Crate Brewery, Hackney Wick

My Saturday afternoon was spent lounging in the sunshine at CRATE Brewery. The Brewery is about a three minutes walk from Hackney Wick overground station and is located on the canal. There are plenty of large outdoor benches, which makes this place ideal for visiting in groups. All the benches look over the canal and the boats so with the ducklings and birds it can become pretty picturesque for East London.

They have a main bar inside as well as a barge bar on the canal so you can choose, which is more convenient or which has the shortest queue to order from. The bar is all made from recycled materials such as ladders and railway sleepers, which is pretty cool. There is lots of wood and metal around so has an industrial feel, which suits the local area perfectly.

This is a real working brewery so tuck into a wide and interesting range of beers and ciders. Or, break the norm completely and work your way through several bottles of prosecco with your girlfriends, which I think was £17 a bottle but this became a little hazy half way through the afternoon! The best part of this place though is the pizza. They serve up wood fired pizza's in about 20 mins and they are amazing! The menu is a little out there but everything we tried was great, especially when needed to soak up prosecco! Give the middle Eastern lamb a shot, they were super generous on the lamb mince and everything combined really well! The sage and truffle is also very good as is the courgette, feta and red onion. I think one pizza can be shared between two as they are large and they come sliced on wooden boards so are super easy to tear and share between friends.

You can take tours around the brewery and they have an event space to hire for large parties. However, you cannot beat relaxing by the canal in the East end sunshine sipping a drink and gorging on pizza with a large group of friends sitting comfortably on a bench. This place is really busy so head down early for a good spot and be prepared to wait in line at the bar. It will be so worth it though and is a great place to gossip all afternoon long.