The South London Beer Festival comes to the Tooting Tram & Social on Sunday March 19th, noon to 6pm.

The event will be a celebration of South London craft beers and breweries, showcasing a selection of breweries, all from south of the Thames.

The idea comes from local craft beer/beer festival-loving Jennifer Allen (AKA Lady Pub Diaries) after living in South London for the last 9 years and seeing the rise of craft beer breweries and bars (and having worked in a few) in the area.

Jennifer says, “an interest in craft beer has recently been created, breaking new limits for flavour, strength and unfiltered beers. Beer has gone from being just a pint of lager of a lifeless pint of ale, to more of a taste sensation of hops, colours and flavours. Some say that craft beer has now taken over from wine in the way it is drank and matched with food. There has been a 8% rise in craft breweries over the last year, with now around the 1,700 in the UK. It seems craft beer is here to stay and will continue to rise!”

The South London breweries confirmed for the festival are:

By The Horns – Tooting
Rocky Head Brewery – Earlsfield
Earth Ale – Balham
Mondo Brewery – Battersea
Bullfinch Brewery – Herne Hill
Canopy Brewery – Herne Hill
Gipsy Hill Brewing Company – Gipsy Hill
Brockley Brewery – Brockley
Villages Brewery – Deptford
Anspach & Hobday – Bermondsey
The Cronx Brewery – Croydon

Craft Tooting (bottle shop and bar) in Broadway Market will also have a stall selling various South London beers by the bottle, with gift packs and goodies to take home.

Food will be available from The Chilli Man, a Tooting resident, and Plot Kitchen from Broadway Market with two others to be confirmed.

The event will also raise money for The MS Society UK. Jennifer is aiming to raise over £1000 on the day, which will also support her sponsorship for the London Marathon. Jennifer has been busy training and organising events for this charity close to her heart. Jennifer is hoping to raise at least £2000 in time for the marathon on 23rd April 2017.

Free advance tickets are now all gone, but there will still be limited space on the day.

The beer festival will finish at around 6pm, but the Tram will remain open until midnight with their usual retro video games night and a Signature Brewery tap take over. The retro video games will be available throughout the day, for free.

Beer stalls will be on two levels.

Families, children until 7pm, dogs are all welcome.

There is disabled access only to downstairs.

The event is free but donations will be kindly accepted on the door.

Follow Jennifer on Twitter to hear announcements of other breweries and food traders.