Brewpub Near Me in Kentish Town: Camden Town Brewery Under the Arches

A pint of Hells Lager costs £6.90 at Camden Beer Hall, and it travels about twenty metres from the conditioning tank to your glass. The bar sits inside the original Camden Town Brewery at 55-59 Wilkin Street Mews, Kentish Town, London NW5 3NN, tucked into Victorian railway arches directly beneath Kentish Town West Overground station. If you typed brewpub near me anywhere between Camden Market and Hampstead Heath, this is the one that brews its flagship on site, opens at noon every day, and takes card only.

The brewery's own history page tells the founding story with a straight face. Jasper Cuppaidge, an Australian, missed his flight home, ended up collecting glasses in a London pub, and later pinched a For Sale sign off a tired building in Hampstead. He bought it and reopened it as The Horseshoe in 2006. In 2007 he brewed a cask ale for his mother, Patricia, based on a recipe from his grandfather Laurie McLaughlin, who once ran McLaughlin's brewery in Rockhampton, Australia.

That beer, called Mac's, sold so well that Cuppaidge needed a proper brewery, and a trademark clash forced a new name. He registered camdentownbrewery.com in 2009, then spotted arches being refurbished under Kentish Town West and rented five of them. Brewing started in spring 2010, and the first batch of Hells arrived that autumn, a cross between a German Helles and a Pilsner made with German malt and hops. The company is now part of AB InBev, but the arches remain the original Home of Hells.

The current draught list prices every core beer at £6.90 a pint, £3.45 a half and £2.30 a third. That covers Hells Lager at 4.6%, an Unfiltered Hells poured hazy from the tank, a 4.0% Pale Ale with American hops, Eazy Hazy IPA at 5.0%, and a 4.0% nitro Stout with a thick creamy head. Order thirds if you want to compare the filtered and unfiltered Hells side by side, because the difference in body is the whole point of drinking here.

The specials column runs £7.40 a pint. Recent taps include Off Menu IPA at 5.8%, built on Simcoe hops and a clean Californian ale yeast, an Italian Pilsner at 5.1% dry hopped with German noble hops, a banana-and-clove Hefeweizen at 5.6%, and Jam Sandwich, a 4.5% fruited sour made with British strawberries and raspberries. Beers from the Arch 55 series, which the brewery describes as brewed under the arches, rotate through here before they show up in cans.

Friends who do not drink beer are covered, though not cheaply. An Aperol Spritz or Negroni costs £12, a 175ml glass of Sicilian Grillo is £8.50, and the alcohol-free option on draught is Firebrand Shorebreak, a gluten-free hazy pale at £6.50 a pint. Honest advice: skip the wine list here. You came to a working brewery, and £8.50 buys a Hells plus most of a third of Unfiltered Hells to compare it with.

Tours run through the brewery's FareHarbor page at £31.50 per adult, fees included, and last 75 to 90 minutes. You start with a half pint, move into an air-conditioned room for a guided tasting of five beers, then walk the brewhouse floor and finish with a full pint of your choice. Groups top out at 26 people, everyone must be 18 or over, and the ticket gets you 20% off Patio Pizza at the bar on the same day.

Read the dress code before you book. Long trousers and closed shoes are mandatory on the brewery floor, so shorts, skirts, tights and sandals are refused, and staff cannot always supply spare footwear. Arrive 15 minutes early. Dogs are welcome in the Beer Hall but not on the tour, so plan a sitter. Bookings can be cancelled for a full refund up to 48 hours ahead, which makes it easy to lock in a Saturday slot early.

Food comes from Patio Pizza, a resident kitchen that mashes New York and Neapolitan styles into a thin, crisp, chewy base; its own site quotes The Times naming it among the top 20 pizza places in the UK. The catch is timing. Patio serves dine-in Wednesday and Thursday from 4pm to 9pm, Friday and Saturday from noon to 9pm, and Sunday from noon to 7pm. On Monday and Tuesday the taps run but the oven does not, so eat beforehand.

Hoppy Hour runs every Friday from 5pm to 8pm, when every Camden beer served by the pint drops to £5. That is the busiest window of the week, with after-work groups filling the heated patio by 6pm. If you want a bench without hovering, book a table through the brewery's DesignMyNight link or come on Saturday at noon, when the hall has just opened and tour groups have not yet spilled out of the tasting room.

The crowd tracks the brewery's own rules. Tour groups in mandatory long trousers drift back to the bar clutching their free pint and a pizza discount. Dog owners treat the hall as a stop on the walk between Kentish Town and Primrose Hill, because the brewery explicitly welcomes four-legged regulars inside. On Fridays the office crowd arrives for £5 pints, while weekend afternoons bring friends playing table football under the curved brick ceiling with the occasional Overground train rumbling overhead.

Turn south and the brewery is about ten minutes on foot from Chalk Farm Underground on the Northern line, which drops you onto Chalk Farm Road beside the Roundhouse, the round Victorian engine shed that now hosts concerts. Keep going and you reach the Camden Lock and Stables market buildings along the Regent's Canal. Doing the walk in this direction means you finish at the market food stalls rather than starting your beer session hungry.

Heading north instead, ride the Overground one stop west from Kentish Town West to Gospel Oak, which sits at the foot of Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath. The climb takes a few minutes and the view over central London is the classic reward. A good loop is a morning on the Heath, back down to Gospel Oak, one stop to the arches for noon opening, and a Patio pizza on Friday or Saturday when the kitchen runs from midday.

Hours are noon to 10pm Monday to Thursday and Sunday, and noon to 11pm on Friday and Saturday. The venue is card only, with cash refused, and a discretionary 12.5% service charge is added to table bills, all of it passed to staff. The listing notes wheelchair access, accessible toilets, a heated outdoor terrace and no door charge, and the hall is 18 and over.

There is no on-site parking and the surrounding streets are residential, so take the Overground to Kentish Town West, which lands you right above the bar, or walk ten minutes from Kentish Town or Chalk Farm on the Northern line. If the Friday crowd is two deep at the counter, order a round of thirds instead of pints; they come out faster and let a group work through the whole tap list together.