Saturday dates now booking
Bristol's original craft beer tasting experience, running since 2016. Sail the Floating Harbour with a beer in your hand, go behind the scenes at an award-winning brewery, then finish under the vaults of King Street with a flight of beer and a board of cheese and charcuterie.
Bristol has been brewing for the best part of a thousand years, and the modern city has one of the densest craft beer scenes in the country. Our tour is the shortcut to it.
You'll cover the city by water and on foot, tasting as you go, with a guide who can tell a saison from a stout at fifty paces and knows exactly which brewery once stood where the flats are now. It's four hours, it's £69 a head, and everything you drink and eat along the way is already paid for.
No coach. No pub crawl. No queueing at the bar. Just good beer, in good company, in the city that brews it.
Beer at every one, and a guide who stays with you from the first pour to the last.
Bristol Floating Harbour
We meet outside The Grain Barge and board a ferry we've taken over for the afternoon. Thirty minutes across the harbour with two Bristol Beer Factory beers in hand, your guide talking you through the styles, and the water taking you past the site of the old Bristol Brewery. It is a genuinely lovely way to start a Saturday.
Days Road, St Philips
A short walk from the water to one of Britain's most decorated independent breweries. You'll get in among the kit, hear from the team how the beer is actually made — Moor famously don't fine or filter theirs — and then settle into the taproom to taste a proper selection brewed a few metres from where you're standing.
King Street, old city
A twenty-minute stroll through Castle Park, past the site of the old city brewery, brings you onto King Street — one of the great drinking streets in England. Down into the brick vaults for the final flight of the day, with cheese and charcuterie boards to share. Tour ends here, and most people don't leave in a hurry.
We pour in third-of-a-pint measures on purpose. It means you taste eight or nine different beers over the afternoon instead of three pints of the same thing, and you finish the tour merry rather than done in.
Real photographs from real tours — the boat, the brewhouse, the vaults and the people who came along.
★★★★★
Booked this as a birthday surprise and it completely outclassed everything else we'd looked at in Bristol. The boat is the bit nobody expects — you're twenty minutes in, drink in hand, going past the docks, and everyone's already grinning.
★★★★★
Our guide knew an enormous amount and never once made anyone feel like they should have known it already. My partner doesn't really drink beer and left having found two she now buys.
★★★★★
Did this as a work away day for fourteen of us. Well organised, properly informative, and the cheese and charcuterie at the end meant nobody was hunting for food at 4pm. Would book again without hesitating.
Pick a Saturday below and book instantly through DesignMyNight, our ticket partner. Public tours take up to 30 guests and popular dates go weeks ahead.
per person — beer tastings and sharing platters included
Got a gift voucher? Redeem it here — don't book through the calendar above.
Ticket terms and conditions · Our tour terms & refund policy
Booking for more than 30 people, or want a weekday? Ask about a private tour.
All the beer tastings, at all three stops, plus cheese and charcuterie sharing platters at the last venue. We serve beer in third-of-a-pint measures so you can taste a proper range of styles — usually two or three beers at each stop, though that varies with what each venue has on. You might be drinking keg or cask depending on availability.
The platters are nibbles rather than a full meal. The Beer Emporium do excellent pizza and our guests get a discount, so plenty of people stay on and eat.
Selected Saturdays through the year, at least once a month. There are usually more dates over the summer and fewer through winter. Live dates are in the calendar above.
If none of the public dates work, a private group tour can usually run on a day that suits you.
Meet your guide at 11:45am; the boat casts off at midday and won't wait, so please don't cut it fine. We finish around 4pm, though that shifts by a few minutes depending on the group.
Outside Outside The Grain Barge, Hotwell Road, Bristol BS8 4RU — open in Google Maps. It's about a 20-minute walk from Bristol Temple Meads, or a short bus or taxi ride.
We finish at The Beer Emporium, 13–15 King Street, Bristol BS1 4EF — map link.
Refunds are available up to 30 days before your tour date. Inside 30 days we've already committed to the boat, the venues and your guide, so we can't refund — for any reason, including illness or travel problems. If that's a risk for you, please consider your own ticket protection.
You're welcome to pass your ticket to someone else at any point; just let us know the name.
Yes — in rain, hail and snow. Please dress for the weather, because a good chunk of the tour is outdoors and on foot. We only cancel if conditions would make the tour itself unsafe. If you're travelling in from another city, plan on the tour going ahead.
Very much so — we run birthdays, hen and stag groups and corporate away days all the time. What we don't run is a pub crawl. This is a guided tasting with real content to it, which is exactly why it works for mixed groups where not everyone wants a heavy day.
Public tours take up to 30 guests. Bigger than that, or want the tour to yourselves? Private tours start here.
Honestly, yes — some of our happiest guests arrive saying exactly that. Third-pint measures across eight or nine very different beers is the fastest way to find out that "beer" covers everything from a sharp, almost wine-like sour to something that tastes like coffee and dark chocolate.
On private tours we can arrange cider, wine or gin alternatives. On public tours, tell us in advance and we'll do our best at each venue.
There's roughly a mile of walking spread across the afternoon, including a 20-minute stretch through Castle Park, plus boarding a ferry and steps down into the cellar bar at the final stop. If you have mobility requirements or anything else we should plan around, get in touch before you book and we'll tell you honestly whether it'll work.
Yes. This is an alcohol-focused tour and all guests must be 18 or over. Please bring ID — venues can and do ask.
Corporate away days, birthdays, stag and hen groups, client entertaining, or just a big group of friends who'd rather not share the boat with strangers. We'll build the afternoon around you — different dates, different venues, food that's more than nibbles, and cider, wine or gin for anyone who isn't drinking beer.
Open-value gift vouchers from UK Brewery Tours can be spent on the Bristol Craft Beer Experience or any other tour in the network. They're delivered instantly by email, they're for any amount you like, and they never expire — so there's no scramble to use them before a deadline.
Four hours, three stops, one boat, and everything included. Pick a Saturday and we'll see you on the water.
Tour itineraries, venues, beers and pricing can change — breweries occasionally close their doors to visitors at short notice, and we'll always substitute a comparable stop if that happens. Everything on this page was correct at the time of publishing.
