Craft Beer Hipster Bars in Manchester City Centre

Obviously a city like Manchester has many places to drink beer, but where better to have a craft brew than at one of the more hipster bars that are scattered around the city centre. I have spent a while visiting quite a few of them, so you don’t have to. Or something. I am not a role model, I just like beer, you know? If you fancy somewhere a bit more ‘raw’, I’ve also created lists of the best brewtaps and the best brewery-operated bars in the city.

Cafe Beermoth

Kind of tucked away in the mess of side-roads in the very centre of Manchester, near the main Post Office, this is a fairly sizeable two-room craft beer bar worth a visit. The main room is ground-level, with a long bar, pseudo-snugs with tables on a long wooden plinth, and a good number of other stand-alone tables on the level. There’s a smaller area up a flight of stairs that almost acts as a mezzanine level on one side of the bar.

Inside Beermoth. Large open space, laminate floor, small raised table with a couple of stools around it just off-centre, and the bar is to the right. Above the bar is what can best be described as autumnal foliage.

There’s usually around 16 beers on tap (mostly keg), which vary wildly both in strength and origin, I’ve noticed a slight tendency towards high-strength beers and brewery collaborations, but that might just be because when I’m here, they’ve been the ones that sounded most interesting. Additionally, they like local breweries – for example I’ve seen beers from Rivington Brewery, from near Bolton, here more than anywhere else in the area.

You can also get site-made beer snacks, including sausage rolls which come with a couple of interesting chutneys.

Inside Beermoth. Laminate flooring. There's little snugs on the left with fixed leather sofas around tables. The ceiling is high and a metal conduit is visible.

Beermoth also run a bar and beer shop in the Northern Quarter, because of course they do, but I’ve sadly yet to visit that.

The New Cross

This place is about as basic and minimalist as you can possibly get. It’s relatively new, having been opened within the last year or two, and my first thought was ‘it’ll be cool once you’ve finished building it’. Very raw, with wood frame, pipes, and bare walls all visible. One room with the bar and some seating in, then a room next door with more seating that feels like the inside of a logistics shipping container. The whole thing looks like it’s some kind of temporary pop-up structure. And yet.

Inside the New Cross. To the right is the bar – a flat wooden panel on a wall of yellow tiling. A small kitchen area is staright ahead, behind more plain panelling. To the right are simple green wooden tables and plain chairs.

It’s located just beyond the Ring Road in the Ancoats part of the Northern Quarter, on a road that’s very much straddling the line between ‘industrial dereliction’ and ‘urban regeneration’. Weirdly, it’s next door to, and works in association with, a similarly-vibing takeaway food place that cooks things like very weird fries and barbecued octopus. I have Questions. But I still ate it.

Two beers on a wooden table, next to a blue hat with a they/them badge. Minimalist tables and benches are in the background.

Ten beers on tap (keg), from a variety of local and regional breweries including Pomona, Manchester Union, and, a bit further out, Left Handed Giant (Bristol, but I see them frequently up here, for some reason). Music is played over the speakers but it’s not quite loud enough to be irksome.

Micro Bar, Arndale Shopping Centre

Possibly the least likely place to have a micropub, but also, the most obvious place to have a micropub if you think about it, and more similar establishments should have the same, this apparently un-named bar is located within the food market area of the Arndale Shopping Centre in the centre of Manchester, right next to the entrance on High Street, near Shudehill Bus Station.

A very busy-looking pop-up frontage. The bar is in front of shot, with old-style adverts under it. To the right is a large beer fridge. Behind the bar are a lot of glasses and a variety of weird trinkets and retro posters.

It’s not very big, consisting of a bar and a few tables, and its opening times seem to be linked with the opening times of the food market. Note it’s the food *market*, not the food *court* – it’s on the middle level near the Aldi, not the upper level with the McDonalds near the Argos. It doesn’t do food itself (aside from things like pork scratchings out of a huge glass jar) but you’re welcome to take food in from elsewhere in the market, as long as you do actually buy some beer.

Two glasses of beer on a circular wooden table. The bar and beer fridge are blurred in the background. On the table is a sign informing customers you can eat in, but only if you buy drinks from the bar.

And they have a greater range of beer than you might expect from somewhere like that; at least four cask ales on tap, plus a few ciders in the fridge. It’s quite an interesting place to sit and watch the world go by while munching on something random like jollof or stir-fry.

Cask (Ancoats)

Not to be confused with the pub on Liverpool Road near Deansgate Station, this bar is on the canal basin in Ancoats close to where the Rochdale and Ashton canals diverge. It’s in a very up-and-coming neighbourhood and exactly the sort of place Future Barefoot Backpacker would live when and if they finally get their own canal boat.

It’s a one-room, but large, bar, with seating outside at the canal edge (though demarcated from it, leading to the situation where you could theoretically pass contraband to underage drinkers across the vague divide). Probably more aesthetic when it’s not raining. Inside it’s ‘busy’ but still very open, with plenty of space around the tables. Which are mostly long and wooden; ideal for nattering. Quite minimalistic, with raw panelled ceiling. The predominant colour is blue.

