The best beer in Stopford

The Third Space under the Viaduct that serves the best beer in Stopford

Chances are you’ve become familiar with Mark Welsby and The Runaway Brewery Team. Over the last three years they’ve been immersed in Stopford’s social scene creating pop-up bars to introduce the town to their beer. 

Mark moved his business from Manchester city centre to Stockport back in 2023, the business had been selling direct to the trade, but after just over a decade of producing beer for some of the city’s best bars, collaborating with local brands and running pop-up events, Mark knew he needed to create a dedicated space for his growing community of brand advocates and chose Stockport for that space.

We pull up a stool with Mark to understand more about the runaway success story that is Runaway Brewery. 

“The Runaway Brewery started around 12 years ago in central Manchester.” Explains Mark. 

“We moved to Stockport in 2022 as we wanted to have a location where people could come and see us making our beer, sit down and enjoy tasting it with us at the same time. We found an amazing building in central Stockport, almost underneath the viaduct in the heart of Stockport. It’s a beautiful old place, right on the side of the Mersey, opposite the new amazing bus interchange. It couldn’t be a better place for people to come and find us and experience what Runaway Brewery is all about.”

So, for someone who hasn’t been through the door yet, tell us what it’s all about and what you’re serving, because it isn’t just beer, is it? 

“Obviously, our focus is beer. We started brewing in 2014 and I’ve built a reputation around making beer which is influenced by traditional methods but is designed and made for a contemporary audience. Through that time, we’ve made lots of friends, one of which is Richard from Honest Crust Pizza, who we invited to come and join us out at this new site. So, we’ve got a great big woodfired pizza oven out the back, which, whenever we’re open, Thursday through Sunday, Honest Crust are there making delicious food as well. We’re incredibly lucky to have them, they are nationally recognised as one of the best pizza makers in the UK. So, for them to be sharing our space with us, we feel very lucky to do that. 

We’ve also got a fridge, which our friends from the Beer Moth fill with weird and wonderful beer, cider, all sorts of stuff, which they source from amazing producers from all over the place. So, it really is a collaborative effort between those three businesses. 

We do brewery tours as well. And yeah, our focus, as I say, is mainly about the beer.” Said Mark.

"There is a lot of buzz around Stockport."

One thing I’ve noticed about you as a brand is your willingness to collaborate with the town and how you’ve created a place for community as well.

“Yeah, absolutely. We have a little event space upstairs and we host life drawing classes up there. We’re also doing bits and pieces with Serenity bookshop, who are in central Stockport. They had Robin Ince come recently and do a talk about one of his books there. We’ve done little cinema nights there. We’ve hosted supper clubs with chefs from places like Yellowhammer, Iska. Honest Crust, they’ve obviously done bits and pieces up there, too. So, yeah, you’re right in the sense that, although for me, beer is at the core of everything, the reality is that this space is not trying to be something that competes with a pub but is community venue. So, what we’re trying to do is create a third space in lots of ways. We don’t open late. It’s somewhere that we want people to come and enjoy and learn about what we do, but we also enjoy being in Stockport and being part of Stockport, which is why we’ve done beers with people like Luis from Cafe San Juan, Paul from Stockport Gin. We’ve got one of his beers with us today, in fact, a Stockport Dry Wit, which we’ve made with Paul. We’ve worked with Stockport County as well. We do the house beer for them, up at Edgley Park, which has been an amazing thing to do, and it’s great that we’re able to be part of that match day experience. 

You’ve just listed off five, six different bars, restaurants, and brands that are on the move in Stockport? The whole place is getting more column inches. What’s going on right now in Stockport? And how do you articulate that for somebody who’s an outsider who had never been? 

It’s an interesting one. There is a lot of buzz around Stockport. The main reason for that for me is that it’s a town which is largely being driven by small independent businesses, which are very, very DIY in their approach. So rather than providing a very off-the-shelf experience, you’re getting something very personal and very real and very authentic because it is the owners who are pushing and running these small businesses and trying to create things in Stockport, which they felt were missing. As a result of that, you end up being part of a network of like-minded people.

We’re often being asked by, Rare mags, for example, they do little book launches and arts evenings with writers and artists, and they will often come and get some beer from us picking styles which go with whatever it is they’re doing that evening. 

And because we all understand each other it’s not like working with big corporations, we’ve done bits and pieces like that in the past, and it just isn’t the same experience. It feels much more like a box-ticking exercise in some cases, whereas this is very real, and we’re all supporting each other because we know that if we can all do well, then we create a thriving place that people want to visit and people want to spend time in. 

I definitely think having a collective approach to things, we’re doing an event called Stocktoberfest, which is like a beer festival that we’ve run for the last three years. This year, a lot of the independent venues on Underbank are also getting involved. We’ve pulled together a cross-town event where people can go from place-to-place and know that there will be something different in each of those places. 

That sort of desire to keep doing interesting things and keep giving people a reason to visit the town is what’s driving Stockport’s revival.”