Best Craft Beer Pubs in Edinburgh?

The Bow Bar
Staggs/The Volunteer Arms
The Halfway House
Cloisters
The Blue Blazer
Abbotsford Bar
The Guildford
The Southern
Stockbridge Tap
BrewDog
The Red Squirrel
The Hanging Bat
Holyrood 9A,
Clerks Bar,
The Cask and Barrel Southside,
The Kilderkin

 

For an excellent all round real ale, craft keg, uisge beatha and Scottish beer experience hie Ye forthwith to Ye Olde Bow Bar.


Grand Scottish ale from trad tall founts at The Abbotsford


10 ales on hand pull at The Guildford


I believe the Hanging Bat (6 cask 14 keg), Red Squirrel and The Southern are geared more toward craft keg.

I find the Cloisters bar has a great range of ales whenever I visit.

 

Great thread great replies.

Can definitely recommend virtually everything mentioned by Aye (Cheers!) Personal fav remains the Bow Bar though a lot of folk love the still relatively new trendy Hanging Bat. Good place IMHO too.

I'm within range of all the pubs you've mentioned but can't commit to any Christmas time pub crawl at this point at least. When will you be here?

 

Quite a pub crawl there Aye!
I've visited about half a dozen of them but If I only had one night, I'd split it between The Hanging Bat & Cloisters bar, the latter is the pub my now wife took me to on our first date!

 

I love all of those bars...kudos.

 

Just as a wee aside to Aye's fantastic list of bars, The Standing Order has a brilliant range of Craft ales. Yeah it's a 'Spoons, but that doesn't detract from the excellent beers on offer.

 

Cafe Royale is worth a gander if you like nice interiors of pubs, I think they have a few cask offerings, maybe not the best though

 

Nice. There's a reasonable chance of a hook up then. Will know more as the dates approach.

 

Just don't take any notice of the Time Out review of the bat

 

what do they say?

 

Here's the review and the response

http://www.thehangingbat.com/index.php/2014/11/04/my-response-to-our-recent-timeout-review/


caused a minor kerfuffle in the craft beer matrix of scotland

 

Quite ironic that the reviewer criticised the Hanging Bat basically for having lots of beer, not being warm and welcoming, and being expensive, yet gave Brewdog 5 stars out of 5.

 

*wipes manly tear* that was an epic response.

I went to the HG at the beginning of the year when I visited Edinburgh and found it quite pleasant. The Timeout review was a load of pish.

 

It is possible to be critical of The Hanging Bat despite having lots and lots of great well kept beer. Bluntly, it isn't warm or welcoming at all but I'd still give it 5 stars out of 5 too. Expensive? I've seen worse. And it is certainly one of the very best places to bring the latest most innovative UK beer in Edinburgh if not all of Scotland. Very few others bring as much to the table.

 

I love the Bow Bar, among others already mentioned here. These are also some of my favorites:

Bennets Bar

Next door to the King’s Theatre, a colourful clientele of theatre-goers, thespians and seasoned locals make up the average evening in Bennet’s Bar. The décor speaks for itself and the listed interior dates back to 1906, so Bennets has a real authenticity that many other Edinburgh haunts strive for.
8 Leven St, Edinburgh, EH3 9LG

Barony Bar

Broughton Street may have plenty of options when it comes to public houses, but the Barony Bar is certainly worth a visit. With some of the friendliest staff in Edinburgh and a real working fireplace (an invaluable feature on a cold January evening), the lively Barony always seems to have something going on. Look out for its cameo role in the Sylvain Chomet animated film The Illusionist.
81-85 Broughton St, Edinburgh, EH1 3RJ

I pasted the above descriptions


Leslies Bar
http://www.realalepubedinburgh.co.uk/