Brewpub Near Me in Colliers Wood: Wimbledon Brewery's Saturday-Only Tap

The Wimbledon Brewery tap is only open on Saturdays, from 11am to 4pm, and cask ale pints cost £5. It sits in Unit 8 of College Fields Business Centre, 19 Prince Georges Road, London SW19 2PT, about a five-minute walk from Colliers Wood station on the Northern line. The rest of the week the building is a working brewery, so the Saturday tap is the only time you can drink beside the tanks. For anyone in south-west London looking for a brewpub near me that brews on site, plan around that one day.

The name goes back to William Cook, who started the original Wimbledon Brewery in 1832 on Wimbledon High Street, where the old fire station stands today. He also ran the Brewery Tap beer house next door, at a time when there were 115 breweries in the London excise district. In 1880 William Quartermaine took over and built a five-storey tower brewery, then the tallest building in Wimbledon.

On 2 January 1889 a fire gutted the tower. It destroyed all the brewing equipment, but the main structure survived. The modern brewery uses that story in its logo, which shows the tower, a phoenix, barley and hops. The current site has an older connection too. The brewery notes that it is on the land of Merton Priory, which brewed throughout the Middle Ages, and that William Watney ran a brewery in Wimbledon in the eighteenth century before his family built the Watney empire.

The recipes come from consulting master brewer Derek Prentice. He has brewed at some of London's best-known breweries, including Truman's, Young's and Fuller's. He has received the SIBA lifetime achievement award and was named Brewer of the Year for 2013 by the British Guild of Beer Writers. He is a Diploma Master Brewer and a Fellow of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling. The brewery says his favourite of its beers is Common Pale Ale.

The rest of the brewing team are qualified brewers with ongoing training, and the house style is described as beautifully balanced rather than extreme. That suits a Saturday session. You can drink two or three pints over an afternoon without being knocked flat by double IPAs or heavily fruited sours.

The core range covers most drinkers. Wimbledon Pale and Wimbledon Lager are the everyday options, Common Pale Ale is the master brewer's pick, and Plough Lane is another pale ale. Cascadia is a West Coast pale ale for hop fans, and Kaiser is a Vienna lager for anyone who wants something maltier. For autumn, Copper Leaf Red Ale arrived in five-litre kegs in the brewery shop from 14 October.

The strongest beer is XXXK, an Armagnac barrel-aged barley wine at 10.5 percent. The 2025 vintage sells in 75cl bottles from £25.95. At the bar, start with a £5 pint of cask, which is the main deal of the Saturday tap. Then move on to a keg beer and finish with a small glass of the barley wine if it is open. Skip the larger takeaway kegs unless you have a party to bring them to, because a five-litre keg costs £27.50 to £29.50.

On selected Saturdays the brewery runs two one-hour tours, at noon and at 2pm. Tickets cost £22 through DesignMyNight, where the listing shows the next date as Saturday 7 November 2026 followed by ten more Saturdays. A team member walks you through the brewing process. You get a glass of cask beer from the cold store, a glass of keg beer poured straight from the conditioning tank, a taster of the XXXK barley wine and a Wimbledon glass to take home.

The tour is for over-18s only. Arrive fifteen minutes early, because the guide will not wait. Wear sensible shoes, since open toes, flip-flops and stilettos are not allowed in the brewery. Once you have booked a tour voucher it is non-refundable, and you need to give at least 48 hours' notice to change the date. The noon tour is the better choice, because you finish at 1pm with three hours of tap time still ahead of you.

The brewery's own pitch tells you who it expects: people coming to grab minikegs and gin refills, and people coming for what it calls a cheeky pint. On tour Saturdays, the noon and 2pm groups often stay on at the tap afterwards with their new Wimbledon glasses in hand. The brewery calls the tap a little party paradise tucked in the middle of an industrial estate. Treat it as a relaxed afternoon pub rather than a late night out.

Because the tap closes at 4pm, there is no evening session to fall back on. If you arrive at 3.45pm you will only have time for one pint. The shop is open Monday to Friday from 11am to 5.30pm for cans, kegs and polypins, but you can't drink on site on those days. Weekdays are a working brewery, and the team asks visitors to take care on the site.

From Colliers Wood station, it is about a five-minute walk to College Fields, a business estate rather than a high street. Look for Unit 8 inside the estate. The address to put into a map app is 19 Prince Georges Road, SW19 2PT. Inside and outside space can be hired for private events through the brewery's enquiries email.

To make a day of it, start at Merton Abbey Mills by the River Wandle, close to the old Merton Priory land the brewery mentions in its history. Then arrive for the noon tour and stay at the tap until closing. If you would rather keep drinking later in the evening, Wimbledon town centre has plenty of pubs, but this tap's beer is best fresh on site.

Address: Wimbledon Brewery, Unit 8, College Fields Business Centre, 19 Prince Georges Road, London SW19 2PT. Email: enquiries@wimbledonbrewery.com. Tap room: Saturdays only, 11am to 4pm, with £5 cask pints. Shop: Monday to Friday, 11am to 5.30pm. Brewery tours: £22, noon or 2pm on selected Saturdays, over-18s only, closed-toe shoes required. Nearest station: Colliers Wood, Northern line.

Karpo can remind you on Friday that the Saturday tap is on, and suggest an evening pub in SW19 for after it closes.