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.
