Temple Brew House / The Essex Street Brewing Company

We were pulled into the place like a neutron into a collapsing star — one minute dodging tourists on some sanitized street in London, the next inhaling sideways into a narrow vein off the main drag, barely wide enough for sanity to follow. There was a stairway, stone or steel — doesn’t matter — what matters is that we ascended first. A trick. The bait. A gleaming altar of brewing equipment right there at street level, gleaming like relics from the Church of Fermentation.

Then came the drop. You descend into Temple Brew House. A plunge into the undercroft. A ritual. Down into a low-slung, square chamber — the kind where monks might've once bled demons or British civil servants drink to forget about them. At the far end, rising like a monument to symmetry and sin, a massive rectangular bar commands the room. Perfect geometry. In this temple, beer is the sacrament, and the bar is the altar.

Behind it? A tap list so wide it should’ve required a permit. Casks stretched across the horizon — a horizon conveniently capped by the end of the bar, assuming your eyes, like your ambitions, are myopic. House beers, guest taps, things you'd never heard of and things you'd forgotten you loved. No frills. No pomp. Just steel, pressure, and the quiet hum of controlled chemical reactions that end in revelation or ruin.

And then came the food — a Scotch egg, of all things. I ordered it on a dare from no one but myself, which is the most dangerous kind of gamble. Wrapped in what I can only describe as a meat exoskeleton, deep fried by the ghost of Churchill’s hangover, it arrived with the confidence of a dish that knows it's better than you.

I worked through a handful of pale ales, each sharper than the last, each brewed with the kind of precision that would make a German engineer sweat. A dark beer followed — smooth, brooding, possibly prophetic. It whispered things I’m still trying to translate.

We drank under the soft glow of ancient physics. At our table, scratched into the raw metal, was the Schrödinger equation — iħ ∂Ψ/∂t = — the fundamental expression of quantum uncertainty. A cosmic joke in chalk, the perfect annotation to a night that couldn’t decide if it was sacred or profane. We weren’t sure where we were going, or when, or if we’d already arrived. But we were observed. And so we were.

I left not drunk enough to storm a harbor, but far too content to care. The fog wrapped around me like an old coat. London pulsed just out of reach. And the temple stayed behind, waiting for the next pilgrim foolish enough to wander in with eyes wide and liver willing.

God help them.
And pour them something cask-conditioned.

Visited with my wife during our honeymoon in London and Paris.

Tried the following beers:
Camden Town Camden Ink (draft)
The Kernel Pale Ale Mosaic (draft)
Beavertown Gamma Ray (draft)

All were drinking great. Also enjoyed a really nice meatloaf and mashed potato dinner. My wife liked her burger, fries, and wine. Service was top notch, as the bartender was very engaging and happy to answer questions. Our overall experience was fantastic, and we would certainly come back.

This is my favorite find in London so far, and I've been a bunch of places for ale. It has an American brewpub feel about it (even more so than BrewDog Camden), but with several cask ales in addition to other draughts. I had a cask Pacific Pale Ale, which was the most flavorful cask ale I've yet had - a bit hop-forward (in a citrussy, not dank, way), and quite cold for a cask. They have pub food, but it we were there mid-afternoon and didn't partake, so I can't speak to that. Nice basement space, large and uncrowded, despite being so close to the Old Bailey, with its crowds of besuited lawyers.

At the time of my visit to London, American style craft beer taprooms where still hard to come by. This nice spot was one I was lucky enough to visit. Nice mix of English pub and American taproom. Beers on cask and draft. Pretty average, but drinkable. Food was really good and I loved the mix of the two cultures.