Start at nine in the morning at the Dockley Road end, not at midday at the London Bridge end. The Kernel opens its Saturday shutter at 09:00, the food producers in the same arches open on Fridays and Saturdays only, and the taprooms at the other end of the route do not open until the afternoon. Walk it in that order and the day feeds you; walk it the usual way round and it does not.
The general picture — what a taproom is, how London ended up with a hundred breweries, how to order, what a brewery tour involves — is on our page about craft beer and brewery taprooms. The streets themselves, and everything here that is not beer, sit on our neighbourhood page for Borough and Bermondsey.
This page is about the logistics: the order to walk the arches in, which of them open when in autumn 2026, the three places that solve the food problem, and how not to spend a Saturday looking at shutters.
Planning a Saturday on the arches
- Earliest opening
- 09:00, The Kernel, Dockley Road
- Last to open
- Anspach & Hobday at 11:00; the two Enid Street arches in the early afternoon
- Food, Saturday
- Spa Terminus producers, Maltby Street Market from 10:00, street-food vans at several arches
- Stations
- Bermondsey (Jubilee), London Bridge, South Bermondsey
- Walking
- Flat pavement throughout; about 25 minutes end to end without stopping
- Payment
- Card and phone; several arches take nothing else
Three clusters, not one line
The phrase "beer mile" suggests a single row of doors. It is not. Three tight groups sit along it, each about ten minutes' walk from the next, and knowing which one you are standing in decides what else is within reach.
The Druid Street and Maltby Street group is the London Bridge end: Anspach & Hobday and Southwark Brewing Company under the viaduct, with Maltby Street Market and its food arches a few steps away. This is the busy, photographed end and the one with the most non-beer things to do.
The Enid Street and Stanworth Street group is the middle: Bianca Road and Big Hug on Enid Street, Hiver on Stanworth Street. Bigger rooms, later openings, a good deal more space to sit.
The Dockley Road and Spa Road group is the south-western end, where The Kernel sits inside a working industrial estate surrounded by the food producers of Spa Terminus. It looks the least promising of the three and is the best reason to come.
Beyond all of them, a further fifteen minutes south, Small Beer keeps a taproom on Verney Road, five minutes from South Bermondsey station. It is a separate decision rather than part of the walk.
Photo: Ethan Doyle White · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
Opening times in walking order, autumn 2026
Each line below was read off the brewery's own site in September 2026. They change, sometimes without notice, and a taproom that has had a good Saturday will occasionally close early on the Sunday. Check before you travel.
| Arch | Street | Open |
|---|---|---|
| The Kernel | Arch 11, Dockley Road Industrial Estate, SE16 3SF | Wed–Fri 12:00–22:00; Sat 09:00–21:00; Sun 12:00–20:00. Card and electronic payment only |
| Hiver Beers | Arch 56, Stanworth Street, SE1 3NY | Thu and Fri 17:00–23:00; Sat 12:00–23:00; Sun 13:00–20:00. Closed Mon–Wed |
| Bianca Road Brew Co | 87 Enid Street, SE16 3RA | Wed–Thu 16:00–22:00; Fri 16:00–23:00; Sat 13:00–23:00; Sun 13:00–18:00. Closed Mon–Tue. Street-food traders on site on Saturdays |
| Big Hug Social | Arch 72, Enid Street, SE16 3RD | Closed Mon–Tue; mid-afternoon to late Wed–Sat; Sun to 21:00. The brewery's own table disagrees with itself about Friday, so treat it as opening in the afternoon and confirm |
| Anspach & Hobday, The Arch House | 118 Druid Street, SE1 2HH | Wed 17:00–21:30; Thu 17:00–22:00; Fri 14:00–22:00; Sat 11:00–22:00; Sun 13:00–19:00 |
| Southwark Brewing Company | 46 Druid Street, SE1 2EZ | Tue, Thu and Fri 17:00–22:00; Sat 12:00–19:00; Sun 12:00–17:00 |
| Small Beer | 70–72 Verney Road, SE16 3DH | Fri 16:00–20:00; Sat 12:00–18:00. Brewery tours released seasonally |
Read down that column and the shape of the day appears by itself. Before noon there is exactly one option. Between 12:00 and 13:00 a second and a third open. Everything else is an afternoon proposition, and on a Monday or a Tuesday there is effectively nothing at all.
