Manchester's breweries tend to end up in buildings that used to do something else entirely: cotton mills in Ancoats, railway arches near Piccadilly, a former engineering works out past Green Quarter. The city keeps its industrial bones and just changes what's happening inside them, so a taproom might have exposed brick two storeys high and a hoist still bolted to the ceiling from whatever came before. Northern Quarter stays the obvious starting point, all cobbled side streets and bars that stay open past the point most cities have gone quiet, but the real spread runs wider than that these days.
Follow the canal out past Ancoats and into New Islington and you'll find railway arches doing double duty as brewhouses, their doors open on a weekend afternoon with picnic benches set up outside whatever the weather's doing. Salford gets its own share too, on the other side of the river, along with pockets of Chorlton, Levenshulme and Stockport that don't bother chasing footfall from the centre. Rain is a fair assumption most weekends, so most of these places plan for it: awnings, heaters, somewhere dry to stand with a pint while you wait for a gap in the clouds.
The full UK brewery and bottle shop directory · Find breweries, pubs & shops near you · Every live deal