Hop Horizons

Track

Track has quietly become one of the most consistently impressive names in British craft beer. Based in Manchester, they're best known for beautifully put-together pale ales and IPAs, though the range stretches confidently into lagers, dark beers and the occasional experiment.

The brewery was founded in 2014 by Sam Dyson after a long cycling trip that took him through Europe, the US, Central and South America, Australia and New Zealand. That sense of travel and discovery still sits at the heart of the brand – as they put it themselves, beers "born on a bike and raised in Manchester".

Where Track really excels is modern hop-forward beer. The hazy pales and IPAs reliably deliver vivid citrus, stone fruit and tropical flavours on the soft, rounded body that's become the Manchester signature. The bigger double IPAs can be luxuriantly thick and saturated, but the best of them keep enough bitterness and definition to avoid collapsing into vague sweetness.

There's real clarity to the more restrained end of the range too. The lower-strength pales manage plenty of aroma and flavour without feeling thin, and the lagers show a brewery capable of precision as well as excess. Even in familiar styles, everything Track does feels deliberate, technically sound and well polished.

Single-hop releases and variations on recurring recipes are a big part of what they do, and they make differences between hop varieties, growing regions and even harvest selections unusually easy to pick out. The flipside is a catalogue full of superficially similar hazy IPAs – but for anyone interested in the finer details of hop flavour, that's precisely what makes Track so rewarding.

The presentation is understated and instantly recognisable: elegant abstract artwork, muted colours and clean typography, with none of the shouty cartoon branding found elsewhere in craft beer. The names tend to evoke movement, landscapes, weather and light – another nod to the travelling origins.

The brewery and taproom sit in an industrial railway-arch-style space near Manchester Piccadilly, with the brewing kit on show alongside a broad line-up of keg and cask. It's modern and spacious, but keeps enough of its industrial character to feel like a working brewery rather than just another bar – and it's become a real focal point for Manchester's brewing scene.

If there's a criticism, it's that Track can seem overly focused on soft, hazy, heavily hopped beer, and anyone chasing radical novelty may find release after release covering similar ground. But that consistency is also the point. Track rarely bothers with novelty for its own sake – they just keep refining styles they understand exceptionally well.

This is modern British craft brewing at its most accomplished: elegant, expressive and remarkably dependable, with technical precision balanced against a genuine sense of adventure. The reputation may rest on pale ales and IPAs, but the quality across the wider range shows this is far more than a one-trick brewery.

For anyone who loves hop-forward beer, Track isn't just one of Manchester's finest – it's one of the best in the country.

Beers (and other) Brewed by Track

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