We’re raising our pint glasses to the women who make Crate Brewery what it is. From the kitchen to the bar, behind the scenes to front of house, there are some incredible powerhouses who drive Crate forward every day. Jess, Founding Director  Since day one, our founding director Jess has been building our mini-empire here in Hackney Wick. Crate started as an idea during the 2012 Olympics and has grown into a vibrant canal-side venue that's proudly rooted in sustainability, creativity, and community, and is built for connected experiences and memory making. Jess showcases the ways in which good ideas...

It’s bold, it’s rich, and it has a history as deep as its colour. From roots as a nourishing brew for hardworking folks, to becoming a staple of the modern beer world, stout has come a long way in its lifetime. In this blog post, we’re diving into the history and recent buzz around stout, touching on Guinness’s marketing genius that has strengthened the drink's popularity among new and diverse beer drinkers, and finishing with a quick look into our very own version of a classic.  How it started In 17th-century England, ‘stout’ didn’t mean dark beer - it meant...

Welcome to Silo's fermentation factory! It’s soon to be a hive of microbial activity, creating macro waves on the food waste frontier. 

The output? So far, CRATE’s delicious Amazake and Gooseberry Sour. Using koji to produce amazake - a sweet, low alcohol fermented rice elixir - and adding it to the gooseberry sour beer brew really rounds out the sharpness, creating a subtle and more full drinking experience. 

Craft beer trends of late have seen us demanding for yet more flavour from our regular order. Perhaps due to the inescapable cost of living crisis, many are opting for high quality, savourable pints - if we’re spending our hard earned cash on nice-to-haves, we want to know they’re going to be delicious! Enter the hazy pale… Hazy pales generally have low bitterness and a full, edging on fruity profile, with a touch of sweetness and, as the name suggests, a degree of haze.  The haze factor in hazy pales can be anything from just off transparent, all the way...

The world of sustainability has moved on from ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’. Nowadays, two more guiding “Rs” are incorporated: ‘Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot’. With this in mind, single use wine bottles have stumped many green-minded hospitality businesses. Recycle sounds like problem solved, sure, but what about the energy required to take a wine bottle away, turn it back into sand, only to rise from the ashes as a very similar looking wine bottle? With no or few other options to Refuse or Reduce (short of not drinking wine at all - the horror!), Sustainable Wine Solutions - the brainchild of...

Mention Japanese Knotweed and you're likely to trigger unlucky homeowners up and down the country. First introduced in the 1800s as an ornamental plant, knotweed quickly thrived - much to the distress of anyone in ownership of a smooth piece of driveway or load bearing wall. Structured like bamboo, knotweed is expert at punching through infrastructure to an alarming degree: it'll devalue your home by thousands if it's found in the vicinity.  Also like bamboo, if handled with care it can be reimagined as a delicious and interesting ingredient - the Japanese have been onto this for centuries. If you can't beat...