This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
Declaring any city Britain’s best for beer would be ridiculous. There’s no objective measurement. But the name that endures, in any pub debate on the subject, is Manchester. Set in England’s North West, a region with an ingrained love of real ale — traditional, cask-conditioned, hand-pulled beer — Manchester took an enthusiastic interest in the hop-forward flavours emanating from the US craft beer scene, from the late 00s onwards. And it did so as a property boom was about to transform Manchester city centre, and a wave of new bars and breweries opened as thirsty young professionals flocked to the city.
Breweries such as Cloudwater, Track, Runaway, Blackjack and numerous smaller outfits, embraced the stylistic freedom of craft beer — a wild new world of NEIPAs, sours, fruited gose and barrel-aged beers — with such vigour and skill that Manchester was soon being talked about alongside global craft beer hubs, such as Copenhagen and Brooklyn. Launched in 2012, Manchester’s annual Indy Man Beer Convention, held in a disused Victorian-era swimming baths, saw the world’s best breweries pour alongside their Mancunian colleagues.
Manchester’s scene of brew taps and specialist bars continues to proliferate and diversify. There’s little you can’t find, from niche barrel-fermented, mixed-fermentation ales at Balance Brewing & Blending to Bundobust Brewery, the Gujarati restaurant that brews its own beers on site. And excellent beer flows way beyond central Manchester, too. The adjoining city of Salford is home to several incredible breweries including Pomona Island Brew Co., Marble Brewery and Strange Times, while an ever-growing network of bars and micropubs, often created in ex-high street shops, has taken craft beer right across the Greater Manchester region.
Travelling north-to-south, you could journey as far afield as Rochdale’s award-winning pub The Baum and Altrincham’s Libero, a tiny beer and football bar, drinking amazing beer at all points between. And, at each of Manchester’s main railway hubs, you can step off the train into a specialist beer bar, the Piccadilly and Victoria Taps.
Older drinkers argue that this is less revolution, more a renaissance for good beer, in a city with malt and hops in its DNA. Manchester’s once iconic Boddingtons Brewery, said to have given the city its taste for dry, hoppy pale ales, is long gone but, as writer Matthew Curtis, author of Manchester’s Best Beer Pubs and Bars (CAMRA Books), observes, it’s rare in still hosting four of its historic, family-owned local breweries: Joseph Holt, JW Lees, Hydes and Robinsons. Each of these pubs has promoted real ale across Greater Manchester since the 19th century. Stop at any of their venues and raise a glass — of Holt’s bitter or cult favourite, Robinson’s Old Tom 8.5% barley wine, first brewed in 1899 — to those who paved the way for the city’s now thriving beer ecology.
Port Street Beer House offers an impressively broad selection of ales, showcasing many of Northern England’s best brewers.
Photograph by Manc Wanderer
Port Street Beer House
One of Britain’s pre-eminent beer bars for over a decade, the Northern Quarter’s Port Street Beer House is set across two floors and has a small urban beer garden. It serves a staggering array of ales, from obscure saisons in 75cl sharing bottles and sought-after imports like limited edition 9% DIPAs to seven impeccably cellared real ales showcasing Northern England’s best brewers. Look out for meet-the-brewer events, new beer launch parties and fledgling breweries road-testing their work on the small first-floor bar.
The Smithfield Market Tavern
Opened in 2015, the Smithfield successfully executes that contradictory concept: the modern, traditional pub. The interior is simple and handsome. The lighting is warm. There’s a busy dartboard, a billiards table and a mixed, all-ages crowd, many arriving here from neighbouring food hall, Mackie Mayor. The pub also attracts beer geeks, given it serves a large selection of keg and cask beers, many from owners Blackjack Brewery, whose summer brew tap is also worth visiting. Don’t miss the 3.8% Irk Street, a classic clean, citrussy session pale, and Blackjack’s satisfyingly complex, West Coast-influenced, Salvation IPA.
Track Brewing Taproom is one of several must-visit taprooms located in the industrial area behind Piccadilly Station.
Photograph by Stefan Melbourne
A taproom tour
Planning a Manchester pub crawl is easy. The city centre is relatively small and its good beer venues come in handy clusters. For example, the industrial estate behind Piccadilly Station is home to railway arch brewery-taps from Sureshot, which has proclaimed the area as the Beermuda Triangle, and Balance Brewing & Blending, specialists in sours and funky, Belgian-influenced beers. Larger, nearby units further house the breweries and brew taps of two of the best-known names in UK beer: Cloudwater and Track. Cloudwater’s Unit 9 taproom is as crisp and clean as its cutting-edge beers. Track’s tap is a big, stylishly designed warehouse affair, which shares space with its brewing kit. All the flavours and styles are delivered in its 20 keg and three cask real ale taps. Brewery tours are available at Track, Balance and Cloudwater.
The Marble Arch
Lovers of historic pub interiors often fall hard for this Grade II-listed, 19th-century venue in the Angel Meadow district. With its sloping mosaic floor, the main bar area features some remarkable period detail, including its glazed tiled walls and vaulted brick ceiling. Owned by the pioneering Marble Brewery, which started out brewing here in 1997 — back when craft beer was but a rumour on the wind — the pub serves an array of stellar Marble beers on cask and keg, now made at its Salford brewery. Try its Manchester Bitter, which lends a hoppy dynamism to that traditional style, or its 6.8% tea-tweaked Earl Grey IPA.
The Runaway Brewery part of a neat constellation of pubs and bars near Stockport Station.
Photograph by Mark Welsby
The Runaway Brewery
To get a taste of how superb beer runs through Greater Manchester’s veins, head just out of the city centre to the satellite town of Stockport. If Manchester’s beer crowd skews to hip, Gen Z drinkers, Stockport’s crowd is more mixed — a little older and less self-consciously cool. Having relocated from Manchester in 2023, Runaway Brewery’s brew tap is the headline news in town. Its mainline IPA is a classic, but rolling creations, such as a blackcurrant Berliner weisse or its Belgian yeast pale ale, ensure plenty of variety. It’s part of a neat constellation of pubs and bars near Stockport Station, including the cute, bric-a-brac lined Ye Olde Vic and The Petersgate Tap bar. But do make the 10-minute walk to The Magnet, a convivial, multi-roomed, traditional pub-cum-pilgrimage spot for Northern beer-lovers, serving an astonishing 25 taps of beer from Britain’s most forward-thinking breweries.
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