A founder who could not resist.

Siren Craft Brew is based at Finchampstead, near Wokingham in Berkshire. The Brewery History Society’s wiki records that it started brewing in early 2013, and the company dates its birth to 2013. Its founder is Darron Anley. A Barclays business feature in March 2020 described how he came to brewing after a spell of home-brewing, took advice from Californian brewers, bought a 5,000-litre brewhouse and hired a professional brewer; one tip he passed on was “Whatever size brewery you think you need, double it.”

The name is a story about that decision. The company says the sirens of Greek mythology lured mariners with songs whose voices wove into a complex, layered melody, and that its brewers work the same way, combining four ingredients that “interact together in magical ways.” It says the idea grew from Anley’s enthusiasm for the modern, flavour-forward beers emerging around 2010, and that despite his efforts to resist, “the call of starting up a brewery persisted.” In a 2017 feature in Foodism, the company’s marketing manager put the founding a year earlier, in 2012, the year the business was set up.

The company states its aim as introducing “exciting, full-flavoured and forward-thinking beers to as many people as possible,” and says its philosophy is to make the beer it wants to make, sourcing ingredients “regardless of cost.” It says its first brew was Maiden, a barrel-aged barley wine, which began what it calls its “love affair with barrels”; Maiden is still released every year, and Beer Today listed it among the anniversary beers in April 2026. Blended barrel beers sit in a range the company calls Odyssey.

A hook in the S.

Siren’s identity is built around its name. The company says that once the beer was settled, the challenge was “elegantly telling our story on each and every bottle,” and that it did so with the help of an illustrator, whom it does not name. It says it does not use design “to shout the loudest,” but to “draw people in with intrigue.”

The clearest example is the letter that begins the name. The company says “The famous Siren ‘S’ even has a subtle barb at the end — now you’re hooked!” Foodism, in a February 2017 feature on beer label art by Jon Hawkins, explained the hook the same way: a nod to the sirens who pulled sailors off course, and to the pull that brewing exerted on Anley. The marketing manager, Andy Nowlan, told the magazine that the brand tries to draw people in rather than shout above a crowded market, and that “the beer is always the starting point.”

Siren’s labels also appear as a case study by the label printer MCC, which lists flexographic printing, white screen printing, a “no-look” label material and a special cutter shape.

The company also runs collaboration series. It says it started the International Rainbow Project in 2013, pairing breweries from around the world to make beers inspired by the colours of the rainbow, and later added Project Barista, which explores coffee in beer. It says its brew schedule included more than 100 different beers in 2023.

Craft beer and its owners.

The seven brands in this group are all British craft brewers: Camden Town Brewery, Thornbridge, Magic Rock, Siren Craft Brew, Tiny Rebel, Harviestoun and Lost and Grounded. They began as small, founder-run businesses, but they have travelled very different roads since — some remain in their founders’ hands, while others have been sold, licensed or bought back.

Camden Town Brewery was founded in London in 2010 by Jasper Cuppaidge, in railway arches beneath Kentish Town West station, according to English Wikipedia; AB InBev has owned it since 2015, after a sale announced that December. Thornbridge brewed its first beers in 2005 in outbuildings at Thornbridge Hall in Derbyshire and opened a larger brewery in Bakewell in 2009, English Wikipedia says. Harviestoun was started by Ken Brooker in a farm barn near Dollar, in Clackmannanshire — in 1983, English Wikipedia says — and moved to Alva in 2004; Caledonian bought it in 2006, and in April 2008 long-standing shareholders bought it back to keep it independent, The Morning Advertiser reported.

Magic Rock was founded in Huddersfield in 2011 by Richard Burhouse. The Australian brewer Lion took full ownership in 2019, Lion’s UK business passed to Odyssey Inns in 2022, and in January 2025, after administrators were appointed and the Huddersfield brewery closed, Keystone Brewing Group took an exclusive licence to produce the brand, Just Drinks reported. Tiny Rebel was founded in Newport in 2012 by the brothers-in-law Brad Cummings and Gazz Williams and moved its brewing to Rogerstone, in Newport, in 2017. Siren Craft Brew was set up in 2013 by Darron Anley at Finchampstead in Berkshire, and in April 2026 Anley told Beer Today that it was “still independent.” Lost and Grounded was founded in Bristol by Alex Troncoso and Annie Clements and says it was established in 2016.

A brewery’s identity is carried by its pump clips, cans and labels as much as by its beer, and those can outlast changes of owner or even the brewery itself. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its beer is brewed and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A breakfast stout, and still independent.

Siren’s best-known beer is Broken Dream, a breakfast stout. On 7 August 2018, at the opening of the Great British Beer Festival at Olympia in London, the Campaign for Real Ale named it its Champion Beer of Britain, CAMRA’s own news site reported. The Morning Advertiser gave its strength as 6.5 per cent, quoted CAMRA’s Nick Boley calling it “dangerously drinkable,” and quoted Anley saying the win was unexpected, because the team had not fully understood how the competition’s categories worked. The company says Broken Dream was one of its first beers, and that it works with a coffee specialist to choose the coffee in it — so carefully, it says, that the coffee costs more than many breweries spend on hops for a hoppy beer.

The business has grown around Finchampstead. Barclays reported in 2020 that it employed 37 people there and exported to more than 15 countries, including the United States and Japan. In April 2026 Beer Today reported that more than 700 people came to the brewery for its 13th anniversary, built around the theme “Superstitions,” and described a Tap Yard beside the brewery and a flagship bar in Reading.

Siren has stayed independent, its founder says. Speaking at that anniversary in April 2026, Anley described the brewery as “still independent,” Beer Today reported. The company also says it has grown from a team of three.

For a design guide, Siren Craft Brew shows how a single idea — a myth about temptation — can shape a name, a letterform and a whole way of talking about beer. Compare BrewDog, the Scottish craft brewer founded in 2007, and Fuller’s, the London brewer that sold its beer business in 2019. For this guide we use deep-water teal, brass and a sail-cloth cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Siren Craft Brew’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.