A Leeds Pub, Bar, and Brewery Tap Excursion

Day three of the Road Trip took us from our Halifax base to the metropolitan thrills of Leeds.

Forty minutes on a Northern rail service which was busy but still had just enough seats at Halifax for us all to sit down.
Available seats would be essential if (just theoretically) any of the group, maybe Tanya for example, had been in the Victorian Beer Cafe until after midnight quaffing craft ale and was feeling a little worse for wear.

Our first challenge on arrival was to navigate the never-ending 'improvement' works in front of Leeds station and find a way to get to the lower level.  We trekked under the bridge and into the southern part of the city in search of a Beer Guide regular Heritage pub.

Grove Inn (Back Row, Holbeck, Leeds, LS11 5PL)
Being as we arrived early and it's located a little way out of the centre we initially had the place to ourselves.
Not a bad traditional pub to find yourself able to poke your head into all of the rooms without disturbing anyone.

The Grove dates back to 1832 but the layout we see today was the responsibility of John Smith's of Tadcaster, who updated the place to create a central corridor with four rooms leading off it.  There's a comfy snug to the right of the entrance, benches and red carpet spoilt a bit by the phone charging machine in the corner.  To the left is a tap room with bar counter, or you can order from the counter on the corridor which has a second bank of hand pumps.

There was a difficult beer choice to start the day: eight cask ales available from Abbeydale, Wensleydale, Small World, Daleside, Timothy Taylor, Acorn and Rudgate.  I finally plumped for the sweet and fruity Acorn 'Plum Porter', taken through to the central snug with its rounded plain wooden benches hugging the walls.

The largest space, the rear concert room with small stage in one corner, is a slightly more recent addition, being an inter-war construction.
It's still historic enough for me and offers up some excellent pub bench seating...

A 10-minute amble took us westbound, past the spectacular-looking Temple Works building, to the Northern Monk Refectory.

The Northern Monk Refectory (The Old Flax Store, Marshalls Mill, Holbeck, Leeds, LS11 9YJ)
The taproom is located upstairs with glimpses through big windows to shiny brewing equipment en-route.  It's a bright modern space with small merch stall to one side, high and low solid bench seating, sofas under one window.  Birthday party in the middle, brewery tour folk loitering by the bar, Franz Ferdinand 'Do You Wanna' playing through the speakers.

The more adventurous stuff, and a couple of those Patron Project collaboration concoctions were on draft, whilst there were three beers on cask ('Eternal' session IPA, 'Sup' golden ale and one just being pulled through went we arrived).

I went for the keg 'Chocolate Caramel and Biscuit Porter', a rich dark 5.2% brew priced at £3.35 for the sensible half pint measure.  A pleasant visit, although I'd rather be sitting on a rickety bench next to a conditioning tank in a brewery rather than in such a smart bar, given a choice.

Next up, the Midnight Bell...

Midnight Bell (101 Water Lane, Holbeck, Leeds, LS11 5QN)
Bonus points for having John Farnham 'You're the Voice' playing on arrival.
Sadly I could find little else in the Midnight Bell which warranted my imaginary bonus points - a dining dominated affair which wasn't as a good as I'd hoped.  I don't really approve of anywhere which has every table set up for food and requires you to park your pint of beer between knives and forks.

Still, I was here to ensure I drank some Leeds Brewery beer whilst in Leeds.   And that was a success, with four of their ales as well as Cameron's 'Strongarm' and Keighley 'Three Swords' on offer.

A swift Leeds 'Best' was my pick.

We crossed back over the River Aire into the recently redeveloped area betwixt railway lines and waterways.  I suspect this thoroughfare was probably run-down and grim not so long ago, but now it's a hotbed of hotels, eateries and bars along a pedestrianised walkway.
We were aiming for an Ossett bar in the arches.

The Hop (Granary Wharf, Dark Neville St, City Centre, Leeds, LS1 4BR)
The Hop is bigger than your average railway arch venue due to the fact that these arches stretch back a long way underneath the multiple lines serving the platforms of Leeds station.  Plus the Hop occupies two of 'em.
This proved not to be the usual quiet lunchtime visit due to a festival event running across several of the Granary Wharf venues.  We entered to a sizeable crowd of folk and a lively one-man band set up on the first floor above the bar.  The sound really carries through the arches necessitating a bit of shouting at each other to be heard.

There were eight hand pumps, serving all your favourite Ossett ales from the paleness of 'Excelsius' to the darkness of 'Barghest Stout'.
Plus a new one of the 'Rat' series for me, from Huddersfield's Rat Brewery, part of the Ossett empire since 2004.

