Cloudwater Brew Co (Unit 9 Taproom)

Cloudwater Brew Co was founded in 2014 by Paul Jones and James Campbell, with brewing beginning in February 2015, and it rose almost immediately to the front rank of British craft beer — within two years RateBeer had named it the fifth-best brewery in the world, the first UK brewery ever to make that top ten, and by 2017–18 it had climbed to second globally. The brewery built its reputation on a constantly evolving, seasonal range of hazy IPAs, pale ales and barrel-aged beers. In July 2018 it opened Unit 9, a dedicated taproom immediately next to the brewhouse on the Piccadilly Trading Estate, tucked just behind Manchester Piccadilly station.

The taproom is an industrial, warehouse-style room built entirely around freshness: it sits on a mezzanine above a 3°C cold store from which all 22 lines — 20 keg and two cask — are drawn, so every pour comes straight from tank at cellar temperature. There is a shop corner selling the latest cans, bottles and Cloudwater merch, street-food traders set up most weekends, and the space is dog-friendly, wheelchair accessible via a lift, and open to children with their parents until 8pm (card payment only). It opens Tuesday to Sunday, from mid-afternoon midweek and from noon at weekends.

What earns Cloudwater its place here is that it brews its own alcohol-free beer rather than buying it in. The flagship is Fresh, a 0.5% AF Hazy IPA the brewery calls "the ultimate thirst-quencher", brimming with zesty orange and succulent peach hop character at just 28 calories a 440ml can. The taproom's board and fridge regularly run a whole spread of the brewery's own 0.5% brews alongside it — AF IPAs such as Chubbles, the Kopra alcohol-free pale, a Margarita AF Gose and fruited AF sours like a Lychee & Watermelon Aviation Sour — and there is even a monthly alcohol-free beer subscription, The Lowdown, for drinking the same range at home. Cloudwater was an early pioneer of the category, having launched a range of hopped, low-calorie soft drinks (Cloudwater Soda, originally Good Call) back in 2019. For anyone skipping alcohol, that makes Unit 9 a rare thing: a genuinely world-class craft brewery whose zero-proof beers are made in the very same brewhouse, and served just as fresh, as the full-strength ones.