A Dalston brewery whose name honours its humble origins – a single 40-foot shipping container in a Dalston yard
The Prat’s economics desk cracks open a fresh one at 40ft Brewery, a Dalston brewery whose name is a proud badge of its humble beginnings: it started life, quite literally, in a single 40-foot shipping container in a Dalston yard. The naming desk loves an origin story worn openly on the label, and this is a fine one.
The container in the name
“40ft” refers to the standard forty-foot shipping container – the great steel box that carries the world’s cargo across the oceans – in one of which the brewery first set up its tanks and began to brew. To take that origin as the name is a genuinely charming piece of honesty: rather than dressing itself up with something grand or historic, the brewery celebrates the modest, resourceful, make-do-and-brew spirit in which it began. It is a name that tells the truth about where the beer comes from, and wears its bootstrapped roots with pride.
The container economy
The naming desk salutes the wider phenomenon the name reflects. The shipping container has become one of the great enablers of the modern independent economy – cheap, sturdy, movable and endlessly adaptable, these steel boxes have been turned into everything from street-food stalls to shops to studios to, here, breweries, offering affordable space in which small, creative ventures can take root. In an expensive city, the container has given countless start-ups their first home, and a brewery that began in one, and named itself for it, is a small monument to that scrappy, resourceful spirit of enterprise.
Dalston’s craft-beer scene
40ft belongs to the flourishing craft-beer culture of East London, which has colonised the yards, arches and industrial corners of the area with independent breweries and taprooms. What gives this one its particular charm is its origin and its honesty – a genuine local brewery, grown from a single container into a beloved neighbourhood institution with its own taproom, brewing fresh beer a stone’s throw from where it is drunk. Its strong rating reflects a devoted following of local beer-lovers.
Fresh from the source
The naming desk savours the particular pleasure of drinking a beer where it is made. There is a real difference in beer enjoyed at the brewery tap, fresh from tanks a few feet away – a vividness and character that the long journey to a distant bar can dull. The rise of the brewery taproom has given drinkers access to that freshness as never before, and a small local brewery like 40ft, brewing and pouring in the same Dalston yard, offers it at its very best. To drink a 40ft beer at the 40ft taproom is to taste it as fresh as it can possibly be, and the naming desk counts that among the finest pleasures the craft-beer age has to offer.
The verdict
A rating of 4.6 across some 178 reviews marks 40ft Brewery as a genuinely well-loved spot with a devoted following. A Dalston brewery named for the single 40-foot shipping container in which it began is the economics desk’s kind of honest, bootstrapped heritage. The Prat orders a fresh pint at the taproom, admires the make-do-and-brew spirit behind it, and toasts the humble container that started it all.
