Seven Bro7hers Beerhouse (Ancoats)

Seven Bro7hers is a Salford family brewery founded in 2014 by the seven McAvoy brothers — Guy, Keith, Luke, Daniel, Nathan, Kit and Greg — who grew up watching their father home-brew in the cellar and turned the hobby into a business. The Ancoats Beerhouse opened in 2016 at 39 Blossom Street and was one of the group's first bars, planted in one of Manchester's most heavily regenerated inner-city neighbourhoods a short walk from Cutting Room Square. The brewery itself sits a few miles west in Salford, and the beerhouses act as the brand's shop window across Greater Manchester, alongside its 11 Central bar and microbrewery at Salford Quays and the Amber Alehouse at Manchester Airport.

The bar runs over several levels — a busy ground-floor room, a relaxed downstairs lounge fitted out with leather sofas, and a large outdoor patio for warmer days. Table bookings are taken for both food and drink, and the kitchen keeps things simple and beer-friendly with burgers, gyros and 'bar munchies' built to sit alongside a pint. Rotating house taps pour through the core Seven Bro7hers range — Honeycomb Pale Ale, Easy IPA, Helles Lager, Pilsner and a rotation of hop-forward IPAs — so the line-up shifts but stays firmly the brewery's own beer.

What earns it a place here is that Seven Bro7hers brews its own alcohol-free beer. AF Pale, launched in December 2021 as the brewery's first low-alcohol release, is a 0.5% ABV pale ale built to keep the hop character of a full-strength craft beer — pale and light, with citrus and fruity aromas and a clean bitterness — and it is vegan-friendly. From launch it has been stocked in 330ml cans across all of the company's Manchester beerhouses, the Ancoats site included, so the zero-proof choice at the bar is the same beer the brothers brew rather than a bought-in lager dropped on for form's sake. It is a modest but genuine non-alcoholic offering: one well-made house AF beer from a brewery that makes it itself, ideal if you want a proper Ancoats craft-beer night without the alcohol.