no. 062 | Pressure Drop
Next in our run of revisits is a brewery from Tottenham Hale. Pioneers of London’s brewing renaissance, Pressure Drop has new people in charge, with a familiar face from Canterbury running the brewhouse.
When we first featured Pressure Drop back in November 2022 (batch no. 015), the brewery had just turned ten. It had grown from a garden shed in Stoke Newington to a railway arch in Hackney, and then to a 20-barrel brewhouse on Mill Mead Road. Nearly four years on, the kit, the cold room and the commitment to packaging everything in-house are all still there. The people at the top, however, have changed.
Founding directors Ben and Sam have handed over the reins to husband-and-wife team Tim and Sienna. “While we were sad to see Ben and Sam go, it’s been a big and exciting internal change,” Elly from the Pressure Drop team tells us, “and everyone is looking forward to seeing where Tim and Sienna take us next.”
Neither of the new owners is new to the brewery or to the industry. Sienna has headed up Pressure Drop’s marketing for the best part of a decade. Long-time subscribers may recognise Tim’s work too: he was previously head brewer at Floc., our feature brewery for batch no. 020. Both had always wanted to run a brewery of their own. Taking on one they already knew and loved, and putting their own stamp on it, was too good an opportunity to pass up.
They’ve inherited a tougher city than the one Pressure Drop grew up in. “It’s no secret that the past few years have been hard on the London beer scene,” they say, “with lots of beloved independent breweries shutting down or being sold to macros.” They put it down to a saturated market and the rising cost of, well, everything. Pressure Drop has felt that too. The Experiment, the Hackney railway-arch bar it ran with Verdant (batch no. 050), closed in 2023 when the lease came to an end. The team’s response has been to get creative with how they market their beer, “while ensuring that we never compromise on quality.”
Closer to home, the Tottenham taproom remains the brewery’s anchor. Pressure Drop continue to support local charities and community groups. They also run discount schemes for locals and host a calendar of events, from Spring Fling to the Summer Sour Sesh, that bring the neighbourhood together over a shared love of craft beer.
Ask what the team are proudest of and the answer goes back almost to the beginning. Bosko, their 6.5% West Coast IPA, has been brewed once a year for twelve years, and the 2026 edition was unanimously voted the best yet. “It feels good to continue to make something that we love so much and see, and taste, a visible improvement as the years go by.”
That fits the brewery’s longstanding ethos of making beer they’d love to drink themselves. “Taste is subjective,” they admit, “but as long as we love it, we hope the customer will end up loving it, too.”
Demand has shifted along with the landscape for craft breweries. Some smaller customers have grown massively while others have closed. Meanwhile, British craft beer’s reputation abroad keeps growing, and Pressure Drop have recently shipped beer to Denmark and as far as Japan. Now at the helm, Tim is keen to diversify the tank line-up, which should mean more specials in the future.
That appetite for new things is shaping what comes next. The portfolio is expanding, and it now includes cask beer for the first time. “We’re excited to diversify our offering and bring something new to the table,” they say, “so watch this space!”
Looking back on the years since their first batch feature, the team sums it up neatly: “We’ve obviously had a lot of internal restructuring, but in reality, we’ve pretty much stayed exactly the same: dedicated to making really good beer.”
Shop the Pressure Drop beers from this month’s batch.