Brewery Tap / Brewers Arms, Great Ducie Street

.....
Brewery Tap, Great Ducie Street. (c) manchester.com and manchester2002-uk.

.

This was the brewery tap for the famous old Boddington's Brewery which was sadly closed in 2004 and was demolished a couple of years ago, the Brewery Tap going with it.

Brewery Tap, Great Ducie Street, 2006. (c) Charliebubbles1 at flickr.

The excuse made by the callous owners of Boddingtons, InBev, was that the tastes of the drinking public had changed and their non-cask product - i.e. their Widget-containing cans and the bland Boddies Smoothflow - accounted for 90% of business and it couldn't justifiably be brewed in Manchester and then packaged elsewhere. Cask Boddies is still brewed in Manchester in smaller volumes by Hyde's of Moss Side, but it's rare you see it available around town these days.

Brewery Tap (left) and Brewery. (c) whathappenedlastnight.net.

.

As well as standard pub grub and a decent pint, the Brewery Tap - or the Brewers Arms as it was known in the '80s - was also the Boddington's merchandise retail center where they flogged a huge range of memorabilia.  This was on the back of their brilliant 1990s "Cream of Manchester" advertising campaigns, the best of which featured local lass Melanie Sykes sailing down the Rochdale Canal on a lagonda with a foaming pint in hand.

Brewery Arms, Great Ducie Street. (c) deltrems at flickr..

Brewery Tap, Great Ducie Street, 2007. (c) Gene Hunt at flickr.