My favourite craft brewery-run bars in Manchester

Manchester may have a number of breweries with actual brewtaps, but not every decent brewery-led bar is a brewtap, or even from a brewery local to the area. Here’s a few of my favourite brewery-operated bars and pubs in Manchester City Centre which aren’t at the breweries themselves.

Northern Monk Refectory

Exterior of Northern Monk – a long brick building with large windows, and outside there's a pavement lined with tables and benches, and people.

On the edge of the Northern Quarter, and not far from places like the Pelican Bar, is one of several taprooms for Leeds-based Northern Monk brewery. Although based in an old Victorian-era building, it has a typical hipster-bar vibe with bare brick walls, wooden ceilings, and exposed lighting and pipework.

Inside the Northern Monk. Laminate flooring, wooden beam panels on the ceiling, quite minimalist wooden bar on the left, and a sign on the wall in lighted letters that says 'hit the north'.

It’s made up of two main rooms, one of which contains the bar, Seating is either on stools along high tables, or on leather-like benches at lower tables. There’s some slogans etc painted on the walls of the back room but otherwise it’s quite bare, even if it feels more cluttered and homely than it is.

Laminate flooring, long wooden tables with benches. Quite an empty if large room, brick wall at far end that says in big painted letters 'dark and true, tender is the north'.

There’s (on my most recent visit at least) four cask and twenty keg on tap, mostly from Northern Monk, and let’s be honest, Northern Monk are one of those breweries who could probably fill an entire beer festival with the random excessive one-off beers they produce. They also have a menu of “fried chicken biscuit sandwiches”, made from a recipe from the US state of Virginia, so yes, American Biscuit. And American style fries and corn salad. I have Questions.

Close-up of fries, ketchup, and a 'fried chicken biscuit sandwich' (chicken-in-a-scone).

Fierce Bar

Small brick building in a terrace, fronted by a fenced off area of pavement filled with tables, chairs, and outdoor drinkers.

In the heart of the Northern Quarter, is Thomas Street, The (pedestrianised) road is lined all the way along with outdoor seating for the various bars and cafes, and Fierce Bar is no exception.

Wide view of the interior of Fierce Bar. It's not very big. A couple of tables, the bar on the right with merch above it, and on the far wall in front, a mural of a badger spinning records like a DJ.

At first glance it’s one of the smaller venues on the street, being a rectangular room with a bar along one wall and around seven tables on the other walls. There is however an upstairs seating area at the back, down what looks like a back passage, but it’s not always open. When it is, it also looks to have a separate bar. The frontage is entirely glass so it gets a good bit of light. Along the top of the bar is a display of various branded t-shirts available to buy.

The bar; quite long. Lots of glasses hanging upside down over it. Above the bar are a series of branded t-shirts available to buy.

What it lacks in size it makes up for in craft beer. There’s eight or nine kegged taps on offer, most of them from Fierce Brewing themselves; they’re based in Aberdeen, up in the distant north of Scotland; they also have a bar in Edinburgh so they’re slowly heading south. The lady I spoke to at the bar said ‘well, Fierce are a kooky brewery and Manchester’s a kooky city’. [As an aside, it vibes as a very LGBTQIA+ friendly pub, but it’s the Northern Quarter so it’s going to be!]. There’s also a good range of spirits in shelves behind the bar, and on my most recent visit one of the nearby tables got cocktails (there’s about eight on the menu).

A dark beer in a branded Fierce glass patterned with small strawberry motifs. Stuck in the glass is a small asexual pride flag.

As an aside, at the time of blogging, the venue also does comedy events every Monday in The Vault, which might be upstairs, obviously.

Sadler’s Cat

Well, this is a weird one. A permanent temporary pop-up pub.

It’s behind an old building that’s been scheduled for demolition for several years; Cloudwater Brewery set up a temporary structure in the adjacent city square … and it’s still there. The lease comes up for renewal every couple of years and the latest is it’s likely to be here until at least July 2026.

Inside the Sadler's Cat. It's a long, quite thin, corridor with wooden tables on the right and a series of supporting columns on the left, beyond which is the bar. The floor is plain.

On the one hand it feels weird to have an obviously hastily-built wooden structure as a bar. And its evident inside – a long rectangle with plain walls and a warehouse vibe, and cheap wooden tables with seating. There’s some Pollok-esque artwork on large canvases curled around the lighting rigs, and the are` behind the bar is the only place with ephemera. On the other hand, it’s quite spacious and larger than you might imagine, and with an outdoor area in the square to drink in that pretty much doubles its size. It’s the sort of place that could get very full before you’d actually notice.

