coolers". It’s beer, but not as you know it.
All brewed to 4.5% with Scottish water, malted barley, a hint of hops and natural flavourings, they are designed to be light and refreshing in the summer.
There are three flavours to choose from: lemonade with raspberry, cola with cherry and iced tea with lemon. Fierce suggests they are garnished with raspberries, pitted cherries or sliced lemon respectively.
2. Orbit Beers - Damson Blend: Cuvée de Cologne
6.8% - BA Lager
Each year, Orbit barrel ages a small amount of its flagship Kolsch style lager, Nico, allowing it to ferment with wild yeasts. Fresh Nico is added each year and the 2024 edition, to celebrate the brewery’s 10th birthday, has been aged on damsons.
The result is a complex beer, nothing like a regular bottle of Nico. Orbit says to expect oaky vanilla and fruity aromas, bready malt flavours and jammy sweetness. Restrained bitterness, delicate acidity, and a champagne-like dry finish make it one for the more adventurous drinkers.
Only one 20L keg will be available from 6pm on the Friday.
3. Siren - Mucha Mora Mocha
9% - Imperial Stout
Mucha Mora Mocha, as the name suggests, is one for the coffee lovers. It's part of Siren’s annual Project Barista series.
This imperial stout has been made with the Columbia Viani roast from Anonymous, in various forms and ways in the brewing process. Along with additions of cacao, muscovado sugar, vanilla and lactose, the result is a hugely rich, thick and opulent stout.
Siren will also serve another notable new beer for the first time at the festival - a 6% red berry sour called Something in the Water.
4. Lost & Grounded - Newstalgic 8
5.2% - West Coast Pils
One of the UK’s best lager-focused breweries is eight years old and has created Newstalgic 8 to celebrate.
The base of this crisp beer is formed of Pils malt and maize, with Pacific Northwest hops bringing the West Coast vibes. Specifically, Chinook and Citra add notes of pine and citrus fruits.
5. Double Barrelled - Big Fruit Heist
6% - Kettle Sour
One of our favourite sour beers ever is certain to refresh you in the heat and business of Tobacco Docks.
Big Fruit Heist is Double Barrelled’s flagship seasonal kettle sour and is crammed with Alphonso mangoes and juicy passion fruits for, well, bags of fruit flavour.
Imagine a melted Solero in sour beer form and you’ve got the idea. And if you like this, Northern Monk is pouring Sun Hero as part of its Ice Cream Van series, which is also inspired those classic Solero flavours.
6. Five Points - BA Apricot Tripel
9.3% - Belgian Tripel
One of our favourite beers from last year’s festival is back for 2024, which is especially good news as it’s so hard to get hold of.
The Beglian-style Tripel has been barrel-aged on apricots and has a complex character with sweet and tart fruity notes along with oak and plenty of booze.
While you’re there, ask for a pour of the 2018 vintage of Old Greg’s Barley Wine - there will only be eight bottles at the festival. Five Points will also be one of the only breweries serving cask beer from handpumps.
7. Anspach & Hobday - The Arch House Bretted Porter
8.4% - Porter
Released only days ago at the brewery’s taproom, The Arch House, this is a special Porter from the makers of London Black (also try this while you’re there).
The London brewery has taken its classic Porter and re-fermented it with a blend of French Saison yeast and Brettanomyces Lambicus (a wild yeast). The result is still chocolatey and coffee-ey but with a funky character from the yeast and a drier finish.
8. Stone Brewing - Double Bastard Ale
10.5% - ‘Classified’
One of the most legendary beers in the US, Stone Brewing doesn’t even give Double Bastard a style or tasting notes, saying the beer is “not to be wasted on the tentative or weak”.
This is the amped-up version of Arrogant Bastard, first brewed in 1998 to celebrate the first birthday of its little brother, and can be best described as an imperial red ale. With a huge malt bill and aggressive hop bitterness, not to mention the high alcohol, it’s not for the faint-hearted.
9. Ideal Day - Field Beer
4.5%
One of the winners of the festival’s Raise The Bar competition.
Ideal Day is a family-run brewery in rural Cornwall inspired by Belgian farmhouse traditions, classic British beers and modern innovation. You might have heard about ‘hop-forward’ beers but Ideal Day focuses on an ester-forward approach where the yeast is the star of the show. Field Beer doesn’t have a style denotation but is loosely a farmhouse ale.
British hops, heritage malted barley, regeneratively grown wheat and expressive cultures give it fruity esters, balanced flavours and a crisp finish.
10. Allagash Brewing - Allagash White
5.2% - Wheat Beer
As the most award-winning wheat beer in the world, it’s no wonder Allagash White has something of a cult following. The Belgian-style witbier is made with oats, malted wheat, and unmalted raw and a blend of coriander and Curaçao orange peel for a complex but refreshing beer.
You’ll find Allagash White on the Brewers Association bar where a total of 60 beers from 17 breweries across the USA will be available. Most of which are unavailable in the UK.
11. Garage Beer - SOUP
6% - IPA
A beer we always seek out at Garage’s cosy taproom in Barcelona, SOUP is one of the best IPAs you can hope for.
As the name hints, it’s one of the thickest around with an almost pithy but still soft and smooth mouthfeel. Bags of hops bring an avalanche of juicy tropical and citrus fruit flavours. If you like hazy New England-style IPAs, this is an absolute must-try beer.
12. Vault City - Blueberry Muffin Waffle Cone Crunch
8.4% - Ice Cream Sour
Edinburgh’s Vault City is one of the best sour breweries in the UK. It specialises almost entirely in modern sour beer. Part of the recent ice cream scoop trio of beers, this triple scoop is the most boozy at 8.4%, but hides the abv well.
It’s thick and well-balanced between tart and sweet with oodles of blueberry, vanilla and honeycomb flavours. We loved a can on holiday in Devon and can’t wait to try it on draught.
13. Beak - Locals
6% - IPA
Beak only built its brewery in Lewes a few years ago but quickly made waves in the craft scene with outstanding IPAs, followed by various other styles.
Locals is "an ode to regulars everywhere" and is an exquisite IPA showcasing Nelson Sauvin hops for aromas and flavours of lychee, white grape, gooseberries and honeydew melon.
With oats and wheat on the malt bill, it also has an incredibly soft mouthfeel. It’s like drinking the most delicious cloud you can imagine.