The Hare and Hounds serves two beers on cask: Ossett White Rat and Holt’s Bitter. The latter – brewed less than a mile away at the Joseph Holt brewery in Cheetham Hill – costs just £3.40 a pint. Based on my regular visits, it’s always served in perfect condition.

Such a keenly-priced pint wouldn’t (or, at least, shouldn’t) be out of the ordinary in many towns, suburbs and villages, particularly in the North West of England. But here, on the edge of Manchester’s Northern Quarter, it’s anything but.

This square-mile of street art-decked lanes and alleyways winding between tall, proud former cotton mills serves as the city’s cultural hub. Some of the best pubs and bars in the city can be found here, from modern destinations like Port Street Beer House, to proper Mancunian classics such as the Castle Hotel. It’s also home to numerous live music venues, plus artists’ studios like those at the Manchester Craft and Design Centre on Oak Street. Although options for good beer within the Northern Quarter – or the NQ for short – are numerous, few offer an experience as quintessentially Mancunian as the Hare and Hounds. Fewer still will provide you with such a great value pint of locally-brewed beer.

Directly opposite the Shudehill tram stop and Transport for Greater Manchester’s signature yellow livery, is the Grade II-listed building that holds the pub itself. Tiles in dreamy shades of blue, green and grey cover the lower half of its facade, providing contrast to the sharp red of the Lower Turks Head a couple of doors down. You can enter from the less romantic surroundings of the car park to its rear, but doing so would rob you of glimpsing the lovely tilework at its front.

Although the building itself dates back to 1800, the current interior was reportedly installed around 1925. Stepping inside via the narrow entryway, it really does feel like things in here haven’t changed much at all over the past century or so. A few paces inside will lead you to the bar and seating area in the West Riding fashion – potentially a leftover feature from the fact that this was formerly a Tetley’s house. More seating can be found at a side room immediately to your right as you enter, plus in another room at the pub’s rear.

In the front room, you can generally expect a quieter, calmer experience, soundtracked by some northern-accented chatter and the occasional clinking of pint glasses. More often than not the back room will spring into life, hosting that most northern of traditions: karaoke. However, this isn’t a free-for-all affair as pub regulars who participate take it very seriously indeed, and when it’s their turn, it’s time to sit down and listen. You’re in for a genuine treat if the chap who does Frank Sinatra is present. He can be so entertaining you might want to close your eyes for a moment and pretend you’re listening to Ol’ Blue Eyes in the flesh.

What I find most interesting about the Hare and Hounds is that, often, it doesn’t get referenced in the same breath as other iconic Manchester drinking destinations: Marble Arch, City Arms, Peveril of the Peak. These are all essential stops, yes (especially the Pev on a Tuesday evening for trad night) but if I’ve learned anything from my regular visits into the city centre, it's that its most understated pubs often provide me with some of the best experiences.

I’ve spent the last 18 months updating the information compiled in my award-winning, CAMRA published guide book, Manchester’s Best Beer Pubs and Bars. The second edition, which launches on 2 April, contains more than 50 new additions, and after accounting for closures (which was about 20 of the pubs featured in the first guide) it brings the total to 220.

One of the best parts of researching the second edition wasn’t discovering new pubs to add, it was the opportunity it presented to return to some of those that I perhaps didn’t give enough time or focus the first time around.

In the city centre one pub I almost cruelly ignored is Salisbury. While the rock pub might lack the old world ambience of somewhere like the Hare and Hounds, it serves some of the best cask beer in town, including my go-to, Old Peculier. While visiting Bolton I found myself lingering for longer than intended in Bank Top’s brewery tap, a lovingly maintained spit-and-sawdust pub that also sells remarkably well-priced pints. Down in my hometown of Stockport I got to enjoy the restoration of the Crown, a former Boddington’s pub, that lost its way under previous tenants, and is now arguably one of the best pubs anywhere in Greater Manchester.

That’s the thing about Manchester – it’s easy to point at some of its big hitters and say, with conviction, “this is the best city in the UK for beer and pubs” because it is. However, when you scratch beneath the surface, and turn your attention to some of those off the beaten track, a bit like the wonderful Hare and Hounds, you realise that this isn’t some hubristic Mancunian provocation, it’s just simple northern honesty. For beer and pubs, Manchester’s better than all the rest.

Manchester’s Best Beer Pubs and Bars (Second Edition) is available to pre-order now from the CAMRA Shop. It covers the entirety of Greater Manchester with a foreword from Matty White and cover art by David Bailey. 

Pre-order here.