Inside the Brewery Fighting Water Poverty with Beer

When I moved to East London a few years ago, I naively imagined it to be a place full of traditional East End boozers with locals propping up the bar, sharing tales of run-ins with the Kray twins. I hoped for DIY tap rooms headed by unassuming beer nerds, filled with friendly neighbours sharing casual after-work pints. Sadly, I soon realised that drinking in this part of the capital would be more likely to involve overpriced cocktails served in an adult ball pool or sipping from a tin can at a horribly misjudged prison-themed bar. Simply going for a drink wasn’t enough—there had to be a novelty spin.

But after a recent move to Leytonstone, a borough further east of Central London, I came across a railway arch that might have fulfilled my drinking den dreams.

Pretty Decent Brewing Co. is run by James Nida, a lifelong beer lover who previously worked in the charity sector. Taking over a railway arch on a quiet street in Forest Gate, one side is filled with brewing tanks and the other functions as a small bar, complete with fairy lights. In the middle are a few pieces of ramshackle furniture that Nida made himself from wooden pallets.

“I’ll be honest with you, my mum made the sofa cushions,” he tells me.

As I try one of Nida’s stouts—which, I can comfortably say, is the nicest stout I’ve ever tasted—I marvel at how he managed to cram a working brewery and taproom into such a small space. And all by himself.

“It’s probably half the size of the next smallest brewery I know of, which is the biggest challenge at the moment,” Nida admits. “But that’s kind of the beauty of making beer, you can make 10,000 litres or 10 litres, as long as you take the same care for it and go through the right processes you can make exceptional beer.”

The idea of brewing beer came to Nida when he first moved to London and went on a night out with his brother.

“I tried a beer and suddenly realised you could get more than just Heineken on tap,” he says. “I even remember the beer, it was called Southville Hop by Bristol Beer Factory. I remember at that moment I was like, ‘Fuck, you can drink this, instead of that.’ And that kicked if all off.”

From there, Nida’s love of beer turned into an obsession. A kitchen-absorbing home brew set led to working one day a week at a microbrewery in Croydon. After a while, he realised that his friends were giving genuine compliments about the taste of his beer, and not just out of politeness.

“I realised people were actually enjoying it and asking for more, and not just being kind while really wanting a bottle of BrewDog.”

The last thing Nida wanted to do with his beer was overcomplicate it. It had to be something that fitted with his own drinking habits.

“I’m not someone that would try 20 different beers in a night, I liked to find my home with one or two,” he explains. “So I wanted to make beer that you could sink all night. It needed to be simple, accessible and sessionable.”

With a background in the charity sector, Nida also wanted Pretty Decent to be about more than making a profit.

“Water and access to water is one of the greatest privileges we’ve got, and also one of the fundamental gateways to development in the developing world,” he says. “If I’m a brewery, it’s an absolute privilege to have enough water to make beer when a lot of people don’t have it, so I decided to give away 15p from each beer to Pump Aid, whose whole approach is focusing on locally built and locally designed pumps and wells in Sub-Saharan Africa.“

Giving such a large portion of each sale to charity is admirable, especially when you consider that Pretty Decent has been in existence for less than a year. But Nida is already thinking about expansion.

“You wouldn’t believe the number of people that come in here and think it’s helpful to quote that 90 percent of business go under in their first year,” he laughs. “But yeah, the aim is to find some more investment, expanding it, and getting someone else on board.”

Currently, Pretty Decent is a one-person operation. Being in charge of everything in a brewery is a daunting task. Nothing can be compromised, from the amount of hops in the beer to the business plan. Nida is responsible for it all, which means that when he does decide to bring someone else on board, it's crucial that they understand the ethos of the brewery.

“The worst thing I can think of is some hipster behind the bar being stand-offish,” he says. “There’s no theme to this bar, if families want to come and bring in their kids and they decide to pull all of the things off the walls, great! If people want to bring dogs in, great! Louie who just came in brings his 90-year-old great uncle. I just want this place to be accessible.”

But until that time comes, it’s Nida on his own. It seems like a scary prospect, spending months crafting a beer, then offering it to a customer to try right in front of you. What if they hate it?

“Nothing leaves my shelves that I’m not really, really happy with myself,” says Nida. “I mean, I’ve got a batch that I haven’t quite hit the levels of aroma that I want on it, and that’s 400 bottles, but I’m not going to sell it. It’s going to sit there and chances are, I’ll end up drinking it myself.“

Unlike the Shoreditch novelty bars, Nida really cares about what customers think of his beer. And he’s not taking them for granted.

“It sounds cheesy, but it’s a real privilege that someone would choose to come here instead of their local pub,” Nida says. “I will always try to explain the beer to people that decide give us a try, whether that means nerding out with someone about hops and yeast strains, or just recommending the closest thing we have to San Miguel. Anyone that comes through these doors is allowed to taste whatever they want before they buy it. I know I’d be the same if went somewhere new.”