Northern Monkey, Bolton

Four hand pulls with three in active service at the time of my recent visit on a Friday lunchtime. I went for Cowella by Ampersand, at £2 for a half, and this was very pleasant indeed. I also spotted one from their own Northern Monkey brewery and one from Deeply Vale. Food is served, they seem to offer 12" pizzas between £10 and £12. Seems a nice place with a couple of different levels and seating types - sofas, tables, chairs, bench seating. It has a fairly modern vibe but an older fireplace and what loks like an old station clock appear somewhat at odds with the modernism. There is a pool table, and this is advertised as being free on a Wednesday. There is also a dartboard. Service was friendly and overall it had a nice vibe to it despite being quiet.

Official site of Northern Monkey - www.northernmonkeybrewco.co.uk

Official site of Northern Monkey - www.northernmonkeybrewco.co.uk

Sort of best and worst of experiences. Worst - overun, inexperienced bar staff who had lost control of a busy bar and were standing behind looking like rabbits caught in the headlights. Asking punters who is next is never going to end well when 2 deep. Packed - with too many kids running riot, I moved outside where I had the best of pub experiences. Getting involved in great beery chat with a couple of guys who i shared a table with. Beer was very good - a traditional cask bitter, which I failed to record in Untappd as my new friends were too entertaining. GBG 2024

I came here a few months ago but appears I forgot to submit my review. It’s a modern single room craft beer bar on two levels which was very lively on a Saturday night. The pool table in particular was seeing a lot of action. I enjoyed a swift half of chocolate stout but it was a touch too busy to be enjoyable, i’ll surely return though. For beer it’s right up there as one of the best in the area.

Northern Monkey is a split level bar with high tables at street level across the front windows before a step down to the sunken bar area with serving counter that runs across the rear wall. Craft keg is available alongside four hand pumps. This is Northern Monkey Brew Co’s tap so their Reeny’s Beans and Dirty Harry were available alongside Chapter Brewing’s Kandata and Vocation’s Pride & Joy, the latter being on good form. There’s a pool table and there was some background music playing. This is a decent bar, so I was surprised that there were only three or four other customers during my recent early midweek evening visit. The crap fizz barns were all busier, which is very depressing.

This is the brewery tap for Northern Monkey. It's a lively bar in an equally lively area for pubs and bars. There were quite a few in for our early Saturday evening visit. On entering the bar, I noticed a number of bag-in-the-box ciders at a counter near the entrance. It soon became apparent that we'd stumbled across a sausage and cider festival. Not wishing to try any sausage, I did indulge in a couple of the ciders on offer. I'm not sure if the bar normally serves any kind of real cider. The only Northern Monkey cask beer available was For Pete's Sake. Guest beers on cask were Big Trip The Bump & New Invention Triumph. Craft beers were Northern Monkey Patience Is A Virtue & Mango Session IPA, Beavertown Neck Oil, Vault City Strawberry Sundae, Hammerton Crunch & Schofferhoffer Watermelon. Ciders were Snail's Bank Banoffee Pie, Pulp Strawberry Daiquiri & Rhubarb and Mango Cider, Thistly Cross Whisky Cask, Barbourne Cherry Bakewell, Dorset Nectar Top o'the Hill & Little Pomona Table Perry. Pizzas seem to be the food of choice. They did seem quite tempting, but we had buses to catch to other areas of Bolton. So, there was no time. I think the cider festival certainly helped matters, but this was my favourite new pub to try on this visit to Bolton.