A Saturday that works
The version below is built around food and daylight rather than around drinking as much as possible, and it ends in central London rather than in an industrial estate after dark.
| Time | Where | Why then |
|---|---|---|
| 09:15 | Dockley Road and Spa Road arches | Coffee and bread from the producers; the food arches are busiest by eleven |
| 10:00 | The Kernel | The only taproom open, and empty. Have a half, not a pint |
| 11:15 | Walk east to Stanworth Street and Enid Street | Twelve minutes on flat pavement, past the back of the estate |
| 12:00–14:30 | Hiver, then Bianca Road or Big Hug | Seats are still available and the street-food traders have arrived |
| 15:00 | Druid Street: Anspach & Hobday and Southwark Brewing | The crowd is here, but you have the afternoon light and a short walk to a station |
| 16:30 | Maltby Street Market, before it closes at 17:00 | Something substantial before the train |
Doing it in reverse — the usual instinct, because London Bridge is the station people arrive at, means the Druid Street arches at their worst, a walk into the empty end, and finding The Kernel closing while you are still hungry.
The cheese shop at the far end shuts at half past two on Saturday and is not open any other day. Neal's Yard Dairy keeps its Bermondsey arch, Arch 10 on Lucey Way in the Apollo Business Park, open on Saturdays from 08:30 to 14:30 and closed the rest of the week. It is the maturing warehouse rather than a shop front, and it is a ten-minute detour from Dockley Road. If you are going to do the beer mile from the west, do this first.
The food problem, and the three things that solve it
Almost no taproom on the route has a kitchen, which is the single biggest reason people end up drunk, cold and cross by four o'clock. There are three answers, and all of them are time-limited.
Spa Terminus is the collection of food and drink producers occupying the arches around Dockley Road and Spa Road. Its own description is that the producers "open their shutters to the public on Fridays and Saturdays", which is the crucial detail: on any other day you are walking past closed roller doors. Among them are Monmouth Coffee's roastery at 3 and 4 Dockley Road, a bakery, a cheesemonger, a greengrocer, a fishmonger and an ice-cream maker. Hours differ from arch to arch, so the site tells you to check each producer individually.
Maltby Street Market, at Arch 46 on the Ropewalk just off Maltby Street, runs Friday 17:30–21:00, Saturday 10:00–17:00 and Sunday 11:00–16:00. It is small, packed at weekend lunchtime and considerably better than its size suggests. Our survey of the city's food markets puts it alongside the others, and Borough Market, fifteen minutes' walk west, is the large-scale alternative.
Street-food vans at the arches themselves. Bianca Road states that traders are on site on Saturdays; several of the other taprooms do the same at weekends and nothing at all on a weekday evening. If you are coming on a Thursday or a Friday night, eat before you arrive.
For coffee that is not part of a brewery visit, our page on where to find a good cup covers the roasteries; several of the names on it have their production arches in exactly these streets.
Friday, and why it may be the better day
Saturday is the one day when almost every shutter is up, and that is exactly its problem: by mid-afternoon the arches are full, the queues at the bar are ten minutes long and the outdoor seats have gone.
Friday from about 16:00 is the quieter trade. The Kernel is open from noon, Spa Terminus producers are open, Maltby Street runs an evening session from 17:30, and Hiver, Bianca Road, Big Hug and Anspach & Hobday all open during the afternoon. What you lose is Southwark Brewing's Saturday afternoon hours, most of the street-food traders, and the Kernel's early start.
Sunday is the third option and the gentlest. Most arches open at 13:00 and close between 18:00 and 20:00, which gives a short, civilised afternoon with no evening crowd, and the earlier closing is a feature rather than a fault.
Two of the web addresses in older beer-mile guides no longer belong to breweries. The domain that once served Fourpure now carries an online-gambling site, and hiver.co.uk is a parked holding page while the brewery itself trades at a different address. A live website is not evidence that a business is still in the arches, and a page with no dated opening hours on it should be treated as an unknown. Moor Beer's visitor page now lists only its Bristol taproom.
What an afternoon costs, and how to keep it sane
Nobody sells a ticket for this and nobody runs it; the route is simply a public pavement. The cost is entirely what you drink, and taprooms price by measure, so a third of a pint costs roughly a third of a pint's price. Budget as you would for a central London pub and assume the stronger beers cost more.
The measures are the useful economy here. A modern taproom board will offer thirds, halves, two-thirds and pints, and four thirds across four arches is a pleasant afternoon while four pints across four arches is not, particularly when a hazy IPA can carry nearly double the alcohol of a standard lager. Order in thirds, check the strength printed beside every beer you order rather than assuming it matches the last one, and eat at the Enid Street stage rather than at the end.
