May 8, 2012
first good bar/bottleshop i have been to that is located in a mall! - reasonable prices and they have a lot of great american and british beers. Also belgian. They have a really small cooler but fill it with a mix so there is always something interesting to drink at the bar, but a lot more to take home. Also sell glasses. Very small place but the most beautiful sight ever when you have been stuck in the mall for too long ;)

May 2, 2012
Always try to visit here when in Manchester. A great little bar in the Arndale shopping center. Good selection of draught beers from around the world plus bottles that are also available for take away. Nice place to sit and watch the world go by.

April 22, 2012
Quite an insane idea to stick this oasis of quality beer in the middle of a food court, but it works wonderfully. Beer range isn’t bad at all, and you can buy a couple of bottles to take home.

April 15, 2012
Tucked away in the very interesting multi nationality food court of the Arndale Centre (don’t go to the big multinational food cout upstairs like I did first!!). This is a great little respite from retail hell and compliments the surrounding outlets very well. Cask beers in good nick, decently priced. Good UK bottle selection, Sierra Nevada PA on tap and rotating cask beers. A good little find.

April 9, 2012 [ Updated April 21, 2012 ]
A great little bar with five hand pumps and three keg taps at the edge of the shopping centre maze that is Manchester’s Arndale Centre. The Microbar shares tables and chairs with the more usual type of market café in a chilly space by the window on the margins of the Arndale Centre’s market area – very handy for someone like me who has a pathological aversion to shopping malls. It’s a cross between a bar and a shop so you can browse the bottle selection or just sit awhile, watch the world go by and recharge the batteries. I’d just spent a few happy hours in the excellent People’s History Museum down by the river (www.phm.org.uk/) so I decided to do the latter. There were three cask ales from Boggart (the Microbar is a Boggart outlet), a guest (Pictish Nugget) and a perry as well as three keg beers. I chose the Boggart Rum Porter, which was delicious and did the trick nicely. The bottle selection isn’t huge but it’s quite eclectic. There are offerings from fairly close by (for example Hornbeam, Dunham Massey and Acorn), others such as Brodies from farther afield in the UK and standard continental Europeans like Erdinger, Duvel, Liefmans, Lindemans and Floris. Incidentally, there’s a specialist cheese stall next door, the Queen Brie (www.thequeenbrie.co.uk/), where I bought a great selection of cheeses from Lancashire and Cheshire at very reasonable prices. Cheese and beer complement each other so beautifully and, had I not been planning to eat dinner later, I’d have been very tempted by the three cheese platter and a Boggart’s beer for £5.50. (Visited 19 January 2012).

January 22, 2012
Small bar in the Arndale Centre. A couple of cask beers on, including a lager and strawberry beer from Phoenix. Not a bad selection of bottled beers also available with a fairly wide and reasonably priced selection. Worth a look.

December 22, 2011
Now this is an interesting set-up if I’ve seen one! Its not an ordinary bar, its on a stall in the Market Hall of the Arndale. There is two sides to the bar, one with a couple of hand-pulls on and surprisingly a price list! The other side has Boggart Beers, including the superb Rum Porter and a couple of taps, normally a Kolsch at around £4.40 a pint. Then there’s the shelves of bottled beers. Near to the entrance is the foreign beers with Americans like Brooklyn, Goose Island, Anchor and Belgians/Dutch like Westmalle, La Trappe Dubbel, Tripel, Achel, Gouden Carlous Tripel, there’s about 20 anyway. Prices going from £1.80 upwards on the Americans, most of the Belgians going up towards £3, quite heavily marked up but I know nowhere else that sells these in a shop in Manchester. Anyway continuing there is a bigger selection of British beers, again over £2 a bottle. Against the back wall is ciders, fruit beers in bottles, and a few more Belgians the likes of Maredsous 8, Kasteel Triple. I can also know a few items of glassware on sale, the Grande versions of Chimay Blue and Duvel and various gift packs, Maredsous 6,8,10 and a glass but prices aren’t shown. There is little room in the bar, normally 5-6 at it and room for a couple to browse in the shop, I sat down on one of the tables adjacent to it with a pint and got up to browse occasionally. I’ve been here a couple of times, the 2nd time a special visit to pick up some bottles, 4 Belgians, 1 Dutch, 4 English and 3 American beers and a pint of Boggarts I am Beer for around £34. Overall, I quite like it here, just a shame many of the bottles are very expensive.