Six Degrees North

Howe Street and the Question of What a Local Bar Can Be

Walk down Howe Street on a Tuesday evening and the city's New Town reveals itself at its most residential. Six Degrees North is a bar at 24 Howe St, Edinburgh EH3 6TG, United Kingdom, in Edinburgh's New Town, with a casual dress code and a walk-in-friendly policy. The Georgian terraces here are quieter than the Royal Mile's visitor corridor or the Grassmarket's weekend density. It's the kind of street where people actually live, and Six Degrees North sits within that context rather than against it. The bar occupies a ground-floor space in one of those same townhouses, and the low ceilings, wood finishes, and amber light visible through the windows read less like a designed concept and more like somewhere that has found its register and settled into it.

That register is Belgian beer. In a city that defaults to whisky as its defining drink category, and where cocktail programmes at venues like Bramble and Panda & Sons have drawn the critical attention for the past decade, a bar that anchors its identity to imported Belgian ales occupies a genuinely distinct position in Edinburgh's drinking geography.

Belgian Beer in a Scottish City: Why the Specificity Matters

Specialist beer bars across the UK have followed two broad trajectories over the past fifteen years. The first is the craft beer taproom model, brewery-owned or brewery-adjacent, built around rotating domestic kegs and a utilitarian aesthetic. The second is the Belgian import model, which requires a different kind of institutional knowledge: sourcing relationships with producers in Flanders and Wallonia, correct glassware for each style, and staff who can explain the difference between a gueuze and a faro without consulting a crib sheet.

Six Degrees North operates in the second category. The Belgian beer tradition spans Trappist ales brewed in active monasteries, lambic fermentation that can run for three years before bottling, and saison styles originally designed for seasonal farm workers. Presenting that range credibly to a Scottish audience, many of whom encounter Belgian beer primarily through Leffe on a pub draft line, requires a curatorial commitment that goes beyond simply stocking interesting bottles.

The bar's name refers to the latitude difference between Edinburgh and Belgium, a quietly precise framing that signals the operation's orientation from the outset. It's a detail that tells you this is a venue run by people who think about provenance, not one that has added Belgian beers as a secondary category to a broader drinks list.

The New Town as Context

Edinburgh's New Town was built in the latter half of the eighteenth century as a planned residential expansion north of the Old Town's medieval density. Howe Street sits within the Second New Town, slightly north of the principal Georgian grid, and it retains the residential character of a neighbourhood that was always more about living than commerce. Bars that survive in this kind of location do so because they serve the people who live nearby, not because they draw footfall from passing tourists or pre-theatre crowds.

That local dependency shapes what Six Degrees North is. Regulars here are not making a destination visit to drink in a famous bar. They are choosing a neighbourhood institution in the same way New Town residents might choose a particular fishmonger or a wine merchant: because it does one thing with enough seriousness to justify the habit. The community function is inseparable from the editorial one. A bar that operates as a genuine gathering place for its immediate neighbourhood tends to develop a character that designed concept bars cannot replicate, because that character is built incrementally by the people who return to it.

Visitors arriving from outside the neighbourhood should understand they are entering a local's bar that also happens to carry serious beer credentials, not a tourist attraction that has been granted local status. The distinction affects how you should approach the visit. Sit at the bar, ask what's worth trying on tap that week, and treat the staff's knowledge as a resource.

Where Six Degrees North Sits in Edinburgh's Bar Landscape

Edinburgh's premium bar tier is well-populated. Bramble, operating in a basement on Queen Street since 2007, helped define Edinburgh's cocktail identity. Panda & Sons brought a more theatrical format and has sustained critical recognition. Hotel bars like 24 Royal Terrace and Aurora serve a different function, anchored to accommodation and formal-service expectations.

Six Degrees North does not compete in any of those categories. Its peer set is better understood by looking at what specialist beer operations in comparable UK cities have built. Schofield's in Manchester and Horseshoe Bar Glasgow each operate with a strong sense of local identity that distinguishes them from the broader hospitality market, and the most technically minded bars further afield, such as 69 Colebrooke Row in London or the Merchant Hotel in Belfast, demonstrate how depth of programme translates into sustained credibility regardless of format.

Six Degrees North's position within this broader UK bar context is that of a venue that chose depth over breadth in a category most of its city has largely left to Belgian café culture. That choice, made in a residential neighbourhood rather than a high-traffic commercial zone, carries its own editorial logic.

Planning Your Visit

Howe Street is a direct walk from Edinburgh Waverley or Haymarket stations, sitting north of Princes Street in an area that requires no particular navigational effort from most central Edinburgh locations. The bar is walk-in friendly.