A popular micro-brewery is expanding its brewing operation and creating a new tap house after demands for its beers soared over lockdown.

Liam Convery and Ryan Bailey run Northern Monkey Brew Co., which has a popular bar in Nelson Square, Bolton town centre, with its own brewed beers growing steadily over that time.

However, over lockdown, demand for the duos beer has soared as they follow in the footsteps of other popular local breweries, such as Rivington Brew Co., selling their beers across the country.

This means the demand for Northern Monkey beers has started to outweigh their brewing capabilities in Nelson Square, leading the pair to expand their production.

They have acquired a site in Chorley Street, which has allowed them to double their brewing capacity.

The site won't just act as a brewery, with plans to open a tap house to sample their beers on site.

Ryan Bailey told The Bolton News: "This isn't right in the town centre so we hope to attract some new people here for a nice experience.

"We've been selling beers nationally over lockdown, and as we're coming out of lockdown the demand is going up even more, we're really trying to keep up now.

"We used to only be able to deliver locally but we've been able to courier nationally recently which has gone well.

"Everything kind of hit us all at once and we were running at maximum output but it wasn't quite enough and we didn't want to let anyone down.

"So with a bigger site hopefully we can get as much as we can out there.

"This is our fourth increase in size since we started from my garage which isn't bad going and we're really excited for the future."

Northern Monkey's beer festival 'Monkey in the Woods', at Barrow Bridge, in July sold out within six days with the team creating plans for bigger festivals in the future.

The brewery will also once again be at Bolton Food and Drink festival in August "which is brilliant", Ryan said, and will be running the bar at Rivington Music festival on July 18.