The Best New Breweries in the UK

It’s pretty hard keeping up with most trends these days. Should I be on TikTok, is oat milk the new coconut milk, and is reverse yoga even a thing? Craft beer is much the same. Sometimes it feels like you need a personal assistant just to keep tabs on all the new breweries popping up and the new beers said breweries are releasing into the foray. To help you stay sharp, in this piece, I analyse a few of the UK’s hottest new breweries. The knowledge you need to keep up with craft beer nerds lies within.

1) Sureshot

Blossoming from the wreckage of Covid, Sureshot Brewing was something brewer James Campbell always wanted to do – break free from making beer for other people and produce his own. A fairly bold and confident move when competition for tap and shelf space is at an all time high. James backed himself however, having worked as a head brewer at some of Manchester’s most respected independent breweries: James even boasted Cloudwater as one of his former employers.

After a decade of guiding others at the cutting edge of the craft beer world, James decided that it was time to go it alone. To begin with, he launched a set of beers centred around New World hops that announced Sureshot’s arrival.

The initial release was met with a somewhat muted reception. Solid beers for sure, and they didn’t hang about long. But the beers were perhaps lacking some pizazz. James was likely a victim of over-hype and expectation following a star-studded CV, and Sureshot beers have since improved. At the time of writing, Sureshot are finally starting to hit their stride.

CM rating 7/10

Best beer to date: Heavens to Murgatroyd Double IPA. Two classic hops (Citra & Simcoe) make this big old 8% Double IPA sing. A perfect example of where this brewery has got to and where it’s heading.

2) Azvex

Azvex is a fledgling brewery set up within the booming craft beer scene in Liverpool that, at the time of writing, is not yet even a year old. Already Azvex have an admirable rep. Which is saying something given their (lack of) age.

Admittedly, Azvex are one of the more controversial additions to the UK craft beer scene. Founder and figurehead Adam Henderson was one of the founders of Neon Raptor, a Nottingham-based brewery who had, when Covid hit, really started making some noise with their big, hoppy brews.

Lockdown gave Adam a chance to step back and take a breath away from the business after going at things non-stop since 2015. In doing so he started to move away from Neon Raptor altogether. There remains a clear period in history in which the quality of Neon’s hoppy output reduced and, at around the same time, Azvex was born. Sadly I have no insider info on what happened within Neon Raptor, and publicly all was so-say amicable, but the split felt a little like a bad breakup. If nothing else, it was somewhat sudden.

Things hardly became much smoother as Azvex emerged: immediately beef began with the brewery Alpha Delta, whose logo and image undoubtedly bore similarities to that of the new Liverpool-based outlet. Azvex’s nonchalance was bold, but the overriding feeling was Azvex backed themselves as a brewery and didn’t care much that they were rocking boats. Their arrival almost had a Brewdog vibe about it… back when that meant something good.

Overall, the Azvex inception seemed a little messy and strange. Their initial release, much like Sureshot’s, was good but not excellent: an OK and a pretty damn good IPA flanked a somewhat nondescript sour.

Azvex’s next set of beers, however, blew me away, and Azvex has remained at the very top ever since. Their hoppy beers have been off the charts. They’ve delivered huge stouts with mega flavours (obvious comparisons to Neon Raptor’s range were made). And more recently, Azvex nailed a sour that put to bed accusations of the brewery being “good but unable to pull off sours”.

The rate of Azvex’s output has also been impressive. Azvex delivers the goods with a frequency that makes the mouth water and the head spin. It’s testament to the brewery that it already feels like Azvex is up there with Polly’s, Verdant and the rest as one of the country’s best. Again, at the time of writing, this brewery is not yet a year old.

CM rating: 9.5/10.

Best beer to date: Lab Grown Diamonds was the benchmark for their IPAs so far.

3) Baron

Baron popped up from nowhere. One day our chief beer taster Charles (not his official title but pretty accurate!) said he’d had an amazing beer he’d picked up randomly as he’d not heard of its brewer (what a job!). Its brewer, on closer inspection, was an outlet simply called Baron. Our digging revealed Baron was run by someone called Jack on a tiny 1000L kit somewhere in Hertfordshire. I managed to get hold of a lager and a pale ale and tried them both. The lager was (to this day) one of the best I’ve had from a UK brewer and the pale wasn’t far behind. From then on we’ve stocked every brew (in both can and keg) that Baron has made and champion Jack and his wares whenever we can.

Jack says “Baron Brewing is a playground for beer… the next beer will be the best beer.” All we say is don’t leave it to chance: try what you can on the spot and don’t wait around. This is a brewery that’s going places.

CM rating 8/10

Best beer to date: Infinite Monkeys lager. One of the best I’ve had.