Meantime Brewery

Here at Meantime we are very conscious of and proud of our Greenwich heritage.

The Thames flows past our door, and we look towards it for inspiration for the things that we do.

Once ships laden with casks of Porter and India Pale Ale, brewed on the river’s banks, sailed on the ebb tide to all four corners of the globe, so we brew London Porter and IPA.

Ships weighed down with goods from the same four corners floated in on the tide past Greenwich to the London docks. Those cargoes inspired our Coffee and Chocolate beers. At Meantime we will continue to look to the timeless river to suggest new ideas and flavours to stretch our brewing skills.

Meantime Brewery.


Meantime IPA

India Pale Ales are commonly associated with Burton-on-Trent as the town became the brewing capital of the world on the back of these pale beers because of the gypsum-rich local water.

In fact the style originated in London, and between 1780 and 1820 the East London firm of Hodgson had a jealously guarded monopoly of supply to the growing India market. These beers were characterised by pale malts, long maturation, massive hopping levels and high alcoholic strength. The latter were necessary to ensure the beer survived the long months at sea if it was not to be tipped straight into the harbour at Calcutta – a fate not unknown.

ABV: 7.5%
Meantime are proud to authentically resurrect this great style, making us the only British brewery to brew a true IPA.

Jam packed with English Fuggles and Goldings, the beer is brewed with as many hops as we can physically get into the copper. We then fill the lauter tun with hops for a further infusion and then we dry hop with the beer with even more hops using our own unique circulation process to ensure maximum contact between the hops and the body of the beer. All this gives us a final hopping rate of well over 2lbs of hops per barrel.


London Porter

No fewer than seven malts go into our Porter, helping us recreate a recipe of 1750, specially chosen to bring you the flavours so loved by Londoners that demand for Porter made London the brewing capital of the world. Porter offers light roast malt on the nose and on the tongue a sweetish caramel gives way to a mouthful of smokey, dry maltiness, and an astringency on the finish that comes entirely from the brown, black and chocolate malts, rather than hops; and there are an awful lot of Fuggle hops in our Porter.

A big beer, Porter was a fuel of the Industrial Revolution. It was also the world’s first truly industrial product, that laid the foundations of the modern era of commerce, management and science. This was the beer that put the Great into Great Britain. This bottle conditioned beer will mature with age, as it contains a blend of fast and slow acting yeasts.

Along with Meantime India Pale Ale, Porter is pioneering Meantime’s export drive. In July 2005 no fewer than 30,000 bottles of beer crossed the Atlantic to the US. If George III had sent beer to Boston instead of tea, who knows, history may have been very different.

ABV: 6.5%