My Six Best Brewtaps in Manchester City Centre

Manchester has a heck of a lot of places to drink, for sure, including a lot of hipster craft bars. But what it also has are a heck of a lot of local breweries. Many of these themselves have brewtaps; bars or pubs linked to the brewery itself where you can buy beer ‘on the premises’, and sit and look at the pipes and the casks. And of course chat to the bar staff who also help brew the beers themselves. It’s a really interesting way to get much closer to the beers you drink and see a bit more about how they’re made.

In my time in the Manchester area I went to these six – note this doesn’t include pubs owned and operated by specific breweries (that post is here), this is just for places where you can drink beer where it’s made. More or less, anyway.

Cloudwater Brewtap

The outside of the Cloudwater brewery and brewtap; An industrial warehouse type building – to the left are offices, to the right is the barrel store, and on the right of centre is an entranceway with tables.

Quite deep into an industrial estate on the far side of Piccadilly station, on a side road in an unassuming location, is the brewtap for Cloudwater Brewery. It’s worth the effort of getting to though.

Wide view of the inside of Cloudwater – several wooden tables with attached wooden benches, and a raised area at the back with speakers and pink cushions.

For one thing, it feels quite large. The downstairs has a corridor seating area as the outside merges into the interior, and you can sit next to a whole wall lined with wooden beer barrels. There’s also a larger internal room with long tables that’d be good for parties. The bar itself is upstairs, on a kind of over-elaborate mezzanine that looks down onto a whole gaggle of barrels of various sizes, including several Donkey Kong probably couldn’t even lift, never mind hurl at Super Mario’s ancestor.

Wide shot looking down at a whole stack of wooden cask barrels.

Obviously there’s a lot of beer; on my most recent visit there were 19 on offer on keg, including two low-alcohols (one of which was, unusually, a sour), and going all the way up to a couple of 11% Barley Wines, which cost more for a third than the session ales cost per pint. With good reason.

I am sat, daisy dungarees, daisy hat, purple hair, with a small beer in my hand.

While you’re here, by the way, it’s just over the road from …

Track Brewing

Entrance to Track brewery; large glass door and inside you can see the bar, while to the right are a rack of wooden cask barrels.

Opposite Cloudwater, and again in an unassuming industrial cuboid block, Track Brewing is more centralised, but equally as close to the beer.

Three branded beer glasses on a wooden table of different colours (golden amber, hazy yellow, black). In the background, with blur, are other tables and large metal talks of beer.

The main room is a large square. The bar’s to the right as you walk in, and the rest of the area is filled with long wooden tables. At the far end of the room is the brewery itself, beyond huge perspex or glass screens that protect and separate it, but also give full viewing access to the barrels and tuns. There’s also a beer garden at the back, on a gravel square, that has table seating, some of which is under a tarp.

Overview of the bar, with wooden tables in foreground, and a colourful list of beers on the wall that looks like it's made of individual wooden letters.

There’s a decent selection of beers, around twenty on my most recent trip, mostly on keg but with two casks. About two-thirds of the beer is from Track themselves; the rest come from a variety of random breweries. They also do hop-infused sparkling water, and there’s an on-site pizzeria doing any of nine variants of 12″ pizzas, three each of met, vegetarian, and vegan.

I am sat in front of the bar and the beer list, in a non-binary bobble hat, salmon dungarees, blue-shirt, and holding a beer.

Although it feels in the industrial sticks, it’s a very short walk to Piccadilly, On your way back, though, you’ll pass by …

Sureshot Taproom

The outside of Sureshot brewery. It's a red iron-grill door set into a brick railway viaduct arch.

This place is built into the brick archways that lie underneath one of the railway viaducts leading in to Piccadilly railway station, along with other varied businesses; the brewery itself is next door, and their neighbour the other way is some kind of gym or fitness business.

Inside Surehot taproom. Bare lino-type flooring, tables and stools on the left, plain bar on the right, and Sureshot-branded bunting hanging from the ceiling.

It’s not a big venue, given its location, but on my visits it’s felt airy enough. It’s a long thin room with tables and ‘breakfast bar’ style seating around the edge of the room. Some of the walls, and the ceiling, seem to be made of grey corrugated iron, and it’s definitely got an ‘industrial’ vibe. While mostly plain, and with the background of piped music and passing trains, there’s some bespoke artwork canvases on the walls and hanging from the ceiling.

Three small glasses of beer on a wooden table with the bar in the background – Sureshot is in neon letters.

