Manchester Craft Beer Tour – a quality Saturday afternoon

One of the gifts that my wife and I received last Christmas from our Daughter and Son in Law was tickets for two for the Craft Beer Tour Manchester.

The information that was provided with the gift was that tickets were valid for twelve months and we would need to book online for one of the tours which take place throughout the year on Fridays and Saturdays.

Spoiler

Did we go, was it any good and would be recommend it? … er yes, yes and yes.

Scroll on to read more information and to see plenty of pictures following our excellent visit to the Manchester Craft Beer Tour

 

And previously …

Going back some 12 months or so we received a gift of tickets to visit Stockport Gin – home of the Stockport Gin Tour.

The tour located in St Petersgate in central Stockport was excellent. The place has a great story, produces excellent gin and tickets there make for a great gift. You can read more about it here.

Previously we have enjoyed a few other alcohol production inspired tours.

These have included a couple of trips to the Sheveling Wine Estate in Holmfirth, a tour of the whisky distillery in Oban and the Scottish Whisky Experience in Edinburgh.

We also took some time out on a trip to Portugal to take in a a couple of the Port Warehouses in Porto (Taylors and Sandemans).

Pre tour wander around Manchester

Trips into city centre Manchester tend to be occasional rather than regular and when we do go we like to have a wander round. Back in March we wandered around the Castlefield Viaduct area and prior to that we had a chilly December wander around the Christmas markets.

I think when we had booked the tour we had hoped that picking the last day of June might give us a reasonable chance of enjoying the beer tour on a sunny day.

Our optimism was misplaced and the date we had chosen was a classic grey and damp Manchester day. Rather than get too wet we headed down Market Street and ended up spending most of our ‘pre tour’ time wandering around the Arndale Centre and the St Peter’s Square area. The giant cinnamon pretzel from the Hasty Tasty store is more than worthy of a mention.

There’s a few pictures below from our pre tour wandering. Read on after checking the pictures for information about the Craft Beer Tour.

Picture set one – and that giant pretzel

Clicking on any of the images below will open a picture gallery that can be clicked or scrolled through.

Raise your glasses

I’m not going to over do this –  if you’ve read this far I’m guessing that the beer tour is something that you might be interested in booking onto , so I won’t unpick the detail and risk spoiling your own experience. In any case you can head over to the Craft Beer Tour web site for more information.

The meeting point is at the Pelican Bar on Dale Street which is in easy walking distance of rail, bus and tram stops.  The bar is located inside an impressive Grade II Listed building on the corner of Dale Street and Tariff Street.

This link will take you to an outside view and save you a few clicks on Google Maps. The building in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, is also home to the very decent Idle Hands coffee shop. Idle Hands is  a place we have been on a couple of previous occasions when it’s been the venue for the annual end of season live recording of the fabulous Blue Moon Podcast.

Introduction drinks and chat

I think there were about 18 people on the tour we were on – the maximum per tour is 20.

The tour started on time with introductions from our Tour Guides and presentation of the first couple of selections of craft beer.

Each ‘tasting’ is one third of a pint, which is quite enough as there are 10 in all.

After drinks at the Pelican Bar a walk of around 15 minutes or so took us to the second location. The final two bars/taprooms were all closely located and pretty much just a stone’s throw away.

It’s a member of the team from each of the four taprooms that provides background information about the venue, and the particular beers being sampled. The Tour Guide(s) get you around and join in with the chat and information giving and all in all do a fine job.

The duration of the tour is around three and a half hours or so, and there is enough time in at least a couple of the venues to get something to eat.  We ordered and enjoyed some terrific pizza’s in the third of our four stops which was the Unit 9 Taproom and part of the Cloudwater Brewery. And I would absolutely recommend you find out more about the fascinating story of the Cloudwater Brewery – the Wiki entry here is a decent place to start.

A good all round experience

We really enjoyed the craft beer tour and it really is a decent way to spend an afternoon in Manchester. We thought the duration of the tour, the number of venues and the amount of alcohol was just about right.

Despite being Mancunians we were introduced to places that we had absolutely no idea existed as part of the craft beer industry.

To be honest we knew next to nothing of the world of craft beer prior to this trip, and we were blissfully unaware of just how extensive the craft beer scene is in Manchester.

Picture set two – pictures from ‘the tour’

The pictures in this second set are from the locations  we visited during the afternoon.

Included in the pictures are our guides for the afternoon (Fred and Rachel) and Lynne and Chris a couple who we shared a table with (and a laugh) at each of the venues we called at.

Clicking on any of the images below will open a picture gallery that can be clicked or scrolled through.

Final thoughts

I suppose the simple exam question following the craft beer tour is would you recommend it to others?

The answer is an absolute resounding yes.

We enjoyed it for what it was – a craft beer tour, but we also got more out of it that we probably expected and we made a commitment to ourselves to head back into Manchester and check out these taprooms and some more of these beers again.

If you are thinking of giving it a go for yourself  or buying it as gift for someone just do it, I really don’t think it will disappoint.