London-based Pillars Brewery took home four awards at the 2024 London Beer Competition: Pillars Hop Lager and Pillars Helles won gold awards; Pillars Pilsner and Pillars Icebock 23 were awarded silver.

Following their success at the event, we contacted the company to gauge their opinion of the competition and to find out how the awards had benefitted their business.

I started by asking them about the brewery and how it all started.

“We are Pillars Brewery, a specialist craft lager brewery based in Walthamstow, east London. Established in 2016, Pillars was the first craft lager brewery in London. We started as a family business and remain a team of family and close friends, driven by a mutual love of lager. 

“Lots of people drink lager; in fact two of every three pints bought in the UK are lager! Yet, not everyone is proud to admit that they like it. We want to change that. There is a lager for everyone at Pillars!”

According to the brewery, a good lager is: “well balanced, full-flavored and refreshing; it may taste simple but lager is a sophisticated and refined beer style. 

“Getting it right takes practice, knowledge, specialist equipment, and quality ingredients.  Lager brewing is an art, but there is no snobbery here at Pillars, just great beer.”

Their lager is brewed in a traditional Bavarian-styled brewhouse and they tailor the water profile for each brew using their own water treatment plant, which produces award-winning lagers — a fact borne out by their success at this year’s competition. 

The owners were aware of the London Beer Competition having initially entered the competition in 2021.

Given Pillars Brewery’s passion for lager, their motivation to enter this year’s competition was to put their products up against the best in the industry: “We feel confident about our product and believe we are brewing some of the best lagers in the UK. 

“We enter competitions to showcase what we can do and with the hope that we can achieve the recognition we feel our products deserve.”

The impact on the company of winning the four awards has been very positive: W”e get a lot of love from our customer base for products, so it is so nice to get support from the beer world through awards too. 

“We also feel that it helps legitimize and create trust in our products for new customers.”

Pillars Brewery is justifiably proud of its awards, which have been communicated on its website, in blogs, and across its social media platforms.

Whilst the owners were delighted to win the awards, I wanted to know what was their impression of the competition.

Their response was unanimously positive: “We feel that the London Beer Competition is a great competition to enter and you can see that by the caliber of entries. 

“We only choose to participate in awards that well-respected breweries are entering too.”

Looking to the future the brewery would like to increase awareness in the capital and across the UK.