This was a tasty, biscuity, tropical pale ale, similar to 'White Rat', but not quite scaling the same heights.  We perched on a ledge to one side where a window in the brickwork provides a view through to the ground level 'cellar'.  Yep, they've gone to the trouble to put on live entertainment and myself and John were glued to a window studying barrels and pipes. 

Moving on from The Hop, we back-tracked on ourselves a little way, because there's a bar somewhere in that there tower...

SALT Granary Wharf (Candle House, Granary Wharf, City Centre, Leeds, LS1 4GJ)
SALT are another Yorkshire brewery with Ossett links - this time as a sister brewery with both under the ownership of a chap called Jamie Lawson.  This bar is one of three SALT venues in Leeds, this venue pairing your craft brews with falafel.

I skipped the cask options (more Ossett) - and the falafel - opting for one of the SALT beers on draft - 'Vermont XPA' a 4.7% pale brewed with Topaz hops.  Just a half, which is just as well because I didn't enjoy it very much.  Far too fizzy for my liking.
Participating in the same weekend festival as Hop, Granary Wharf was between musical acts and packed with punters in the modern circular surroundings.  Good for SALT, pulling in such a decent crowd and pouring the drinks at a rate of knots.

We'd burnt off the calories from the Wetherspoon's breakfast by this point and were in need of some mid-afternoon sustenance.
For that we called into the Adelphi (3 - 5 Hunslet Road, Leeds, LS10 1JQ)
This glorious pub was included in my 2023 heritage pubs of Leeds post, so I'll skip over it this time.

Except to include this picture of my Kirkstall 'Three Swords' beer, being as I'm rather pleased with it.

The old Tetley brewery, a short walk from the Adelphi, was serving as an art gallery and cafe when I visited a couple of years ago, allowing me to take a moments break from the pubs to frown at some modern art on the first floor.
The gallery has gone for the time being, the ground floor now converted into a pub by Kirkstall.

The Tetley (The Tetley, Hunslet Rd, Leeds LS10 1JQ)
Joshua Tetley brought the land for his brewery for £400 and founded the company in 1822.  In the 1960's Tetley's merged with Ind Coope of Burton and Ansell's of Birmingham, becoming Allied Breweries - the country's biggest producers of cask ale by the 1980's, at which time they employed around 1,000 people at the Leeds brewery.  Brewing continued after a 1998 amalgamation with Carlsberg, but eventually came to a halt in June 2011.

Most of the huge site has been redeveloped.  The central admin offices and reception building that we were heading is now the lone remainder, but was once dwarfed by a larger block and chimney behind, and goods vehicle entrance to the side.
We strolled in and made for the bar to our left, staff scurrying around to set up a function on the other side of the building.
It's a spacious place, gloriously decorated with ample beery pictures and display cases of breweriana.

There were several cask ales on offer, but...we're in the Tetley brewery building.   We had to drink the rejuvenated Tetley Best, even if it's now brewed 80+ miles away.

Time for something a little bit different...

Northern Guitars (41 Call Lane, City Centre, Leeds, LS1 7BT)
On a very lively street, this opened as a guitar shop in 1991, then morphed into a bar and music venue in 2015.  You can still buy your six-stringed instruments upstairs which remains as a shop.  They haven't butchered all their stock to make the door handles...

It's a cracking little place.
There were a handful of tables at the front of the ground floor, one-step up to a stage area in the corner by the window, bar counter to the back of the room

Five hand pumps offered us a choice of Ilkley 'Lotus', Saltaire 'Blonde', Timothy Taylor 'Landlord', plus 'Three Swords' or 'BYB' from the local Kirkstall Brewery. 
The 5.9% 'Lotus' for me - a proper IPA, in good condition.

There is plenty of musical decoration, especially as you head upstairs where walls are covered in gig posters and displays of old concert tickets (remember those?).
A hairy & youthful Prop Up the Bar was at Donnington Park in a heavily-patched denim jacket for that Monsters of Rock show.  You couldn't pick a much less 'monstrous' line-up of rock bands if you tried. 

 

I left the other members of the group finishing drinks in Northern Guitars, planning to catch up with them in Whitelocks.
I'd spied a recently opened brewery tap in a railway arch and couldn't resist poking my head in.

Crown Street Tap (5 Cherry Tree Walk, City Centre, Leeds, LS2 7EB)
This is fledgling railway arch pub ticking, the tap only having opened in November 2025.
It's run by Talking Tides Brew Co., a relatively new operation that started brewing in 2022 on the North Yorkshire coast.
It's brightly lit with the arch-size glass frontage, furniture a mix of high and low light wood tables within, a big crowd attracted by somewhere relatively new.
Two hand pumps served Talking Tides 'Headland' and 'Yorkshire Best', whilst there was a wider choice on keg.

