Whitby Craft Beer: Seven Bars and What Each One Is Actually For

A tap list tells you what a place is for.

I have been doing this long enough to have a method, and it is not complicated. Count the taps. Count the hand pulls. Read the names, then look at the room and decide which of the two got the money.

Seven places in Whitby on one Saturday, and every one of them gave a different answer.

Sorted below by what each one is for, which is not the same order as how much I enjoyed them.

For the beer: Green Dragon Ale House

4–5 Grape Lane.

The Green Dragon is a small beer bar and bottle shop with two rooms, an eclectic mix of quirky seating, and shelving lined with bottles and cans — plus a decent selection of spirits for anyone after something stronger.

The interior I would call eclectic. I would not say it was modern and I would not say it was old. There are two small rooms with seating for about seven different parties, ranging from six-seater tables down to two-seaters.

Twelve taps for keg beers and four hand pulls for the casks. The styles run from pale ales and IPAs through reds, bitters, porters and stouts, with some lagers and a few ciders on as well. All really good quality, well kept beers — and twelve lines is a lot to keep well. Most places running that many have two or three that are quietly not right. I did not find one here.

Lots of different breweries on offer. Kirkstall, Atom, Northern Monk. The chalk board over the bar had:

• Brasserie d’Achouffe Cherry Chouffe — Belgian cherry fruit beer, 8%
• DEYA Steady Rolling Man — pale ale, 5.2%
• Brass Castle Bad Kitty — vanilla gluten-free porter, 5.5%
• Stiegl Radler — grapefruit, 2%

And the screen next to it was running another eight:

• Turning Point Darkest Matter Custard — imperial double milk stout, 10%
• Amity Brew Proximity — imperial double stout, 11%
• Freedom Lager — helles, 4%
• Sandford Orchards Devon Red — traditional cider, 4.5%
• Northern Monk Northern Rising — English stout, 4.4%
• Brass Castle Sour Lips — sour, 4.1%
• Atom Photon Drift — American IPA, 6%
• Kirkstall Virtuous — session IPA, 4.5%

Prices are reasonable for craft beer, depending on the strength and the rarity or quality of the beer — typically five to seven pounds a pint. Most of the screen sits at £5.40. The Stiegl Radler is £4.60. The Atom is £7.20, which you can argue about, but it is 6% and it is Atom.

The Cherry Chouffe is £9.00 a pint, and I did stop and look at that for a moment. In fairness it is 8%, it is Belgian, and nobody sensible drinks a pint of it — the thirds are £3.00 and that is what it is priced for. Olesia has one every time we come and has never once complained.

Friendly staff. A nice quiet place to go for a couple of quality beers while you are in the Whitby old town, and if you only have one pint in this town, have it here.

Dogs are welcome.

For the beer, despite the room: The Esk Vaults

5a Golden Lion Bank.

The Esk Vaults is tucked away on the hill going up towards the main shopping area — a bar sitting above a couple of traditional shops. One of those shops is The Greedy Pig, and if you like a good pork sandwich, that is the place to go. Good price as well: £5 for the medium, £6 for the large, full-on, with crackling and stuffing and apple sauce. Really good. Get one on the way up if you go there before 4pm.

Initially the pub was closed. We tried at around half one, and it was shut; we went back just after three on the Saturday and it was open. Published hours are 4pm most days and 1pm on Saturdays, so check before you build a route around it.

Inside there is not much to speak of in terms of what the place looks like. It is a bit of a drab place, more like an old-style working men’s club than a bar. There is a strange vibe to it that I cannot really describe. You are not going there for the atmosphere or the decor. You are going for the board. Five beers and two ciders on draft:

• Budweiser Budvar — lager, 5.1%
• Tiny Rebel Coal Drop — smooth stout, 4.1%
• Anthology Sicilian Lemon Pale — 4.2%
• Verdant Sun Dialer — pale ale, 5%
• Marble Breezin’ — ginger and lime gose, 4.5%
• Pulp Medium Apple Cider — still, 6%
• Snails Bank Raspberry Ripple — still cider, 4%

Pricewise it is not particularly cheap. Six pound fifty up to seven pounds a pint, and £7 for a Budvar is the one that makes you look twice. But the quality was good.

I had the Sun Dialer. Very nice — refreshing, light, easy drinking. The Sicilian Lemon Pale I only had a try of and it was quite refreshing; I would happily have had a full one. The ginger and lime gose was interesting, but not my style.