Inside Cask, a wide view looking across the bar. Long wooden tables on the right, with standard wooden dining chairs. The blue walls are covered in framed paintings. The ceiling is raw and covered with metal pipes and conduits.

Beers are legion and often from nearby Marble brewery (Salford Quays), though others are on offer. Five beers on cask, including one cider, on my visit, and several more on keg.

Pelican Bar

Once a brewtap of Squawk Brewing (I guess hence the name), who at the time of writing are about to cease production, this bar still exists and is otherwise unaffected by the news.

It’s on the edge of the Northern Quarter, very close to the Northern Monk Refectory and the Port Street Beer House, so there’s a lot of places here you can sample a lot of decent beers. Outside it looks like one of any number of old-style office buildings, but inside it’s a weird array of … stuff. One long room with a small L-shape to the toilets, high wooden tables, (fake?) green leaves and plants hanging from the ceiling and along the sides of the windows, and slightly odd framed one-panel drawings, possibly far more intellectual than I am. You can also sit outside, and with other cafes and bars close by doing the same, it means in summer it can get quite a Mediterranean vibe. Theoretically.

An internal wall with a long mural of various stylised line drawings. The tables are wooden, with stools. One of them has a flight of four small beer glasses on it.

The beer is mostly on keg – 14 taps on tiles behind the bar – though there are a couple of pull-casks too. It’s sourced from mainly local breweries but on my most recent visit they also had one from La Trappe in Belgium. And, of course, you can get (a flight of) thirds; again on my most recent visit it was 10% off if you get four, which, you know, saves me some admin. You can also get some bottles and cans, and two kinds of pizza by-the-slice.

Piccadilly Tap

Just outside Piccadilly Station, and in a row of other cafes and shops, is the Piccadilly Tap. It’s not in the railway station so it doesn’t count as a station bar, but it’s as near as, so if you’ve got half an hour to waste waiting for a train (unless it’s on platforms 13/14), then it’s as good a place as any to pop in and while away some time.

Inside the Piccadilly Tap, a wide view of the bar. It's a kind of square u-shape, people on three sides and bar staff in the middle. On the back wall there's a couple of fridges and a large fish. On the right hand wall is a blackboard with the beers on tap.

It’s actually quite odd inside in the sense it looks like an old-fashioned bar. There’s an open area in front of the door with several tables, then the bar itself is against the back wall but it’ in the middle of the room, rectangular, and end-on, so you can access it and be served from three sides. The thin far end is where the taps are, but also a glass screen lined with spirit bottles. It’s another of those places where you can sit outside, although it’s a very busy area so you might not want to. Upstairs there’s a pool table and a balcony to watch out at everyone walking into and out of the railway station, should you want to.

Upstairs in the Piccadilly Tap. Bare floor, a pool table with a red baize. Leather sofas surround the pool table. Further back is a glass door and windows, behind which is a balcony with people on it.

There’s a whole gaggle of beers on offer – six casks and up to eighteen kegs, from a whole variety of breweries, many but not all of which are local. On my most recent visit there was also a handful of Belgian and German beers available.

Terrace

The Northern Quarter has a myriad of places to drink decent craft beer. One such is Terrace, which has entrances on Thomas Street and Edge Street.

It’s a slightly odd place; the inside is a wide corridor with the bar at the Thomas Street end, while at the Edge Street end there’s a larger room and stairs up to a beer garden, which is sizeable and feels weird to not be at ground level.

The beer garden at the back of Terrace. Patio flooring, wooden circular tables with chairs, metal kegs pinned to flattened wooden pallets up the wall.

The bar itself is quite well stocked – around 15 craft brews on tap and a series of other drinks. It feels all quite rustic and minimalistic, and slightly dark; a bit like drinking in a decked-out hobbit hole.

Inside Terrace bar. There are bare walls, a stone floor, and tables with sofas. It feels quite dark and moody.

Common / Nell’s Pizza

The outside of Common bar; brick frontage, large windows, paved area in front fenced off with wooden tables and benches on it.

Opposite the back entrance of Terrace, on Edge Street, is Common bar, which shares space with Nell’s Pizza, which has one too many ‘l’s for me to make any comments. It, like many of the bars in the area, spreads out onto the road outside, which is useful in good weather. Insert stereotypical joke here.

Common's bar. Wooden with cork lower, wooden slats above, quite cluttered, a couple of scarves hanging from an iron rack on the slats.

(bar)

It’s quite an airy place, lots of windows, and, like many of the other bars, is predominantly wooden-themed. The walls are covered with posters and murals, mainly very Manchester-centric ones.

Inside Common. Laminate flooring, wooden tables with plain chairs, some framed paintings on the back brick wall.

(room of tables inside)

There’s about 12 beers on tap, and several pizzas which you can buy by the slice and which are pretty good, at least for pub pizza. That you can buy them by the slice rather than the full-sized pizza is a nice touch.