jeparish63 | Greenwich Review

Meantime Brewery

by jeparish63 | Mar 16, 2024 | Business, Uncategorized

Meantime Brewery.

At one time the Meantime brewery was poised to be a long lasting Greenwich success story, bringing back long dead and forgotten recipes of beers brewed long ago.

With their Meantime lagers, stouts and my favourite, their Yakima Red ale they were, and still are to some extent an omnipotent present all over London.

The meantime brewery started with small, humble and local routes in a lock up opposite Charlton Athletic football ground in 1999 by a man called Alistair Hook, who studied brewing at the Technical University of Munich.

Eventually production levels facilitated the need to move to bigger premises, so production was relocated to what is now the Old Brewery pub within the Old Naval College grounds.

Eventually even this location was not big enough, so a new brewery was built in 2010 on it’s present location in Blackwall Lane.

In 2015 the Meantime brewery was bought up by the South African multinational brewing company SAB Miller, but apart from a small part of the production being temporarily moved to the Dutch brewery Grolsh to keep up with the demand for their beers. The vast bulk of the production remained at Greenwich.

In 2016 the Belgium brewery giant Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NA or AB InBev for short bought up SAB Miller, but one clause in the purchase contract meant that they had to sell off the Meantime Brewery.

The company that bought Meantime was the Japanese beer giant Asahi Group Holdings. You will often see Asahi beer sold in Fullers pubs as they bought Fullers in January 2019.

Unfortunately Under Asahi is where it all goes wrong. Not for Asahi, but for the borough of Greenwich and us amongst us that like a true rag to riches local success story.

The Meantime Brewery had two pubs and a taproom in Greenwich. There was the Old Brewery, where for a while they brewed their beers, then there was the Greenwich Union in Royal Hill, which was next door to the Richard the first pub, which is a Youngs pub, and finally you had the taproom attached to the Brewery on Blackwall Lane.

The Old Brewery and the Greenwich Union were sold to the Youngs brewery. The Old Brewery still displays the old brewing equipment used in it’s brewing days when Meantime owned it but the equipment is not used for production anymore.

The Greenwich Union Pub was closed and the pubs internal walls knocked down so the old Greenwich Union pub became part of an expanded Richard the First pub.

They still have the taproom in Blackwall Lane but a recent announcement in March 2024 has delivered devastating news and will see the end of Meantime brewing in Greenwich.

Asahi has stated that the Meantime Brewery in Blackwall Lane will be closed and production of all the Meantime beers will be moved to the Fullers Brewery at Chiswick.

So, there you have it a wonderful Greenwich business success story, ruined by multinational corporations who have no understanding and just don’t care about local history or business and the lost to the local community, economy and jobs.

So now the once great Meantime Brewery of Greenwich have now lost their pubs, lost their brewery and now are just a brand name, to be bought and sold and moved to any brewery As long as the brand name keeps selling then the beers will keep being produced and sold, which I suppose is a plus.

Kind of reminds me of another great London brewing entrepreneurial success stories of the 1980’s called the Firkin brewery and pubs chain. Started by a man called David Bruce, the Firkin company was also swallowed up and destroyed by the beer industry big boys, and now no longer exists.

Lets just hope that they don’t start tweaking with the recipe or quality of these great beers.

I know that if I was one of these brewers and a multination company waved millions of pounds under my nose, I know I would also buckle under and accept it. Money is money at the end of the day, and we all want it. It’s just a pity it will affect local jobs and take with it a successful local brewery.

New Pubs

by jeparish63 | Mar 2, 2024 | Business, Pub

New Pubs

Back in October I blogged about a new pub that was opening in Powis street Woolwich, called the Volunteer. According to the Murky Depths website ( Murky Depths – News and views in London (fromthemurkydepths.co.uk) permission was given the go ahead for Antic pubs to develop the building way back in 2014 and again in 2017 but they just sat on it and did nothing.

In 2023 new permission was given to develop it again and since then we have been waiting for it to open but still nothing.

Unfortunately, due to an updating mistake and lost data that blog was lost.

Since they had to close one of the better pubs The Woolwich Equitable in General Gordon Place which was owned by Antic pubs but closed due to rent arrears after the pandemic, we have been waiting for a new decent Woolwich pub to open.

Antics have 23 pubs running throughout London and another 4 waiting to finally open, but they have either sold or closed 20 pubs and some of them were pretty good pubs selling real ales.

A pub in waiting. The soon to open Volunteer pub

If like me, you want to keep updated with the glacial rate at which this place is to open then go to the Volunteers website: Welcome – The Volunteer (volunteerpub.co.uk)

Another Antic pub due to open soon just up the road in Plumstead is The Plumble which will be housed in 236 Plumstead High Street, next door to what used to be up until 2008 a pub called the Horse and Groom but is now an African church.

Up until 2012 there was another pub next to the other side of the African church called the Electric Orange. So years later we are getting one pub back after loosing two next door to the future pub, The Plumble.

Another new pub being planned for the Greenwich based river front location at the Cutty Sark in what used to house Byron Burgers and Frankie and Benny’s, and has laid empty for a number of years now.

It will be called The Ship, and is a business venture between the owner of The Trafalgar Tavern, American businessman Frank Dowling who owns a number of restaurants and bars in the Greenwich centre area and a number of other investors.

Given it’s prime location by Greenwich Pier and in the middle of a popular tourist area with great River Thames views it should be a success.