They also do stone baked pizza. We had already eaten and did not order one, and the smell coming out of that kitchen has been quietly bothering me ever since.

Dogs are welcome here too.

The people serving were nice and really into their beers. They have a rolling set of beers coming on all the time and a board showing what is next, and beer mats all over the wall. They are all about the beer. It is clearly a place somebody set up to be about the beer rather than the decor, and if that is what you are looking for, it is a good place to go. A bit pricier, a bit drab inside, and just up from the pork sandwich shop — so if you are peckish, get your pork sandwich there or a pizza inside.

For the room: Beer O’Clock

11 Flowergate, about a hundred metres further up the hill from The Esk Vaults.

Beer O’Clock is a micropub with a fairly modern shopfront, and inside it is not a traditional pub at all — it is a converted shop, until recently Mason’s greengrocers, turned into a bar. Wood-planked walls, tiling, clean and modern. It is the nicest room of the day.

Six taps for keg beers and four hand pulls.

The hand pulls were nothing to write home about. A Timothy Taylor Boltmaker, which is a traditional beer and a good one. Yorkshire Heart Blackheart, a strong dark stout. A British Summer Time pale. And a Brew York Pale — Brew York seems to be quite popular in Whitby, it was on in half the places we went.

On keg there was a Veltins and a Warsteiner, which are perfectly good German pilsners and which you are not going to class as craft beer, a Green Mountain I had never heard of, and a Yorkshire Black nitro stout. They also had a few ciders on, which were the more interesting shelf — still ciders from the cellar, chalked up on their own board:

• Thistly Cross Whisky Cask — medium, 6.7%
• Seacider Rhubarb — medium/sweet, 4%
• Snails Bank Raspberry Ripple — sweet, 4%

£5.40 a pint, £2.70 a half. I did not try any of them this time — there was nowhere free to sit.

It runs 12 noon to 10.45pm, seven days a week, which makes it the most reliable door on this list. Dogs welcome, if accompanied by a responsible thirsty adult — their wording, not mine.

There are seats for about ten parties of four, but the place is always busy. Every time we have been it has been standing room only and difficult to get a seat.

So: not really a full-on craft beer place, apart from the Brew York pale. If you are in the area and fancy a pint it is well worth a visit, and the decor inside is nice. This one is more about the ambience than the beer.

In fairness, I should say the local CAMRA branch made it Whitby Pub of the Year in 2024, so plenty of people rate it higher than I have. I stand by the tap list, but that is one man’s system against a branch vote and I know which one is more democratic.

For the music: Whitby Brewery

Abbey Lane, next to the Abbey, at the top of the 199 steps.

Whitby Brewery has been up next to the Abbey for a good ten years now. It is in an old farm, and over those ten years they have slowly upgraded it and added to it. There is a small bar area where you get your beers, and then you go and sit in the brewery area itself, or outside if the weather is good.

They typically have about five of their own on, and everything on cask is £5.00 a pint:

• Abbey Blonde 3.8% — what I had
• Saltwick Nab 3.4% — a beautiful dark ruby mild
• Whitby Whaler 4.0% — amber, a proper Yorkshire bitter
• Smuggler’s Gold 4.4% — golden ale
• Jet Black 4.5% — black porter with a hint of liquorice
• IPA 5.2%

And three or four keg drinks alongside: Lager No.9 at £5.90, Fossil Fuel, a New England IPA at £6.60, Whitby White Bavarian wheat, and Black Death, an imperial stout that is 6.66% and priced at £6.66, which somebody clearly enjoyed setting up. There was also an orange Radler on, which was quite nice, and Stowford Press. Bottles, ciders and spirits behind the bar, and loads of bottles on the shelf to buy and take home.

Prices are all pretty reasonable and none of the beers are particularly strong, which is good.

They also have a pizza oven, and the pizza is good. It is not what you expect from a brewery bar in a converted farm building, and it means you can stay for a second pint instead of going back down the steps to find something to eat.

Dogs are welcome, and with most of the seating in the brewery area or outside there is room for them.

One thing I would say about Whitby Brewery beers, and it is my taste rather than their quality: they never taste clean and crisp to me. They all seem to have that maltiness you get with a Yorkshire bitter, and it follows the pales and the blonde around too, whereas modern IPAs and pales tend to be a lot more clean and crisp. That is not to say they are not good beers, because they are. It is just not to my taste.

