Everything with COPPER on the badge was brewed nine metres below where you are standing. The core four are always on: Vault Pale (4.2%, Citra and Mosaic, the one most people start with), Ancoats Mild (3.6%, dark, criminally underrated), Cellar Lager (4.6%, five weeks cold-conditioned) and Nightwatch Stout (5.1%, oats and cold-brew coffee from a roastery two streets away). Beyond those, six rotating taps that change most weeks — a hazy IPA, something sour, and in winter a barrel-aged barley wine that lands in November and is gone by New Year.
Twelve guest lines, refreshed every Tuesday and Friday. We buy from breweries we have actually visited: Cloudwater and Track down the road, Verdant out of Cornwall, Duration in Norfolk, and a standing slot for whoever is doing the most interesting thing in Yorkshire that month. Two lines are always cask, gravity-poured, and one is always under 3.5%, because not everyone wants to write off the evening. The full list is chalked up behind the bar and on the screen by the door.
We do one thing: a toastie, and we do it very well. Sourdough from the bakery on Blossom Street, Ogleshield and Montgomery cheddar, onion jam, pressed until the edges go lacy. £9. Add nduja for £2 or a fried egg for £1.50. There is a vegan version with a cashew béchamel that sells better than we expected. Scotch eggs, pork pies and a salt-and-vinegar crisp sandwich round it out. That is the entire menu and it is not changing.
The vault room downstairs seats thirty-two, holds fifty standing, and has its own four-tap bar. No hire fee Sunday to Wednesday with a £400 minimum spend; £250 on Thursdays; not available Friday or Saturday. It comes with the toastie press, a speaker you control, and a brewery tour from whoever is on shift. Email the address at the bottom of the page and ask for Row.