"Is this place a brewpub?" is a question we get asked more than you'd think, usually when someone's trying to work out whether the venue they've read about online is the same kind of thing as the railway-arch taprooms we visit on our tours. It isn't, quite - a brewpub is its own distinct category, sitting somewhere between a normal pub and a working brewery, and understanding what actually separates it from a taproom or a microbrewery helps you know what you're walking into before you order. Here's what a brewpub is, how the term differs from the other bits of brewery jargon that get thrown around loosely, and what to expect if you visit one.
What is a brewpub, exactly?
A brewpub is a pub or restaurant that brews its own beer on the premises, primarily to sell and serve there rather than to bottle, can or distribute widely to other venues. The key word is "pub": a brewpub is run first and foremost as a hospitality business - proper seating, a kitchen, a full food menu, regular pub opening hours - that happens to have a small brewery built in, often visible through a window behind the bar or down in the cellar. That's the opposite emphasis to a working brewery that also runs a bar, which is closer to what our guide to what a taproom actually is covers.
Because the beer is usually brewed in relatively small batches specifically for that one site, brewpub beer tends to be about as fresh as it gets - often served within metres, and sometimes days, of leaving the tank. Many brewpubs only sell their beer on their own premises, which means a beer you love at one won't necessarily turn up anywhere else, a genuine point of difference from a brewery whose cans reach supermarket shelves.
Brewpub vs taproom vs microbrewery vs pub
These four words get used almost interchangeably in casual conversation, but they're describing different things - ownership, scale and business model, not the same spectrum:
- A pub buys in beer from many different breweries and sells no beer of its own. Food and drink are the whole business.
- A brewpub is a pub that also brews its own beer on site, usually alongside beer bought in from elsewhere too. It's run with full pub hours, food and seating as standard.
- A taproom is a brewery's own bar, pouring mostly or only its own beer, often with limited food and shorter, brewery-led opening hours rather than full pub hours. Our taproom guide goes into this in more detail.
- A microbrewery describes scale rather than business model - a small, independently owned brewery, whether or not it has any kind of bar attached at all. Some microbreweries sell only to pubs and shops and have no public tasting space; our guide to microbreweries, nano, regional and macro breaks the size tiers down properly.
The overlap that confuses people: most brewpubs are also microbreweries by production scale, and plenty of taprooms sit at a similar size too. But the terms describe different things - a brewpub is defined by running as a pub, a taproom by being a brewery's own shopfront, and a microbrewery by how much beer it makes - so a venue can genuinely be more than one of these at once, or none of them despite looking similar from the street.
A short history of the brewpub
Brewing beer on the same premises where it was served is, in one sense, the oldest model there is - most pubs brewed their own ale until industrialisation and improved transport let large regional and national breweries supply pubs more cheaply from a distance, and home and pub brewing largely died out through the 19th and 20th centuries. The modern "brewpub" as a named category re-emerged as part of the real ale and craft beer revival, when small operators began installing brewing kit inside existing pubs again, partly as a reaction against the handful of large national brewers that dominated British beer through the mid-20th century. The UK's Firkin chain, which grew through the 1980s and 90s with on-site brew kit visible behind the bar, is one of the better-known examples of the format being popularised at scale, even though most of those sites have since closed or changed hands.
Since then, the brewpub idea has ebbed and flowed alongside the wider craft beer boom, and it now sits as one recognised format among several - taproom, bottle shop, brewpub, contract brewer - that make up the modern independent brewing scene our own guide to what craft beer actually means covers in full.
What to expect when you visit a brewpub
A brewpub visit feels much closer to a normal night at the pub than a brewery visit does. Expect a proper food menu rather than just a street-food trader outside, comfortable seating rather than bench-and-hatch railway-arch styling, and opening hours that match a regular pub - lunchtime through to last orders most days, rather than the "open Friday evening and Saturday only" pattern common at brewery-run taprooms. The beer list usually mixes the pub's own brews with a handful of guest beers from elsewhere, so you're rarely limited to only what's brewed on site.
The brewing kit itself is often part of the draw - many brewpubs deliberately put the tanks somewhere visible, behind glass at the bar or down a staircase, so you can see roughly how much beer is being made even if you're not getting a full guided tour of it. Don't expect the same depth of brewing explanation you'd get from a dedicated taproom or tasting tour, though - staff are generally pub staff first, so questions about hop varieties or mash temperatures are more hit and miss than at a venue built specifically around tutored tastings.
How this compares to what we do on our own tours
We don't run a brewpub ourselves - our model is a guided, tutored tasting tour through several independent breweries' own taprooms rather than one fixed pub with brewing kit in the corner. Our Bermondsey Beer Tasting Tour (£49pp, 2-3.5 hours, tastings included) takes you through four taprooms along the railway arches of Bermondsey, starting at Southwark Brewing Co, 46 Druid St, with a guide explaining the beer and the brewing behind it at every stop rather than just pouring pints. If you'd rather pair tasting with proper food, our Cheese, Meat & Beer Tour (£65pp, Saturdays, 12pm-2:30pm) covers that ground, and our Hackney Wick Craft Beer Experience (£41.25pp, selected Saturdays) runs the same idea through east London's canalside taprooms. All three work for private groups from six people up to 60 or more via our private and group tours page, and we've been doing this since 2014 - long enough to have a genuinely informed view on how a brewpub, a taproom and a full tasting tour each deliver a different kind of day out.
If you're planning a visit around London and trying to work out which format suits you, our roundup of the best breweries in London, area by area is a useful next stop - it covers taprooms across several neighbourhoods, brewpubs included where they genuinely fit the bill.
Our honest take
"Brewpub" is a useful word once you know what it's actually promising: a full pub - food, seating, regular hours - that also brews its own beer on site, rather than a working brewery with a bar bolted on. Neither format is better than the other; they're built for different afternoons. A brewpub suits a relaxed meal with a pint brewed metres away. A taproom suits chasing the freshest, most experimental beer straight from an independent brewery's own tanks. And a guided tasting tour, which is what we do, suits anyone who wants both the beer and the story behind it explained properly as they go. A gift voucher for any of our tours, bought directly on our gift vouchers page, is delivered by email instantly and never expires - a solid present for anyone who'd enjoy a proper introduction to London's independent beer scene.