The bar itself is a modern take with some traditional wood, and it is small — there is nowhere to sit. Everybody normally ends up in the brewery area or outside with a lot of tables.

The other good thing about this place is the live music. They have bands on most weekends, right through the winter months. The brewery is in a converted farm barn, and over the years they have improved it and improved it, and somehow they have managed to end up with pretty good acoustics — so when the bands play it has a really good sound. We came up the steps at the end of the day and walked into an AC/DC tribute band, which was not planned and made the day.

It does get very busy, especially when the bands are on or the weather is good. Sometimes you struggle to find a seat and sometimes you queue ten minutes for a beer. But it is a popular place for good reason: good quality beers, if not to my taste, and the live music really gets the party atmosphere going.

For the food: Abbey Wharf

Market Place.

Abbey Wharf is in the Market Place area, with all the cobbled streets and the small craft-type shops and rock shops around it, right at the very end and closest to the harbour.

It is an old bar that has been upgraded significantly in the last few years, with a really modern interior. All the old wooden beams are still there but stripped back and modernised, with a steel mezzanine floor, a very open-plan bar area, a big glass roof and a modern wooden floor across the whole space. It is a massive place inside — fifty to a hundred tables, at a guess, and I did not count them. There is a small seating area outside overlooking the harbour, and about twenty tables upstairs on the mezzanine, but you have to book to reserve a seat up there. Downstairs is mostly first come, first served, although I noticed they were holding tables back for later that evening.

Extensive selection on the bar — fifteen or twenty different beers — but all pretty commercial, to be honest. Mostly Cask Marque type stuff, which for me is the tell. Doom Bar, Sharp’s Atlantic, Titanic Plum Porter, Madrí, Carling, Coors. There is the odd one or two decent craft beers hiding in a separate section, a Brew York and a Verdant, so you will not go thirsty.

Their own app carries the prices. The cask ales are £5.40 for the Atlantic and the Doom Bar and £5.80 for the Plum Porter and the guest ale; the craft section runs £6.40 to £6.80, with the Offshore cheapest and the Alpacalypse IPA and the Blue Moon at the top of it. Ciders are £5.90, or £6.50 for the Rekorderlig. Checked 22 October 2026.

A word on the Titanic Plum Porter, since it was on. Many years ago, when I tried it I thought it was a really nice, interesting beer. But having compared it now to what Durham Brewery produce — the chocolate porters, the Waggon Wheel, the Turkish Delight, all heavy-bodied with a lot of flavour — the Titanic tastes a bit weak and watery in comparison. That is not this bar’s fault. It is what happens when your local brewery raises the bar and you cannot un-raise it.

You can also serve yourself here. They have a wall where you tap your card onto a screen, choose the beer you want, it charges you, and you pour the pint yourself. It is quite an interesting system and mechanically it is a good bit of kit. Then you read what is on it — Peroni, Madrí, Coors Light, Carling — and the enthusiasm goes out of you a bit. They have built a machine that finally lets a man do the job himself and put nothing on it worth doing.

The biggest reason to go there is the food, and the food is really, really good. Fish and chips is about seventeen pounds for a proper plate of it, but it is in a restaurant, so it is the same price as most of the takeaways and as good as the Magpie or anything else on the seafront.

Dogs are welcome here as well, which is worth knowing on a seafront where most of the other doors are restaurants.

They also have live entertainment most weekends, ranging from a resident DJ to singers and bands. To find out what is on, check their Facebook page.

So: not somewhere to go just for the craft beer. But if you want a nice pint in a nice setting with nice food in the market area, it is the place to go.

For the building: Helmsley Brewing Co Tap Room

Wesley Hall, Church Street.

The Helmsley Brewing Co Tap Room is a converted Methodist church, in the old market town area down the cobbled streets — a perfect location for a pint. Nice modern interior, but with the old style still going on, and the organ pipes are still up above the bar, so it looks quite historic while being modern inside.

Six hand pulls, and six or seven keg taps alongside. The casks are not just Helmsley’s own — three of theirs, plus some Bradfield beers on as well — and on keg there was Guinness, Aspall cider and a Brew York.

Reasonable prices for the hand pulls: £4.60 a pint, which is pretty good. What I had was the Helmsley Platinum, a session pale — quite light, but with quite a bitter aftertaste for me. The quality is good, but again, not my style.

