Shoreditch gets pitched as one thing — a big, loud East London night out — but there's a genuinely good pub crawl hiding inside that reputation if you know where to walk. We put together our round-up of London's best pub crawl routes a while back and Shoreditch made the list for good reason: it packs proper old East End boozers, converted railway arches and a fair few craft beer bars into a compact, walkable patch around Old Street and the Brick Lane fringes. Here's the fuller version — a route that actually balances "pub" against "bar" rather than tipping into one or the other.
Why this route works
The area works because it's genuinely small — everything on this route sits within about 20-25 minutes' walk end to end, bookended by Old Street station at one end and Spitalfields/Liverpool Street at the other. That means you're never stranded if part of the group wants to peel off early, and you're never more than a few minutes from the next stop. The trick with Shoreditch specifically is pacing the proper pubs against the newer bars and taprooms — go all-bar and the night starts to feel like one long stretch with no texture; go all-pub and you miss what makes the area interesting in the first place. This route deliberately alternates between the two.
Stop 1-2: Old Street and Rivington Street
Start at Old Street station and head towards Great Eastern Street. The Old Blue Last is the obvious opener — a proper old East End pub, above which Vice magazine famously had its offices for years, with live music most nights and a crowd that skews young and loud. It's a good "arrive here, get your bearings" stop rather than somewhere to linger over a slow pint. From there it's a short walk to The Griffin on Leonard Street, an unpretentious, slightly scruffy pub with karaoke nights that's stayed exactly the same while everything around it has been converted into something trendier — a useful contrast this early in the route.
Stop 3-4: Redchurch Street and the craft taproom stretch
Head south towards Redchurch Street and the character of the crawl shifts from classic pub to craft beer bar. BrewDog Shoreditch on Bethnal Green Road is a reliable stop if you want a proper flight of craft beer rather than a standard pub lager — expect a rotating tap list and the usual BrewDog house style, loud and unapologetically hop-forward. Boxpark Shoreditch, the converted shipping-container mall a couple of minutes away, is worth a look even if you don't stay long — it's less a single venue than a cluster of small bars and food stalls under one roof, useful if different people in your group fancy different drinks.
Stop 5-6: Towards the Brick Lane fringes
This is where the route earns the "old boozers" half of the title. The Commercial Tavern on Commercial Street is a genuinely eccentric, well-loved pub with a warm, cluttered interior that's a world away from Boxpark's polish — a good place to slow down. Push on towards Spitalfields and Brick Lane's northern fringe and you'll find The Pride of Spitalfields, a small, old-fashioned East End local near Brick Lane that's stayed proudly unchanged — dogs on the floor, regulars at the bar, none of the Shoreditch sheen. It's a deliberate change of tempo to end this stretch on.
Stop 7: A last one near Spitalfields
If the group's still going, The Water Poet on Folgate Street is a solid final stop before you're a short walk from Liverpool Street station — a big, comfortable pub with a decent beer garden that's a good place to sit down properly after a few stops on your feet. It also puts you within easy reach of the Central, Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines if the night's winding down, or Shoreditch High Street's Overground platform if you're heading further east.
The Sunday variant
Shoreditch on a Sunday is genuinely a different day out, and worth planning around rather than just doing the weekday route a day late. Brick Lane's Sunday markets bring big daytime crowds through the middle of the day, so if you're combining this with a market visit, treat the market as the first half and don't expect much elbow room in pubs right on Brick Lane itself until mid-to-late afternoon once the stalls start packing up. Several bars around Redchurch Street and Boxpark tend to run shorter Sunday hours than during the week, so it's worth checking a venue's own site or social media on the day rather than assuming weekday hours apply — this is the one part of the route where "just turn up" is more of a gamble than usual.
Timing, hours and practical tips
Friday and Saturday nights bring Shoreditch's reputation to life in the least relaxing way possible — expect queues, table minimums at some bars and a genuinely loud atmosphere from mid-evening onwards. A Thursday evening or an early Friday start, before about 7pm, is noticeably calmer and lets you actually get served without a scrum. As with any area this popular, venues change hands, refurbish or shift their opening hours more often than you'd expect, so treat the specific pubs and bars named here as a strong starting point rather than gospel — a quick check of a venue's own website or Google listing on the day is always worth it. If you're bringing a group of more than six or seven, it's worth calling ahead to the busier stops, especially BrewDog and Boxpark on a weekend evening.
Pubs vs bars — picking your balance
If you only remember one thing about doing Shoreditch well, make it this: decide upfront whether your group wants "proper pub" energy or "craft bar" energy, and build in stops from both rather than defaulting to whichever is nearest. The old boozers — The Griffin, The Commercial Tavern, The Pride of Spitalfields — give the crawl its character and its best conversations. The newer bars and taprooms, including BrewDog and the Boxpark cluster, give it variety and, frankly, more interesting beer if that's what you're after. Our guide to London's historic pubs goes deeper on the heritage side of that split if old boozers are more your thing than craft taprooms.
How this compares to a guided crawl
Half the appeal of a Shoreditch crawl is the freedom to skip stops, linger wherever you like and follow whichever backstreet looks interesting — there's no fixed schedule, and that's very much the point. Where a guided tasting tour earns its keep is when "a pint at each stop" isn't quite what you're after and you'd rather have a proper tutored tasting with someone who actually knows the breweries. That's the gap our own Bermondsey Beer Tasting Tour fills — 2-3.5 hours, £49 per person, beer included, across four independent taprooms in the Bermondsey railway arches, starting at Southwark Brewing Co, 46 Druid St. If Shoreditch's mix of old pubs and newer bars has whetted your appetite for East London more broadly, our round-up of unusual things to do in London covers some of the same offbeat, locally-run territory a bit further out, and our Camden pub crawl route is the closest comparison if you want to weigh Shoreditch's bar-heavy energy against Camden's more traditional, canal-side crawl.
Bringing a group
A Shoreditch crawl is a solid format for a birthday or work social precisely because it doesn't need booking months ahead — pick a start time, a meeting point, and let people join along the route. If you'd rather have something more structured for a bigger group, we run private tastings for parties of 6 up to 60+ people, and gift vouchers for our tours are bought directly on our gift vouchers page, delivered instantly by email and never expiring — handy if someone on your list would rather have a guided taproom afternoon than another round of Shoreditch bars.