The Craft Beer Co. Hammersmith — Restaurant in London

Unfortunately I had a bad experience here on 5/7/25. Was with a friend, she ordered a pint of Brulo on draft and I was interested in the selection of AF cans they had. Originally had a fruity gose, but it had lots of floaty bits when poured into a glass. Then realised that the best-before (BB)* date on the bottom of the can was 28/04/2024. I took it back and, with an apology, it was exchanged for a different fruity AF beer. But when I sat back down and checked the label that was BB 10/24. So I went back to the bar and was offered a third AF can, duly inspected and BB 08/24. They weren't even checking the cans before offering me the replacements! The server admitted to being (rightly!) very embarrassed and said they didn't sell many AF beers. However, I think that's a pretty poor excuse as a basic stock-check should've identified these being past their best-before dates way before I was served them. I was then offered a low-alc option (3.4% table sour) which I was told was "on the house", although no refund was offered given my friend had already paid for the round. She'd drunk her pint by the time this was sorted, so I took the can and we left. We'd been looking for somewhere to get food, but she agreed when I said "we're not eating here". *I'll admit I'm not usually precious about best-before dates, they're a guide and not about safety. But I'm pretty sure it's against the law for an establishment to sell items past their BB without disclaiming it. And these ranged from being 9 months to over a year past their best. Which is...

Have been in a few times since opening. Pros: Nice (unusual) decor. Very polite and knowledgeable staff. Beers are overall pretty good. Cons: Very limited realistic wine list. 5 whites, 3 reds but 11champagnes of which most are over £60 and 4 of these are over £200. Seems to me to be a misread of the Hammersmith demographic. After all this is billed as a craft beer bar. Additionally, this pub is in a shopping centre/bus/tube station. More reasonable and greater selection of affordable wine would be practical. The beer should be rotated more. If the selection is "curated" then new types and styles more often might be in order. Kitchen doesn't open until 5pm! Why is that not in the website and why are there menus out all the time. Perhaps in time it might mature but for now teething pains are evident. Hopefully it won't go down the road of their Leather Lane pub which used to be great and is now just a loud tired and not overly clean neighborhood pub of little note.

UPDATE: They have now removed the menus from the tables when the kitchen is closed. And they have, unfortunately, added a DJ some evenings. Not sure why. The bar is too small and the DJ too...

Went to the craft beer company in Hammersmith for a drink sometime before lockdown. Pleasant experience otherwise, the food and the service are high quality. Thank you to Kieran for his warmth and friendliness, hopefully he and the chef have found somewhere better to work since.

What I could not get over is seeing how the boss of the establishment spoke to his employees. Being seated close to the bar itself I was treated to this spectacle for long enough. John I recall his name was. Without asking he butted into a conversation I was having at the time to introduce himself and make nice about beers.

His use of sarcasm and veiled rudeness when one of the employees did something minor wrong was appalling. I was also amazed that I caught him remarking on what seemed to be a younger potential employee that he was interviewing as “giving him a chubby”, poor Kieran had to smile and laugh awkwardly. Probably in order to keep his own job from this old pretentious hipster man child. This moment has stuck with me since as no other pub I have been to have I ever seen...