Just a half of 'Yorkshire Best' for me - not my favourite beer today - an "is it past best or do I just not like it" conundrum.

Draining my beer, I made a short walk through side-streets to reach a bar which has been a Good Beer Guide regular for the past few years, yet eluded me when I was last in the city.

Wapentake (92 Kirkgate, Leeds, LS2 7DJ)
On a busy city centre street, Wappentake is a characterful bar with wooden floorboards and mismatched furniture.  A bit of Erykah Badu on the stereo when I arrived, a hubbub of conversation from a crowd of gentlefolk. (The chap standing in front in my picture gives a clue that I'm going to be the scruffiest person here).
Cask on the bar was Five Points 'Best' or Theakston's 'Old Peculiar'.  I didn't fancy the best and it had been too long a day to indulge in Old Peculiar, so I went rogue with a cask Celtic Marches cider.  Which was actually refreshing and the bit of sweetness that the palate was calling out for.

And what's a wapentake?
It's "an archaic administrative and judicial subdivision of certain English counties (primarily in the North and Midlands, such as Yorkshire and Lincolnshire)."
So now you know.

My companions had been forced to skip Whitelocks, declaring it ridiculously busy, so were instead just a few strides down the road from me in the Duck & Drake.

Another revisit for me, having spent an evening here watching live bands when I was last in Leeds.  On that occasion my bed was a 5-minute stumble down the road - no repeat late evening in the Duck & Drake this time with my bed being 15-miles away.
Just time to admire the ceramics in the gents WC again and enjoy a half of Yorkshire Heart 'Blonde'.

We finished in somewhere completely different - not on your average Leeds pub crawl...

We were here to enable one of our number to say hello to a Leeds-based family member, who in turn was checking out one of the live bands playing that evening.
I bowled in to find a crowd of folk enjoying the last couple of songs by Northwich rockers Airtight - they sounded great, but I've no idea what they looked like from my vantage point at the back of the room.
Don't they make people tall these days?

Unsurprisingly, not a stronghold for cask ale from Yorkshire micro brewers.  Northern Monk's 'Faith' was the most tempting offer.

I would have quite liked to have stuck around and seen all the bands on the bill - live entertainment free of charge is not to be sneezed at.  But we needed to make a move and aim for a Halifax-bound train.
Hells bells - the walk through the centre past Leeds Saturday night revellers was a sight to behold!

A Leeds Tap Room Tour

WARNING
Contains Shiny Brewing Kit pictures.
And Brewdog.

A sunny Saturday in Leeds provided the opportunity for a bit of a taproom tour, with Mrs PropUptheBar in attendance to be in charge of directions, input scores on Untappd, and ensure we ate some food.

We spent an hour wandering the streets of the centre, the arcades and municipal buildings looking glorious in the good weather.

Until we neared midday and decided it was time to make a start on our brewery explorations, catching Bus 39 northbound into the suburbs.  Here's the route...

🕛 12noon - Brewery Number One

Terminus (8a Stonegate Road, Meanwood, Leeds, LS6 4HY - web)
We really ought to learn not to arrive at places too early.  
The tables and chairs were still stacked to the side of the room when we bowled in, hollering "are you open yet?"

This is the taproom of Meanwood Brewery, who produced their first beers in 2017 and opened Terminus in November of 2018.

  

From the very neatly chalked beer board, I opted for the cask option - a Meanwood Brewery 'Court of Horrors', 4.2% session IPA.
A superb easy-going pint of murk in a handled glass to get the day started, enjoyed on the patio outside.

Setting off from Terminus, Mrs PropUptheBar needed steering away from the Boot & Rally - micropubs being her other temptation rivaling pudding-orientated craft beers in brewery taps.
An uninspiring walk took us down Meanwood Road on our longest trek of the day.

🕜 1:30 - Brewery Number Two

North Springwell (Springwell, Buslingthorpe Lane, Leeds LS7 2DF - web)
It's not the most obvious of locations, through some scruffy side streets, past the battered-looking Primrose pub, light industrial units and the inevitable student-living complex.
But at the end of the road we caught sight of happy punters sat in the sunshine next to a decorative bit of brewing kit.

North began life as a beer bar in 1997, before opening their own brewery just outside the city centre in Sheepscar in 2015.  They outgrew this as business boomed, converting a former Victorian-era tannery in Springwell ready to be opened in 2020.
This has a capacity of 16,000hl - 2.8 million pints of beer a year.

With everyone enjoying the sunshine, it was deserted inside except for the odd person popping to the bar and a couple of folks having a tour around the brewery.  You can explain it to me a hundred and one times - I still don't know my mash tuns from my fermenting vessels.

