Guinness Open Gate Brewery London hosts team socials, product launches, award nights, live podcasts, private dinners and Christmas parties, with a private dining room for 24 guests and the Guinness Vaults for presentations and seated performances. The brewery is at 1 Mercer Walk in Covent Garden, in central London, and combines a working brewhouse with bars and restaurants.
Seminars and company events
The Guinness Vaults is the venue's private event space. It can be set with rows of chairs for a presentation, a talk, a live podcast recording or a performance, which suits a product launch or an internal briefing followed by drinks. The venue lists corporate gatherings, team socials, award nights and product launches among the events it runs, and it handles Christmas parties at the end of the year.
For a smaller group, the private dining room works for a meeting over a meal or a client dinner. Private brewery tours are also available for up to 16 guests, an option for a team outing, a client visit or the start of an evening event.
Weddings and receptions
The brewery does not list weddings. It hosts birthdays, celebrations, intimate dinners and parties in its event spaces, and it can discuss special requests with organizers.
Rooms and capacities
The Guinness Vaults is the room for audiences: chairs in rows facing a stage area for talks or performances. The venue does not publish a capacity for it online.
The private dining room is fully enclosed. It is laid with a single long table for 24 guests and has its own private bar and a lounge area where guests can mingle before sitting down.
The site also includes Gilroy's Loft, The Porter's Table and Old Brewer's Yard, which are the brewery's restaurant and bar spaces. They supply much of the food served at private events.
Catering
Food and drink come from the brewery's own kitchens and bars, so there is no outside caterer to coordinate. Guinness and Guinness 0.0 are poured on tap, next to small-batch beers brewed on site. Event menus can draw on oysters from Gilroy's Loft, pies by the chef Calum Franklin and canapés from The Porter's Table.
In the private dining room, the set menu is chosen by the chefs and brings together signature dishes from the on-site restaurants. It is served as sharing plates: classic cuts, charred vegetables and fish, and freshly baked pies. A bespoke menu can be arranged on request.
History and setting
Open Gate is the name Guinness gives to its experimental breweries, where brewers test new recipes in small batches before any wider release. The London brewery brings that idea to Covent Garden, a few streets from the Royal Opera House and the theaters of the West End. Guests at an event see beer being brewed in the same building, which gives a launch or a team night a clear theme without extra decoration.
Getting there
Covent Garden and Leicester Square Underground stations are each a few minutes' walk from Mercer Walk, and Charing Cross mainline station is close by. Heathrow and London City are the nearest airports, both linked to central London by rail. The area is pedestrian friendly, so guests usually arrive on foot or by Tube rather than by car.