There’s up to twelve beers on tap, keg, all from Sureshot although they’re a brewery that does do collabs. They also sell crisps and snacks, including Tunnock’s Teacakes, for some reason I did not enquire about.

A few arches further down towards the city centre is …

Balance Brewing Taproom

The outside of the Egerton Arms; an old-fashioned brick building dwarfed by modern tower blocks behind.

This is a relatively new taproom, again built into the arches of the railway viaduct out of Piccadilly, The brewery itself started up in 2021, with first beer produced in 2022 and the taproom opening around August 2023. As an aside, the brewery tends towards barrel-aged ‘saison’ beers; wild ales in the Belgian style, but they told me on my visit their name comes from trying to keep those wild flavours in ‘balance’ rather than being too ‘tart’. They’re heavily influenced by Burning Sky brewery from ‘down south’ who’ve been doing a similar thing.

Three Balance-Brewing branded wine-glass shaped glasses of beer on a wooden table, in front of a series of wooden cask barrels covered with fairy lights, and some polo shirt merchandise.

Indeed on my visit, there were 6 beers on tap – two from Balanced, two from Burning Sky, and two others. They also sell a series of bottles, in a similar stylistic vein. No food, but they do a crisps and beer snacks, and they advertise a pizzeria elsewhere in the arches that you can eat while drinking.

The bar. Lots of glasses on shelves on the behind wall. Chalkboard with beer on tap above it. The bar has beer coasters on it.

It’s, I’d say, the smallest of the taprooms on the list. The short bar is on the left as you go in, about halfway along. Before the bar on the left are a series of open-plan tables, while on the right there’s a couple of tables in makeshift snugs. Beyond the bar there’s a couple of tables on the right, before the arch itself turns into the brewery lined with large wooden barrels as far as the eye can see.

The room curves slightly underneath what is obviously the railway arch; the wall is lined with beer casks and, at the far end, other brewery equipment.

Green Arches

The name isn’t accidental. This bar is a) another one located within the arches carrying railway lines, though these instead come out out of Victoria station to the North of the city, and b) ‘green’. In the sense the walls and ceilings are painted green (and the lighting gives a green shade to everything), and some of the walls are laden with fronds. Whether they’re living or plastic, I couldn’t tell you.

Inside the Green Arches, looking at one of the walls which is covered in green plant, kind of like ivy, but isn't. Otherwise there's a lot of tables, chairs, and sofas.

It is very much a place you have to know exists in order to get there; there’s no reason you’d casually be walking those post-industrial streets on the edge of Ancoats without having a specific place to visit.

It’s very open-plan, with a wide area with solid planks of wood (probably pine, but what do I know?) as tables on the ground floor, with an outdoorsy area at the far end in cade you fancy a beer garden. There is also a small mezzanine area up (green) stairs near the DJ booth – oh yes, this is a place fond of music, as befits something that looks like a glorified and adapted Nissan hut.

Overview of the bar and seating area. The walls are green and the lighting reflects this inwards making the whole place look green. The seating is mostly small leather sofas either side of wooden tables. The beer garden is visible at the far end.

Anyway, It’s a brewtap so they mostly serve their own beers, which cover the range of styles; I had a double IPA, a pale, a lager, and a stout. All of which were positively drinkable.

I am sat inside in front of a wall covered in green leafage. I am wearing a blue denim jacket, blue denim hat with a they/them badge, and a green t-shirt. I am holding a small glass of beer.

Gas Works Brewbar

Imagine if you are a Bright Young Thing with a hipster mentality. What do you want? You want good craft beer, you want hi-tec modern takes on pub games, you want fancy-looking pub food you’re not going to make at home because all you have is a desk fridge, no freezer, and a dodgy microwave that’s possibly causing interference at CERN. Congratulations, you’ve found your new home.

Overview of the inside of Gasworks. Wooden tables, stools, plastic chairs, and leather benches. Lots of columns. Slatted wooden ceilings occasionally hiding metallic conduits.

Set in a renovated and gentrified part of the city centre just south of the railway and very close to the flats that used to be the Haçienda nightclub (which you’re probably too young to have gone to but nevertheless live in because you’re cool like that), it’s a large open-plan bar with electronic darts and other table games, but where you can also see the building’s frameworks, pipeworks, and beer barrels.

Bar and seating area next to it. Wide open space. Lots of wood and wooden panelling. High tables lined with metal stools. Metallic vats are behind a glass screen on the far right of the picture.

There’s a fair selection of beers on tap – mostly keg, and many from the onsite brewery – and very decent food (if slightly small portions, or maybe that’s just me) including loaded fries and chicken wings.