Steel Coulson Southside
Up to six cask ales and ciders sit on handpump, and CAMRA warns that what you get may actually come off a gravity stillage at the far end of the bar.1
Why go
Edinburgh CAMRA members voted this bar third for Cider Pub of the Year in 2026 and joint third with Brauhaus in 2025, behind the Jolly Judge and the Dreadnought both times.2 Both results pages name the Southside door in full, which matters because the operator has run more than one Edinburgh premises and this entry is about 114 Causewayside only.
The room dates from before the bar did, and the 2021 refurbishment kept the original cornices and hung the walls with framed beermats and breweriana.1 The keg lines carry point-of-sale information identifying which of them are real ale out of membrane kegs, and cans and bottles go out the door as off-sales. Nobody cooks here at all.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the cider, since that is the thing the branch keeps voting for, and look at the far end of the bar before you decide, because the stillage is where several of the pours come from.1
- Avoid: arriving hungry. CAMRA's record is blunt that the bar serves no food and that you are welcome to bring or order in your own, which makes this a pub to plan a takeaway around.
What locals & experts say
- CAMRA Edinburgh & South East Scotland, Cider Pub of the Year: third in 2026 and joint third in 2025.6 The branch's cider list ran to only two places in 2024, so there was no third place to take that year.
- Imran Rahman-Jones, Edinburgh Pub Reviews (16 October 2024), in passing on his way somewhere else: he walks
from the lovely Steel Couslon Southside
to Leslie's Bar, spelling and all.4 That is a named pub critic saying he liked it, inside a review of a different pub. He has never written this one up, and nobody else with a byline has either.
Good to know
- Timing: 5pm to 11pm Monday to Thursday, 4pm to midnight Friday and Saturday, 4pm to 11pm Sunday.1
- August, every year: the bar opens at noon on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through the month, when the free festival shows are running nearby, and it may open early for rugby at other times of year.1
- Booking: none to make. Walk in.
- Food: none, at any hour. Bring it or order it in.
- Which door: this is the Causewayside bar in Newington. The operator's Leith bar at 38 Bernard Street has been closed long term since 11 December 2024.3
- Hygiene, and the honest answer is that there is no record. An absence is not a pass and is not written as one here.5
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: Not one of my saves.
Verdict
could-visit — CAMRA's Edinburgh members have put this bar third for Cider Pub of the Year twice running, joint third in 2025 and third outright in 2026, and both branch results pages name the Southside door in full, so the placing belongs to this premises and not to the operator's other rooms. What is on the bar is up to six cask ales and ciders on handpump, with a note worth knowing: the ales and ciders are often actually poured on gravity from a stillage at the far end of the room. The keg lines carry point-of-sale labelling that tells you which of them are membrane-keg real ale, which is a level of disclosure most bars do not bother with. The room is an old one with its cornices kept and the walls covered in framed beermats. It stops at this rung because the evidence is thin in a specific way: no bylined critic has ever reviewed the place, the only mention anyone has published is a five-word aside inside another pub's review, and the pub serves no food at all. Come for the cider, bring your dinner, and read the pump clips.