The Top 19 Beer Bars Near KPH
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Rank 1. The White Horse
Beer Bar
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Twenty-five seats and no reservations, which means the beer is doing all the heavy lifting on busy nights. This cozy craft beer bar on Goodge Street mixes old-pub bones with pops of color from newer furniture. The tap list leans international and pleasantly obscure, served in vessels so elaborate that one requires a credit card deposit, presumably because someone, somewhere, walked off with it.
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Rank 3. Old Red Cow
Beer Bar
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Rank 4. Draft House Northcote Road
Beer Bar
The original outpost of the Draft House chain, a specialist beer bar on Northcote Road where the tap list runs to around 18 rotating draught options and north of 40 bottles. The staff know their brewing methods, their glassware, and what pairs with what, so being lost is fine. The crowd leans toward the kind of people who read long articles about things and feel strongly about them, but they're having a good time regardless.
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Rank 5. Lost Angel
Beer Bar
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Rank 6. The Porterhouse
Beer Bar
A 200-year-old Irish clock rescued from a town hall anchors the center of this sprawling Covent Garden pub, which runs across several levels and roughly 13,500 square feet of copper pipes, rivet-covered steel, and brass fittings. The beer list runs to around 180 bottles from around the world, plus nine unpasteurised draught ales brewed by the Irish owners back in Dublin. It's the kind of place where choosing a round takes longer than drinking it.
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Rank 7. The Alma
Beer Bar
A monumental island bar runs through the center of the ground-floor saloon, and everything else follows from that fact. This is a Young's pub, so the draught list leans on the brewery's own lineup plus guest ales from Sambrook's and Twickenham, ten or so taps in total, nothing wildly adventurous but nothing to complain about either. It's a proper Victorian pub on Old York Road, the kind of place Wandsworth locals have been using as an excuse not to go home for generations.
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Rank 8. The Princess of Shoreditch
Beer Bar
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Rank 9. The Rake Bar
Beer Bar
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Rank 10. The Lexington
Beer Bar
The menu opens with a Lincoln quote about beer and God, which sets the tone pretty well for this Islington bar on the corner of Pentonville Road. American craft bottles line up alongside a solid draught selection, but the real draw is the bourbon list, which runs to over fifty bottles and generates the kind of quiet, decisive ordering you see when regulars already know exactly what they want.
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A corner pub on the south bank, one building shy of Tower Bridge, with a beer list that leans hard into cask and craft. The room has been freshened up from its former smoke-stained self, lime green seating and all, though the bones of an old London boozer are still there. Tourists coming off the bridge mix with local office workers who'd rather not admit they work next to the Mayor.
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Rank 12. The Dean Swift
Beer Bar
A corner pub in Bermondsey where the Victorian bones are still visible under a liberal coat of white paint, with crystal chandeliers doing their best to class the place up. The beer list leans heavily London-brewed, and the room fills fast with warehouse-flat residents and office workers who treat it like a local because it is one. Named for the satirist dean himself, which feels right for a pub that doesn't take itself too seriously.
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Rank 13. Brew Wharf
Beer Bar
Three railway arches behind Borough Market, and each one earns its keep: the first holds a bar counter lined with gleaming pumps, the middle an open kitchen and glass-fronted beer cellar, the last a view of the actual brewing vessels. It's a beer hall and microbrewery with a walled yard out front, simple wooden tables throughout, and bare brick rising to arched ceilings. The kind of place where the pint comes from the building you're sitting in.
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Rank 14. The Britannia Pub
Beer Bar
Betty Boop perches at the end of the bar like she owns the place, which more or less sets the tone. This unpretentious Bermondsey local hides over a hundred single malts behind an otherwise ordinary pub facade, drawing hospital staff and office workers who clearly need a drink more than a scene. Old church pews and beaten-up leather sofas ring the central bar, and the food is priced for people on an actual budget.
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Rank 15. The Kings Arms
Beer Bar
Candles stuck in wax-crusted bottles flicker under mismatched lampshades at this Tooley Street local, which has the look of a pub that never quite decided whether to go gastropub or stay a straightforward boozer. It landed somewhere in the middle, and mostly that's fine. The cask ales are the reason to come, with a rotating handful on tap and Green King IPA holding down a permanent stool at the bar.
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Rank 16. The Jolly Butchers
Beer Bar
A curtain just inside the door does a surprising amount of heavy lifting, shifting the mood from Stoke Newington high street to somewhere vaguely central European. This Hackney ale and cider house packs its tables with people in their late twenties and thirties who take the draught list seriously, and they have reason to: real ales, craft beers, stouts, lagers, and ciders stretch across a bar that nearly spans the room.
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The shutters go up on Saturday mornings and that's the only schedule that matters here. Kernel is a craft brewery tap under a Bermondsey railway arch, open one day a week, where you can taste before you buy and then stay to drink in a makeshift beer hall next door. Mismatched furniture, no frills, and a crowd that arrived knowing exactly what they wanted before they walked in.
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Rank 18. The Blacksmith's Arms
Beer Bar
A brass plaque on the bar marks the waterline from the 1928 flood, which tells you something about how long this Fuller's pub has been absorbing local history. It's an old-school neighborhood boozer on the Rotherhithe waterfront, the kind where regulars nurse pints of Fuller's ale without checking the ferry schedule. Nelson is said to have stopped in while his ship was fitted out nearby, though the pub isn't the sort to make a fuss about it.
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Rank 19. UnderDog
Beer Bar
The entrance is a hinged picture frame in a stairwell that appears to lead nowhere, which sets the tone pretty well. UnderDog is a low-lit, deliberately scuffed speakeasy-style cocktail bar tucked beneath the Bethnal Green BrewDog, and the brewery doesn't advertise it at all. Just ask to be taken downstairs. The drinks lean toward beer, as you'd expect given the parentage, but the hidden-door theatrics justify turning up curious.