Best After Work Bars in Edinburgh

Edinburgh after work is not a single thing. It is a pint at the Bow Bar before the 5:30 train, a whisky flight at a New Town pub that has been doing this since before you were born, or a craft beer on a waterfront terrace in Leith watching the light change over the Firth. The city does it well. Here is where to go.

Edinburgh's after-work geography follows the working population. The financial district around St Andrew Square, the legal profession clustered around Parliament Square and the Royal Mile, the creative industries in Leith and the southern New Town. Each neighbourhood has its own after-work rhythm, and the bars below reflect that. We have covered the full Edinburgh after work category at our Edinburgh after work bar guide — this article pulls out the best eight.

One important distinction: Edinburgh has a strong pub culture that is different from what most visitors expect. These are not tourist pubs selling overpriced lager to people on stag weekends. They are serious drinking establishments with centuries of habit behind them, where the whisky selection is a point of professional pride and the regulars have been at the same spot since the 1980s. They deserve respect and they will reward you with some of the best after-work drinking in Britain.

The Eight

01 — Editor's Pick

The Bow Bar

Whisky Traditional Pub Old Town

The Bow Bar on West Bow is what a whisky pub is supposed to be. 140-plus malt whiskies behind the bar, cask ale on the hand pumps, Victorian island gantry, and a complete absence of anything you do not need. No food, no music, no television. What there is: a barman who knows his stock, a room that fills quickly after 5pm with people who have come specifically for a proper drink, and the particular calm that comes from being somewhere that does one thing exceptionally well. We recommend starting with whatever single malt the bartender suggests from the week's featured distillery. The Bow Bar has been doing this for decades and has not put a foot wrong yet.

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Teuchters Landing

Craft Beer Waterfront Leith

On Leith's waterfront at the Shore, Teuchters Landing occupies a converted waiting room from the days when ferries carried passengers across the Firth of Forth. The outdoor terrace directly over the water is one of Edinburgh's best warm-weather spots, but the inside works equally well — exposed beams, a proper bar, and a beer selection that focuses on Scottish craft breweries with genuine intelligence. BrewDog and Innis and Gunn appear, but so do smaller producers like Pilot Beer and Cromarty. The whisky selection, as you would expect in Edinburgh, is formidable. After-work crowds arrive from about 5:30pm, and the atmosphere shifts agreeably from work-week decompression to proper evening.

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Edinburgh's drinking culture divides geographically in ways that matter when you're choosing where to go after work. The Old Town bars — Bow Bar, Sandy Bell's, the Grassmarket pubs — are traditional and unhurried. New Town bars tend toward more polish. Leith is where the craft beer scene concentrated itself and where you find the most interesting rotating tap lists. All three work after work; which one depends on what kind of evening you want.

The Oxford Bar

Traditional Pub Hidden Gem New Town

Young Street in New Town is easy to miss, which is part of the reason The Oxford Bar has stayed the way it is. Small, unstuffy, and built for drinking rather than for looking at. Ian Rankin made it famous through the Rebus novels, which has brought some literary tourism, but the regulars — lawyers, academics, people who have been coming in for twenty years — barely notice. The beer is good, the whisky selection solid, the conversation reliably interesting. This is a pub where people go to actually talk, which in an age of open-plan bars with 100dB soundtracks is increasingly rare and valuable. Arrive before 6pm if you want a seat.

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Salt Horse

Craft Beer Old Town

Salt Horse on Blackfriars Street is Edinburgh's most serious craft beer bar. Eighteen rotating taps covering everything from Scottish session ales to Belgian saisons to experimental sour beers, plus a bottle list that runs to several hundred. The staff know their stock in the way that a good wine bar knows its cellar — they can talk you through carbonation levels, yeast strains, and which brewery is doing interesting things with barrel ageing this quarter. For anyone who thinks after work means craft beer rather than whisky, Salt Horse is the destination. It also does food, which means the after-work session can extend naturally into the evening without requiring a decision about where to eat next.

