Beer Merchants Tap
Cave Direct, the importer that has been bringing Belgian beer into the UK since the 1970s, opened this Hackney Wick taproom in February 2018 as the physical arm of its Beer Merchants retail operation, which means the cellar gets first call on the rarities.
Why go
The room runs 20 keg taps and 2 cask pumps with more than 500 bottles and cans behind them, rotating constantly. The distinguishing hardware is the lambic cage, where rare Belgian bottles age on site, and the Good Company Blendery, a lambic-inspired project the venue bills as the first of its kind in the UK, blending naturally inoculated wort from Wild Beer Co, Burning Sky and Duration. Food stays deliberately simple: cheese and meat platters from artisan producers and bar snacks, so the beer carries the visit.
Order this / avoid
- Order: work the Belgian end of the list, lambic and gueuze you will struggle to find poured anywhere else in London, then something British and fresh off the keg wall. Take a bottle home; the fridge doubles as a shop.
- Avoid: arriving hungry for a full meal. The kitchen is platters and snacks by design.
What locals & experts say
- CAMRA: active listing headlined by the hardware,
20 Keg Lines,
at 99 Wallis Road.3 - Imbibe (2018): the Tap opened as the physical manifestation of online retailer Beer Merchants, under importer-distributor Cave Direct.2
- Winerist Magazine: the blendery is
the first of its kind in the UK,
with a lambic cage aging rare bottles.4 - Local rec: flagged to Jeff through a craft-beer Facebook group. REAL.
Good to know
- Timing: open daily; from noon Thursday to Sunday, from 3pm early in the week, closing 11pm (10pm Sunday). Verified on the venue site July 2026.
- Booking: walk-in, with reservations possible for groups; the mezzanine, blendery and garden hold 200-plus.
- Getting there: one minute from Hackney Wick Overground, canal side.
Craft signals (beer: rotation at bottle-shop scale)
Two signals and they are both large numbers. CAMRA records the room as the taproom of an online bottle shop carrying around 1,000 different beers, with two handpumps whose cask varies by style and twenty keg lines behind six fridges3. Untappd's verified stats log 7,230 distinct beers here against 98,999 check-ins and 635 in the last month, the deepest distinct-beer count of any venue checked in this pass6. That is a buying operation with a bar attached, and the bar inherits the buying.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: Craft beer fb rec
Verdict
should-visit — For beer specifically, this is a detour-worthy room: the UK's biggest Belgian importer pouring its own book through 20 lines, a cage of aging lambic, and a blendery producing spontaneous-style beer on site. Nothing else in London stacks that combination; the food is deliberately minimal, so it ranks as a drinks destination.