Signature Brew: We hated drinking shit beer at gigs and that was the thing driving us forward.
The mission: to create a venue where a collective passion for music, beer, and having a damn good time brings people together.
Signature Brew is a family-owned and operated brewery on a mission to redefine what a brewery can be.
'Don't go to great gigs and drink shit beer' is the vision.
The mission: to create a venue where a collective passion for music, beer, and having a damn good time brings people together.
Cousins Tom Bott and Sam McGregor are the founding fathers of Signature brew. Tom - with his inherited skill and passion for brewing at the family brewery, and Sam - a marketer armed with almost fifteen years of experience in the music industry - came together to marry the two. That’s when Signature Brew was born.
Music makes up the very fabric of Signature Brew. From the microphone beer taps and guitar pick branding to the aptly named beers. Signature's tap room, the main bar and an expansive warehouse are permanent homes to live music throughout the season.
It's 'Taco Tuesday', and the East London sun is beating down on the bar. A steady crowd is settling in the courtyard for today's entertainment - the Glastonbury warm-up. Because who doesn't love a bit of 2004 Oasis?
Tom Bott, Managing Director and Co-founder of Signature Brew, welcomes me with a big smile and asks me what I’ll have to drink.
Beers in hand, we take a seat and I’m eager to hear the journey behind Signature Brew. Tom's got a certain witty candour about him and I immediately feel at ease.
'The business started as what was essentially a two-man show! I'd look after the brewing, and Sam would take care of partnerships and sales' he starts. Then over 6 years, the team grew from 2 to 96.'
'We'd been around for ten years, but the Brewery only really started to kick off in 2015 when we got our first actual premises and stopped exclusively dicking around with bands and musicians.' Tom laughs.
Back then, the brewery looked very different, and SB didn't yet have its own range of beers. So, they partnered with awesome bands or artists, took that beer on tour or to a festival, and engaged with their audience.
It was an opportunity to elevate their message. To change the way people thought about breweries, about beer. They wanted to unite people and redefine what a brewery could be.
‘In 2018, we won the brewery business of the year which became the headline for the second round of fundraising and is what essentially funded the Blackhorse Road brewery.'
‘Little would we realise that a thousand other breweries would open without reason or cause a couple of years later! We hated drinking shit beer at gigs, and that was the thing that was going to drive us forward. And thankfully still does.’
You'll find an exhibition of the brewery's many accolades inside the brewer's bar. Plaques are peppered with well-known artists like Alt-J, Hot-chip, The Darkness, and Enter Shakari, to name a few.
I picture artists I admire sharing a pint of Roadie or Studio lager in the yard bar, and something in me feels giddy about what the guys at Signature brew are creating.
Oblivious to the basics of a brewery, I'm excited to learn more. "So how involved do these bands actually get? I ask. "I mean, I'm sure the concept has been mistaken for a high-profile marketing technique?"
Tom laughs, shaking his head. "It has." But if a just band wants to bang their name on a Signature Brew beer and use it as a bit of a marketing or sales tool, we're not interested."
"One of our obsessions in the early days, which has become part of the fabric of what we do, is that every collaboration must be completely genuine. We only want to work with bands who care about good beer and what we are doing. That's why it works."
From the start, Signature Brew has collaborated with many artists from different locations and genres, they are inclusive in their collabs and agnostic to genre. To me this is true diversity. "Working with Alt-J was brilliant; they return for pints frequently; they even launched our Haggerston venue’.
Tom speaks about wedding invites and dog walks with artists turned friends, and his passion for the industry is evident. "There have been loads of instances where you realise - wow, this has gone beyond just collaboration, we're now mates with these guys! - some of them have even become shareholders, they’ve invested in what we are creating here.
"I remember standing with Hot Chip in the bar downstairs. We made a beer with them for a festival in 2021, and after the restrictions had been lifted, the guys had their first proper pint in months here. It was quite something...watching some grown men enjoy that first drink! Tom chuckles.
I laugh. I remember my first proper pint after lockdown, grinning, it hits different after Covid, doesn't it?" ‘Yes, they were having a moment!'
We both let out an elated sigh.
Discover more of their collabs here and nab some for yourself.
We're sitting in the upstairs office overlooking the brewery, and I admire walls adorned with guitars, music plaques and relics of life on the road.
Outside six huge fermentation tanks tower over a yard bustling with friends of the brewery. There's something so starkly beautiful about how the sun beats down on the galvanised silver giants. I feel a peculiar sense of nostalgia for this place.
'So, talk me through the science of creating the beer itself; what's involved?'
Tom begins, "The collaboration process with the bands hasn't changed much since we started. It's been a concurrent throughout. "
"The first port of call is the tasting sessions which we'll usually capture on video. Sometimes we have a blank canvas tasting session where we’ll use all sorts of beer to see where they might head with that.
"A lot of the time, we'll identify 'okay, these guys love lager, these guys love IPA or stout or whatever. We'll then hone in on that style and go into more detail with that.'
‘Some tasting sessions with bands went on for a long time’ says Tom with wide eyes, and we both laugh.
‘What's next? Have you got the frontmen of these huge bands out here stirring hops?’ I say with a raised eyebrow.
‘Then we'll educate them about beer, from how to taste it to how to articulate what they are tasting. It helps us to understand what they really enjoy. It's about teaching them what we do as a brewery'.
‘Water plays such a crucial part in the overall taste of our beer. Reverse osmosis allows us to replicate the water profiles from anywhere in the world. So from Colorado to the Czech Republic, we can replicate the water, which is perfectly clarified but retains flavour.’
As we speak, I sip on a pint of 'C-sharp. It's super sour, not for the weak-hearted, but just what I like. Brewed with real Sicilian lemons and Citra hops, it's got a natural zesty fragrance and somewhat of a hazy yellow colour.
There's a tremendous amount of knowledge and skill that goes into this, I think to myself, and you can undoubtedly taste it in the beer.
"We try to educate the artists on why we do the things we do. We want them to take away 2 or 3 snippets of 'Now, I understand beer, and I understand what this is all about; when we manage to do that, then that is a good day well spent’ Tom smiles.
Over the last 10 years, London has become a hotbed for craft beers. The scene has exploded, giving a home to over 120 independent breweries. Many of them in East London.
What sets Signature apart is the sense of community amongst the staff, the patrons and the frequent partiers.
Signature has something for everyone, from wrestling to Sunday Jazz to immersive sensory experiences. They’re agnostic toward genre, which means you'll find all sorts of artists and events at the brewery.
The common thread? This is a place for creatives, lovers of music, of meeting over a good beer and lovers of having a damn good time.
Find out more about what Tom and the Signature Brew team are up to here
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