They also serve Asian street style food, at not a bad price. About £15 a meal from what I could see, and the sizes are quite big. Inside there is plenty of seating. Outside is pretty small — down the side of an alley, about six tables taking three or four people each — but it catches the sun, so it is quite a nice spot when the sun is out.

The one caveat, and it is a real one: service. We were in at about one o’clock on Regatta Saturday with one person behind the bar and a room full of people. They have a coffee machine and were not able to serve from it. Fair enough on the day — but it is not a one-off complaint about this place, and the same theme runs through a lot of what people write about it. The building and the beer are not the problem. Being short-handed at the busiest moment of the year is.

Go, but go when it is quiet, and do not go if you are in a hurry.

Dogs are welcome, inside and at the tables down the alley.

The one we did not get into this time: The Quirky Den

11 Grape Lane — just down the pedestrian street from the Green Dragon.

The Quirky Den is a micro pub and gin bar in a building that dates from the 1630s, and the reason it is quirky is that the floors are not even. They are on quite a slope, as though the building was put up by a bunch of drunks. In reality it is just very, very old and the ground has had a few hundred years to have opinions.

They typically serve craft beers, and we were there a year ago and the beer was good. I have also read that they serve Theakston’s Old Peculier drawn from wooden sherry casks, which if true is reason enough on its own. There is an upstairs seating area with views over the harbour, which is a further argument for getting there early.

I cannot confirm what is on now, because we could not get in this time. It was full at two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon — lunchtime, in a bar, on a hot day in August. That tells you something about the place, and none of it bad.

Noted for next time.

Also spotted: G’s Bar & Kitchen

97–98 Church Street.

G’s Bar and Kitchen have Camden on tap. We did not stop there this time, but the frontage is smart and the tables outside catch the evening sun on the cobbles. Recorded for completeness.

What I would actually do

• One pint, best beer: Green Dragon.
• Best beer despite the room: The Esk Vaults — pork sandwich downstairs first.
• Best room: Beer O’Clock.
• Cheapest sensible pint: Whitby Brewery, £5.00 on cask.
• Eating: Abbey Wharf.
• Finishing the day: Whitby Brewery or Abbey Wharf, if there is a band on. Check first — it changes where you end up.

A route that works: over the bridge and up Golden Lion Bank for a pork sandwich, Beer O’Clock further up Flowergate, The Esk Vaults if it has opened, back down to the Green Dragon on Grape Lane or The Quirky Den, Abbey Wharf for food, then the 199 steps up to Whitby Brewery.

That is one day and a great many steps. Olesia has written up the rest of it — the Abbey, the harbour, the fish and chip awards and how to park for £5 — over on The Streets.

Addresses

• Green Dragon Ale House — 4–5 Grape Lane, Whitby YO22 4BA · dogs welcome · thegreendragonwhitby.co.uk
• The Quirky Den — 11 Grape Lane, Whitby YO22 4BA
• The Esk Vaults — 5a Golden Lion Bank, Whitby YO21 3BS · dogs welcome · Mon–Thu 4pm–10pm · Fri 4pm–10.30pm · Sat 1pm–10.30pm · Sun 4pm–10pm
• The Greedy Pig — 5 Golden Lion Bank, Whitby YO21 3BS · Facebook page
• Beer O’Clock Micropub — 11 Flowergate, Whitby YO21 3BA · 12 noon–10.45pm daily · dogs welcome · whatpub.com listing
• Whitby Brewery — Abbey Lane, Whitby YO22 4JR · dogs welcome · whitby-brewery.com
• Abbey Wharf — Market Place, Whitby YO22 4DD · dogs welcome · abbeywharfwhitby.co.uk
• Helmsley Brewing Co Tap Room — Wesley Hall, Church Street, Whitby YO22 4DE · dogs welcome · helmsleybrewingco.co.uk
• G’s Bar & Kitchen — 97–98 Church Street, Whitby YO22 4DE

Before you go

• The Esk Vaults does not open until the afternoon — 4pm most days, 1pm Saturdays.
• Beer O’Clock and Whitby Brewery are frequently standing room only, and there is a queue when a band is on.
• Abbey Wharf’s mezzanine is bookable; downstairs is first come, first served.
• Whitby Brewery is at the top of the 199 steps. Plan which end of the day you tackle that from.
• Regatta weekend is exceptionally busy in every venue here, and staffing does not always keep up.