I contemplated the various IPAs and continental lagers but - let's face it - I'd decided on the strongest on the beer list as soon as I walked in. 
A rich and complex barrel aged imperial stout.  Wonderful stuff.
Accompanied by bao buns from the food vendors in shipping containers to the side of the outdoor seating.  You can explain bao buns to me a hundred and one times - I still don't know what they are or what the appeal is.

Thoroughly satisfied by imperial stout, we departed from North and continued on our route back toward the centre.  We called into a small yard of workshops to check out Ridgeside Brewery.  Sadly they were having a 'well earned break' - which we realised when standing outside their closed shutter, Twitter being the one place this was mentioned and the only place we hadn't checked beforehand.  Doh!

So it was onward to Sheepscar Grove...

🕒 3pm - Brewery Number Three

Tartarus Tap Room (Unit 6, Taverners Walk Estate, Sheepscar Grove, Leeds, LS7 1AH - web)
We were now at the original home of North Brewery.
When they first moved to Springwell, this Sheepscar site was used to concoct sours and barrel aged brews for their Small Batch Project.
In 2022 it was sold to Tartarus - a brewery founded by Jack Roberts and Jordan Orpen in 2020 with a view to brewing European, experimental and foolishly strong beers.

Ah foolishly strong.  I will do well.

'The Mackenzie Potergeist', please.  A 14% 'Dulce de Leche Imperial Stout' which was pretty much as good as imperial stouts ever get.  I've had a few of the Tartarus double-digit beers and am in awe of how they make them so fearsomely easy to drink.

  

Tartarus is an old-school brewery tap set up - a little bit of random furniture and some beer-fest style benches; limited opening hours as you'd be well and truly in the way of the brewing operation at other times.
The staff were friendly and happy to chat about their beers, tempting me to try the Vault City barrel aged barley wine.  It is just possible that I may not have been walking in quite such a straight line departing from Tartarus as when I arrived.

Almost forgot the shiny brewing kit picture...

🕓 4pm - Brewdog diversion

Brewdog North Street (Crispin House, New York Road, Leeds, LS2 7PF - web)
We didn't need to call into Brewdog, especially being as they'd tried their best to hide it from us behind scaffolding.
But we were walking right past and figured we'd poke our heads inside.

"No, we can move on", said Mrs PropUptheBar.
"Are you sure?  They've got an Amundsen Scream Egg Series Salted Caramel Fudge pastry stout".
Which was enough to facilitate a quick change of mind.

The beer was too sweet for my liking, although I didn't seem to have any difficulty finishing it.
In the basement of Brewdog is an interesting games area with an arcade corner and two shuffle boards.

Another bus trip was needed to travel out of town in the other direction - west of the city centre to Kirkstall.

🕠 5:30pm - Brewery Number Four

Kirkstall Brewery Taproom and Kitchen (100 Kirkstall Road, Leeds, LS3 1HJ - web)
The original historic Kirkstall Brewery was several miles up the road with grand old buildings on either side of the Leeds-Liverpool canal.  That's now a student hall and the brewery disappeared for many a year.
Resurrected in 2011, they now recreate many of the old recipes, such as this cracking strong mild which I was drawn to...

Whilst it's every bit the modern building outside, the interior of the taproom is something of an eye-opener.  They've collected all manner of old pub features, from screens, to mirrors to old advertisements, creating an impressive bar that you wouldn't be expecting at first glance.  Just don't spoil the illusion by looking up at the high ceiling and modern ventilation ducts.

The day came to a close in a modern brewpub close to the train station.
If ever a city weren't short of places to drink within a few minutes of the station it's Leeds.

🕡6:30pm - Brewery Number Five

Tapped Brew (51 Boar Lane, Leeds, LS1 5EL - web)
This was the busiest place we visited, as well it should be in the centre on a Saturday evening.  Doormen guarding the entrance and turning a couple of people away, so how I got past them I'll never know.

It's part of the small chain which also includes Sheffield and York Taps alongside several other bars. Not quite the heritage environs of either of those, this is a single rectangular room with the bar on the right-hand-side and brewing kit on the left side.
Not sure how much use the kit gets though, with most of the wide beer range coming from well-known UK and European names.  
I opted for their Sheffield-brewed 'Sheaf Street Pale Ale', an easy-going pint to bring things to a close.

We'd had a fine day out, making it to a varied bunch of places and enjoying beers ranging from familiar murky pales to trad milds to decadently strong porters.
Northern Monk is an omission from this post - somewhere that I called into on another day.  And there's a handful more taprooms that I've missed too.  Always leave something for a return visit!