Cloudwater Brewery Tap Room, Manchester

I had tried to visit both Cloudwater and Track (diagonally opposite) last New Year's Eve. However, I was not allowed entry by a doorman at Cloudwater, who said that the Brewery Tap Room was full and also not to bother with Track as that was also full! However, undeterred, I returned last Saturday afternoon. A brewery taproom with a bouncer on the door seems like it could be a very commercial experience, but if anything, this is less so than Track's Brewery Tap. The Tap Room can be found on the first floor. The drinking space was busy when we arrived and was smaller than I had anticipated. As with Track, we shared one of the bench tables with a guy and a lady from the Netherlands. He was working for a brewery in Amsterdam and was another who was very interested in his beers. The single cask ale was a collaboration between Cloudwater & JW Lee's, a 6.8% old ale called Piccadilly Star. I hadn't anticipated I would be drinking a beer from Lee's on this crawl of Manchester's railway arches and trading estates! Craft beers from Cloudwater were Iridescent, Happy, Three Of A Kind, Fuzzy, Helles, IWD 2023, SoCal, Super Happy, Cascading, Window Seat, Kold IPA, Chubbles 53°N, Crystallography: Columbus & Strata Edition, Chubbles, Chubbles Chubbles & Chubbles 3 Enhanced. Guest beers were Two Chefs Funky Falcon & Pohjala Baltic Porter Day 2023 & Oo X (Cellar Series). I'm glad that I've finally got here and can understand why I may have been refused entry when it is busy, as this is certainly a much smaller place than I had anticipated. Nevertheless, I am likely to attempt a return visit one day.

Opposite the Track Brewing Co. Little to choose between the two and you would visit both, surely. This is on a mezzanine floor above the main brewery. Tables, a strange rostrum style seating areas with bean bags - under a projector screen showing their wares. I tried one crafty 2/3rds - Chubbles II: Discovering Pilsengris - and a cask handpull, Taking Over the Brew. Both excellent.

Although housed in a typical anonymous modern industrial estate unit, the Cloudwater Tap is relatively close to Piccadilly Station and Ancoats. The bar is upstairs on a mezzanine overlooking the area where beers are being aged in wooden casks of various sizes (with the main brewery being in the adjacent unit). Basic, canteen-style furniture and limited decoration, as you would expect. As a (mostly) craft keg brewery, I found 17 on their own beers (in a huge range of styles) on the various anonymous taps. However, there are also a couple of handpumps, and I went for the cask version of their 7th Birthday Hopfenweisse (£4.50) which proved an excellent choice.

Visited on Saturday evening. We had booked a table, as is advised, though they do have limited space for walk-ups. However, it's a bit out of the way to walk up and take that chance. As it happened we were half an hour early for our booking and the chap on the door was very accommodating and managed to fit us in. I assume they must have removed a few tables for social distancing purposes but it doesn't really look much different to how it did on my previous visit. You can scan a QR code at the table to view the beer menu and place your order, but if you struggle you can place the order with a human being. Service was efficient, not just from speed of beer delivery to the table after ordering, but also in terms of collecting empty glasses and cleaning tables after customers had left. Complimentary water was provided. Overall a good experience with beer to match, the only downside being they seem to have stopped offering the weekly cask beer and it's now all keg - but there is certainly plenty of choice both from Cloudwater and guest breweries.

Further to my previous review, I revisited on Saturday evening and it is pretty much the same as before with the exception that there is a single cask ale available in the downstairs merchandise room. This can either be consumed down there (so long as you are seated) or brought up to the main bar. This cask ale is put on fresh on a Friday and is available until it runs out. On Saturday this was "What Do The Numbers Say?" which was a 3.8% pale ale and for the rather reasonable price of £3.50 a pint (or was it £3.80?). Currently Track have a pop-up bar in the downstairs room, although this is believed to be temporary.