We’re Open!

Ghost Whale is now officially open for business. We’ve been working relentlessly for 18 months on an idea whereby the seeds were sown from eye opening visits to both Bitter Virtue nearly 4 years ago (an incredible bottle shop with a massive beer selection in Southampton) and Milroy’s following their refit (a legendary whiskey shop in Soho which is now has a small bar upstairs and a speakeasy cocktail bar downstairs). These business showed us how friendly, inclusive, fun and sociable running a bottle shop/tap room can be and how it can bring people together.

Great craft beer is becoming increasingly woven into our culture. There’s a growing understanding of how there are beers to compliment food, regional styles and breweries that can be associated with travel and an affiliation with music and the arts. We believe there’s a beer for everyone so we set out to make Ghost Whale a place for everyone to compliment these cultural ties through a wide (and ever evolving) stock of amazing independent beer.

We took the keys for an old hair dresser salon at 70 Atlantic Road in Brixton on 4th November 2016 and set about converting it into the bottle shop and tap room that is open today. There followed 5 weeks of intense work, diligently following the plans that our awesome interior designer Naomi Doran developed with us based upon what we set out to achieve and the awesome branding provided for us by I Am Sam Creative. Naomi’s been responsible for designing several of the Draft House bars as well as a slew of pubs north of the river and we’ve been so happy working with her for Ghost Whale. We couldn’t have achieved what we have without the significant efforts, support and patience of our families, friends, girlfriends and a couple of gifted tradesmen here and there.

Now that the doors are open and we’re settling into the day to day running of things, we can start to put our minds to work on getting events in the diary. We’re really keen to curate a wide variety to cover everything Ghost Whale is about, from meet the brewer evenings, themed tasting events, food pairing days and there’s even talk of a record fair. We’re lucky enough to have a really well sized beer garden as well so we’ll be using that shortly. Work will begin on that in early spring so it’s open in good time for the summer.

For now however, our four tap lines are pouring some incredible brews, the growler station is being put through its paces (yes, you can take away litre bottles of any beer from our tap list) and the fridges and shelves are full of around 300 different beers to enjoy in the shop or to take away. You can stay up to date with what’s on tap and in stock on our home page and via Untappd.

Thank you to everyone that has come down in our opening couple of weeks to check out the shop, support us and try some top brews.