Several arches sell cans and bottles to take away, which is the sensible way to bring home the thing you liked rather than drinking a fourth pint of it. Before you carry anything onto public transport, note that drinking alcohol and carrying an open container are both prohibited across the Transport for London network; our page on alcohol rules in London sets out where that applies.
Doing it with someone who is not drinking
Better than it used to be, and still uneven. Nearly every arch now pours something without alcohol in it, and a few brew their own. Choice is thin and the soft drinks are often cans from a fridge. Our page about a night out without alcohol covers the wider scene.
Children are generally welcome in the early part of a weekend day and much less so after about six in the evening, when the rooms get loud and standing-room only. Dogs are common. Narrow pavements, and delivery vans using the same roadway. Lavatories exist inside the taprooms and nowhere else along the route, so plan the gaps accordingly; and a few arches close up briefly once the room is full.
On allergies: taprooms without kitchens still sell crisps, pork scratchings and sometimes cheese, and the same legal duty applies to them as to a restaurant. Ask to see the original packaging; our guide to allergens and eating out in Britain explains what they have to tell you. Street-food traders are the weak point, because the person cooking is also the person taking payment.
Getting home
The Jubilee line station at Bermondsey sits in the middle of the route and the best exit from the Enid Street end; it is also on one of the lines that runs all night on Fridays and Saturdays, which our page on the Night Tube explains. London Bridge is seven or eight minutes' walk from Druid Street and has everything.
South Bermondsey serves the Verney Road end and the trains run to London Bridge, but the station sits beside Millwall's ground: on a home-match day it is crowded and stewarded, and the walk is not the one to choose if you are unfamiliar with the area. Check whether there is a match before you plan to finish down there.
Two more practical notes. The arches sit under the railway into London Bridge, so weekend engineering work can change which trains run above your head and which station is easiest; and the whole area is a short walk from the riverside, where our guide to pubs on the Thames and our page on Southwark and Bankside pick up where the arches stop. If you would rather sit outside in a garden than stand in an arch, London's beer gardens is the page for that, and if you want to eat afterwards without a reservation, so is our list of restaurants that take no bookings.
Frequently asked questions
What time do the Bermondsey taprooms open on a Saturday?
The Kernel opens earliest, at 09:00. Anspach & Hobday and Hiver follow at 11:00 and 12:00, Southwark Brewing at 12:00, and the Enid Street arches at 13:00 and in the early afternoon. Nothing else is open before noon, which is why walking the route from the Dockley Road end makes the morning usable.
Is the Bermondsey Beer Mile worth doing on a weekday?
Wednesday to Friday, partly. The Kernel opens at noon and several arches open in the late afternoon or early evening. Monday and Tuesday are effectively closed: almost every taproom on the route shuts for both days, and turning up then is the most common mistake visitors make.
Where can I eat on the Bermondsey Beer Mile?
Maltby Street Market on Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday; the Spa Terminus food arches on Friday and Saturday; and street-food traders at several taprooms at weekends. On a weekday evening there is very little, so eat before you arrive or plan to finish near London Bridge.
How far apart are the Bermondsey taprooms?
The main arches sit in three groups. Within a group it is a minute or two between doors; between the groups it is roughly ten to twelve minutes of flat walking. Small Beer, at the southern end near South Bermondsey station, is a further fifteen minutes beyond the rest.
Does a Bermondsey taproom need booking in advance?
Generally no. Most are walk-in, and the busiest simply stop admitting people when they are full. Some now take table bookings at weekends, and brewery tours always need booking, usually weeks ahead and with a minimum age. Check the individual brewery rather than assuming.
Sources
- The Kernel Brewery - shop and taproom hours, Dockley Road (checked September 2026)
- Anspach & Hobday - The Arch House opening times (checked September 2026)
- Southwark Brewing Company - tap room hours (checked September 2026)
- Bianca Road Brew Co - visit us (checked September 2026)
- Big Hug Brewing - Big Hug Social, Enid Street (checked September 2026)
- Hiver Beers - taproom, Stanworth Street (checked September 2026)
- Small Beer - taproom and brewery tours, Verney Road (checked September 2026)
- Spa Terminus - producers and public opening (checked September 2026)
- Maltby Street Market - opening hours (checked September 2026)