Blackheath Tunnel closure

by jeparish63 | Mar 2, 2024 | Trains, Travel

Blackheath Tunnel closure.

More Greenwich train line frustration which will affect anyone going to Blackheath, Lewisham, St Johns and New Cross station.

according to the Greenwich Wire website: Homepage – The Greenwich Wire

From the 1st June until 11th August the 175 year old Blackheath tunnel will be closed for repairs and maintenance due to major tunnel leakage.

Anyone wishing to get to Lewisham or Blackheath will have to go to Greenwich and change onto the DLR to Lewisham and travel onwards to St Johns and New Cross or travel back from Lewisham to Blackheath.

A better way to Lewisham or Blackheath would be to get the 380 bus service from Charlton to Blackheath and Lewisham.

Luckily the work is being carried out during the Summer holidays when the kids will not be at school so the buses should not be packed with screaming kids making your journey a living nightmare, and the traffic shouldn’t so bad then.

Dangerous Dogs.

by jeparish63 | Oct 19, 2023 | Community

Greenwich Dangerous Dog Incident.

On 3^rd October at about 10 am, in Catherine Grove, Greenwich just outside the Hilton Hotel, a 20-month-old toddler had just left the hotel with his mother when out of nowhere an XL bully came running up to the toddler and attacked him without provocation.

The toddler’s leg was mauled and he will probably be scarred for life if it wasn’t for brave members of the public and his mother coming to his aid the child could have been killed.

The parents an Indian couple from the Netherlands over here on business thought their child would lose his leg but luckily after a two-day stay in hospital, the child is going to be OK.

The XL bully’s owner was with the dog at the time of the attack, a 29 year-old man who like just about every other dangerous dog owner who sees their dog attack someone, he did the usual thing he pulled his dog off, picked up his shopping and nonchalantly walked off as if nothing had happened, leaving the poor child bleeding and helpless in the road.

My blood boils with anger against this heartless and uncaring piece of worthless shit. Unfortunately, it’s a scenario that is played out frequently all over the country. In their mind, their obviously dangerous dog is more important than anyone else’s life. Anyone who can just walk off and leave a child bleeding and injured in the street when they are directly and personally responsible, I can only describe as a human turd.

Thanks to members of the public who followed the man and called the police he was arrested a few streets away and now hopefully he will get what he deserves, and the dog will be destroyed.

The Pitbull and XL bully breed have generations of inbreeding to make them deliberately aggressive and confrontational and they were bred exclusively for one purpose to fight and kill.

It only takes one irrelevant and elusive reason to trigger a Pitbull or XL bully into a wild rage and when that happens you, yourself or any of your family do not want to be anywhere near it.

There’s a certain type of person who thinks owning a pit bull or XL bully will enhance his or her status in society. ‘I need a macho dog because I am macho’. In reality, people will view you as arrogant and uneducated which is more likely the truth.

The Internet channel JOE which mainly deals with political issues interviewed XL bully owners who were protesting against Prime Minister Rishi Sunaks announcement that he intends to ban the breed after numerous attacks and deaths caused by this type of breed.

If those protesting thought, they were going to persuade the public to make them come around to their point of view they must have been delusional.

Some were in complete denial that any XL bully had attacked anyone and there was no evidence to prove any claim, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

One muscle-bound uneducated moron who struggled to complete a whole sentence without sounding like an uneducated chav showed off his dog’s collar and chain, and both were studded with big spikes. It was like looking at the complete stereotypical cliché of Mr macho and his macho dog scenario.

The XL bully and the Pitbull seem to go hand in hand with the anti-social and criminal community who use it to intimidate members of the public.

Look at your local drug dealer and by his side you will more likely find a Pitbull or XL bully dog, not a poodle or a chihuahua.

Look at the XL bully or Pitbull owner and you notice that when their dog fouls the pavement or grass, they never pick up their dog’s mess like responsible dog owners.

Any parent who brings any dangerous breed into the home thinking it will make a wonderful family pet for their young children needs to take a good hard look in the mirror and ask themselves “Am I a good responsible parent or is the safety of my child a risk I am willing to take in order to make a statement about myself to other people” because you will be judged by others over your choice of a dog in a family setting.

Here are the initial reports from the Daily Mail. Many other media outlets reported the incident, but few showed or named the owner who was charged.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12597005/american-xl-bully-attack-toddler-dog-owner-charged.html

Use them or lose them

by jeparish63 | Oct 15, 2023 | Business, Eating Out, Restaurant

Use them or lose them.

Whilst trying to keep the list of restaurants within the borough up to date it struck me how much the restaurants of certain cuisines are suffering and struggling to stay afloat while in a cost-of-living crisis and the back end of the covid crisis.

I have already had a rant about the lack of British and French restaurants with the number of French restaurants now reduced to just one and even that one I struggle to call a proper French restaurant. Another ethnic cuisine that has struggled are the Caribbean restaurants with now just two within the borough. They have either shut up shop or moved and set up as takeaways,

It’s very sad to see restaurants being replaced by takeaways who seem to be thriving. The borough has a fair size community of Caribbean decent who I am sure would love to experience Caribbean cuisine within a restaurant atmosphere.

You must ask yourself then, if this is the case why did a lot of them just disappear? The only cause I can think of is they weren’t being used. It seems a simple case of ‘use it or lose it’. I’m sure peoples lack of money during the current cost of living crisis and to a lesser extent now, the covid recovery have had a big effect on this situation.