Three small beer glasses on a wooden table. The beers are, left-to-right, black, red, and very pale yellow. Behind them, blurred background, is the bar, with a prominent poster of a cat which is defined as the 'Sadler's Cat'.

There’s lots of beer on keg (sixteen on my most recent visit), and a couple of cask taps, but all of them are from Cloudwater. In a sense it’s not much different to the Brewtap itself to be honest, but of course this is much more convenient a location.

Seven Bro7hers, Ancoats

Another bar surrounded by other bars; it’s located on a square behind the ring road that on a pleasant day is rammed with outdoor drinkers. Which means the inside is quite empty, bar itself excepting.

The exterior of the Seven Bro7hers pub. The only indication that's what it is is a stylised '7' on one of the windows. In front of the pub are people at tables, drinking beer on what appears to be a road.

It’s quite a large place, though it feels smaller than the Salford Middlewood branch. It’s got a square-ish ‘upstairs’ (it’s accessible via seven steps from the ground level), and a cosier ‘downstairs’ section. It’s mostly bare brick and quite a low ceiling, plain aside from the metal grates holding the lighting wiring in place, and an overall woody vibe (laminate flooring, rough wooden tables, stools).

Looking down at the lower room in the Seven Bro7hers bar. The walls are worn brick, the floor is wooden, there are two leather sofas, and a kind of mosaic picture of a Black woman on the wall.

There’s about 10 kegs on tap of Seven Bro7hers beers (and seemingly nothing else), but given its location it also does a selection of cocktails and spirits; indeed they seem to be the focus of the behind-the-bar signage boards. They do do food too, though it’s a limited selection of po-boys (!), wings, and loaded fries.

Overview of the main bar and drinking area of the Seven Bro7hers bar. Lots of wooden tables with stools, a brick internal wall on the left, a sloping roof with skylights ahead, and a busy wooden bar on the right.

Vocation & Co

Next to a patio and water feature just down some steps from Bridgwater Hall, and close to the canal, this place is popular, especially in University Graduation Season, but also generally, especially when there’s an event on.

Inside the Vocation bar. It's very busy. The room, which vibes like a light and airy warehouse stretches off to the left, and the ceiling is lined with pipes and cables which appear to be covered in tinfoil.

It’s a large space, especially with the outdoor seating, and although the bar takes up much of the room, and is the primary reason for being here, it shares its space with a series of streetfood stalls, including a Korean, an Indian, and a Burger Joint. It’s one of those places where you can sit at the table and order, via a QR code, from any of them while you’re having your beers.

A lower-view shot of the far end of the Vocation building, which shows a couple of the food outlet kiosks behind a few wooden tables.

And there’s a huge amount of beers to choose from. Nominally a Vocation Brewery venue, obviously, and that’s reflected in the 3 or 4 cask taps, the real scene is in the taps behind the bar. Over 30 (on my most recent visit, 33 were listed) keg taps, featuring, yes, a lot of beers from Vocation, but also a great many from other regional breweries. While all styles are represented, this tends to be the place with the most interesting selection of sours I’ve found in the city.

A luminous green beer in a Vocation-branded beer glass.

The only downside, apart from its busyness and that the tables, like in Japanese restaurants, are mainly the large kind where several different people can just sit, is its preference for quite loud background music. Even if it is boppy.

North Taproom

North Brewing have recently been the subject of an insolvency issue; for the moment this taproom still seems to exist and still serves North Brewing beers, but be aware this may change over the lifetime of this blogpost.

The venue is on a small landscaped square of cafes and supermarkets just off Oxford Road, on the edge of the University quarter, so it’s a popular place for students and professors, along with staff from the offices just north of the railway station.

Inside the North Taproom. Several long wooden tables with small stools by them. There's a photomat machine in the back.

It’s a long, quite thin, place with a lot of beers on tap: on my last visit there were over 15, plus a couple of ciders, wines, and spritzers. Many of them are from North Brewing (based in Leeds), but a couple are either collaborations, or beers from other breweries around and about.

The bar. It's long, and lined at the front with white and green tiles. Behind the bar are a long series of beer taps. There's a screen above that displays all the beers on tap.

One of the more unusual benefits of this place is its close liaison with a restaurant that does absolutely spiffing bao buns and other Korean-inspired food.