Balance Taproom

The taproom trend in Manchester is something of a mystery. Head out to an unpoliced industrial estate to sit in someone’s workplace surrounded by machinery and huge gurgling tanks? Very Dickensian Chic. Not so with the taproom attached to Balance Brewery. 

Sure, it’s part of that glut of taprooms around Piccadilly Station that no one, and I mean no one, is calling the Beermuda Triangle, but there’s a pleasing level of care and attention to detail here. 

For one, there are actual chairs and tables instead of de rigueur austere stools and benches. It’s a small place, but there’s space to move around, inside and out, and they’ve even made the brewing section look nice: big, beautiful oak wine barrels rather than Gus Fring’s superlab. 

If you attended the Gwafu Vegan supper club, you’ll know Balance Beer – it was their welcome drink and disappeared faster than wild garlic from Chorlton Water Park. Balance specialises in wild ales: sour, zingy and a little bit complex, but not in the “aromas of nettle and mud” way. The malt, hops and other ingredients are all British and often foraged by owners Will Harris and James Horrocks, who set the whole thing up in 2021. 

If you come as a curious gourmand, you’re going to be disappointed. Like most taprooms, the food options are limited to posh crisps and perfectly fine pizza from a nearby arch. No more, no less, but not much different from a typical city centre pub. 

Speaking of which, is it as good as a pub? Kind of, but it runs at a different speed to Manchester’s more high-profile public houses. You won’t get the scruffy bedlam of The Castle and Gullivers, nor the old-school Phoenix Nights feel of The Britons Protection and Kings Arms in Salford. 

What you will get is a more genteel atmosphere, full of millennials keen to sup interesting booze away from all that city centre frenzy. And if that floats your boat, Balance is the best of the small-scale batch.