Editor's Tip Edinburgh's traditional pub last orders are typically 11pm Sunday through Thursday, midnight Friday and Saturday. For craft beer bars like Salt Horse and Teuchters Landing, hours extend later. If you're planning to continue past 11pm, plan ahead — the options thin out quickly in some neighbourhoods.

Lioness of Leith

Neighbourhood Bar Leith

Oscar Street in Leith is a neighbourhood bar in the best sense: a mix of craft beer taps, a whisky back bar, pub food that is better than it needs to be, and a clientele that mixes office workers, creative types, and locals who have been regulars since before Leith became fashionable. The patio out back fills up quickly in summer, and the interior has the comfortable lived-in feel of somewhere that was never designed to be photographed. Prices remain reasonable, which in a city that has followed London northward on drinks prices is increasingly notable. Good choice for groups — the bar accommodates tables without feeling cramped.

The Cambridge Bar

Traditional Pub New Town

Young Street — the same street as The Oxford Bar — also houses The Cambridge Bar, which takes a slightly different approach: more hand-pulled ales, a focus on Scottish craft beer alongside the whisky, and burgers that have developed a quiet following. The two pubs on the same quiet street represent a microcosm of Edinburgh after-work drinking: traditional and thoughtful, without trying to be anything more. The Cambridge is the more food-forward of the two; The Oxford the purer drinking establishment. Both are worth knowing. For a first visit to this part of New Town, arriving at one and finishing at the other is a sound plan.

Edinburgh's geography rewards walking. The Old Town to New Town transition takes eight minutes on foot, which means a natural after-work progression is possible without much planning. Start at The Bow Bar for a whisky, walk up to The Oxford Bar for a beer, and end at Bramble — just around the corner on Queen Street — for a cocktail. That is three distinct experiences, three distinct atmospheres, and a very good evening. The Edinburgh bar guide maps these connections across every category, from craft beer to cocktail bars.

Panda and Sons

Cocktail New Town

Disguised as a barber shop at street level on Queen Street, Panda and Sons has been one of Edinburgh's more inventive cocktail bars since it opened in the early 2010s. The interior is deliberately eccentric — vintage barber chairs, panda memorabilia, a mix of taxidermy and neon — but the cocktail programme underneath the theatre is serious. The drinks lean creative: unusual base spirits, house-made ingredients, combinations that shouldn't work but do. Good for an after-work drink that feels slightly more special than a pint. The bar fills up from 6pm on weekday evenings; arrive a little earlier for the best experience.

The Hanging Bat

Craft Beer Lothian Road

Lothian Road is not Edinburgh's most atmospheric street, but The Hanging Bat makes an argument for the area. This is a craft beer pub with more than 20 rotating taps and a kitchen producing American-influenced food that takes the beer-matching seriously. The industrial interior is comfortable rather than cold, and the after-work crowd that comes in from the financial offices nearby appreciates that you can sit at the bar without having to shout to be heard. Strong selection of American craft imports alongside Scottish producers. For anyone who thinks Edinburgh craft beer means BrewDog and nothing else, The Hanging Bat is the corrective.

The After-Work Rule in Edinburgh

Edinburgh's best after-work bars tend to be busiest between 5:30 and 7:30pm on weekdays. After 8pm, the city's evening shift takes over and the composition of the crowd changes. If you want to drink with Edinburgh's working population rather than its tourists and students, the earlier window is the one to aim for.

The city also has strong live music crossover in the after-work hours. Several of the bars above are adjacent to or connected with Edinburgh's music venues — Teuchters Landing is a short walk from the Bongo Club and Sneaky Pete's, Salt Horse sits near the Grassmarket music pubs. An after-work drink can naturally extend into a live music evening with minimal navigation. For that progression, our Edinburgh live music bars guide covers the relevant venues.

Submit a bar that deserves to be on this list via our bar submission page — we update this guide quarterly.

Best After Work Bars in Edinburgh

The Eight

The Bow Bar

Teuchters Landing

The Oxford Bar

Salt Horse

Lioness of Leith

The Cambridge Bar

Panda and Sons

The Hanging Bat

The After-Work Rule in Edinburgh

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