As almighty Boris the Brexiter declared recently, fck masks and open economy, me and me bird decided to hit the Liverpool on dates mentioned above. No worries we both have triple 5G in us, so probably Windows search can give our precise location any given time, but that’s not important.
What is important that I want to have some bevvies in me whilst in town. And I’m here for suggestions from you who have better idea of surroundings.
Our rough plan is:
Our plane lands late on 23rd, so unless JDW airport serves third or two, it’s gonna be dry night.
24th (thursday) - hit Anfield for stadium tour (1st time, but fan since '97, don’t ask it’s complicated). By the looks of it Sandhills or Kirkdale train station isn’t far, so I thought maybe quick trip to Ormskirk for Lancs county tick is option? Any recommendations there? After that hit central and drink more ales.
25th (friday) - no real plans, some tourist stuff before crawling through pubs and see what they offer. Recommendations?
26th (saturday) - here we left ourselves a bit of option. We are gonna check-out from our hotel and either we book another hotel in Liverpool or we hit Chester and stay there for the night (haven’t decided). If we stay in Liverpool we might hit Chester on friday afternoon anyways so Chester recommendations are welcome anyway.
27th (sunday) - recovery and departure in late afternoon.
If anyone wants to join for beer or eighteen feel free to give me a notice.
Also food recommendations are welcome? Traditional pub foods?
well I’m meant to be in Ukraine then, but that’s looking less likely… and it’s been a while since I did Liverpool
foodwise both Ship & Mitre and Baltic Fleet did good trad pub food last time I went, but that was a good 6 or 7 years ago so wouldn’t put too much faith in that
Don’t know enough about Liverpool but Chesters a nice little town, lots of places within walking distance. Brewery Tap is in a historic old building, quite an unconventional bar and easy to walk past and miss. Bear and Billet on the same street is owned by Okells so good for an Isle of Man tick but not much else. Belgian bar Cavern of the Curious Gnome further down for its Chouffe-inspired bar seats, but also has a good regional cask / keg selection. Beer Heroes has 10 or so keg, lots of regional cans. Cellar Bar prob has best range of the city, but quite often import-heavy. That said, there should be enough UK cask and keg to keep you going. That Beer Place in the market shouldn’t be missed, I think about 5 keg lines if I remember, lots of bottles. There’s some good food places in the market which you can take there too. Those are the highlights but plenty of other stop offs in the RB place ratings like Old Harker Arms and Corner House which are not strictly ‘beer-focussed’ places but will likely have beers others won’t have. Have a good trip.
Wish I could join you. I’m overdue a Liverpool trip but can’t do that weekend
We honeymooned in Liverpool. Sadly my wife hates the Beatles so I couldn’t justify doing any Beatles stuff. Sad face. But there’s loads of interesting museums and the cathedrals (especially. The Catholic Metropolitan cathedral) are worth a look.
I’d recommend Ship & Mitre. I think it is - or was - the top place RB in Liverpool. It may have lost a little bit of its ‘specialness’ due to the craft beer revolution but its still a comfortable and atmospheric place with good beer.
Not too far is Dead Crafty which is an identikit craft beer pub although a very, very good one.
Don’t miss the Okells pubs for an Isle of Man tick or two. Lady of Mann and Thomas Rigby are close to the two I mentioned above. Vernon Arms (same area ish) does 6 casks and as traditional (basic) a pub lunch as you could ask for (not 100% sure they still do food).
Lots of atmospheric pubs dotted around that may not excite your beery senses so much but are worth checking out. Philharmonic, Ye Cracke, White Star, Lion Tavern.
Sorry to have not contributed to this thread before. Hope there is still time for some suggestions / recommendations.
I’ve not been to Liverpool for a long time, as my friend who used to live there has now moved to Birmingham. However, he tells me that the Ship & Mitre has gone downhill a lot recently. Also Dead Crafty is known locally as “Dead Pricey” …
The only place I’ve been to in Ormskirk is the Wetherspoons, and that was years ago. If you want Lancashire ticks, I would suggest you go to Preston instead. I’ve not been for a while, but the Black Horse is a must in terms of the venue, and the Guildhall micropub was good. There was some discussion recently on the Lancashire county thread. County Stat Attack Week 39 - Lancashire - #22 by AshtonMcCobb
The other good thing about Preston is that you can stop off at Wigan on the way there / back. The best place there is Wigan Central which is literally underneath the station ! Some other decent pubs around, but I can’t remember details.
The information given by @Minutemat for Chester is a pretty good summary, but is a bit out of date. The Cellar Bar has undergone a refurb, and appears to have lost most / all of it’s bottle range. Still a good selection of cask / craft though. And That Beer Place is due to move soon, but don’t seem to have done so yet. [ New place is just around the corner from the Cellar ]
If you want to meet up, I can certainly guide you around Chester. I could do any time / day provided you give me enough notice. We could either do the standard pub / bar / shop hopping, or I could take you on the Chester Walls Beer Crawl. [ Walk round the walls, popping off at every exit for a beer ]
Any chance of bringing over a few decent Latvian craft beers for swopping ? [ Labietis / Malduguns / Nurme etc. NOT Arpus ! ] I could give you a few in exchange.
Incidentally, you seem to be doing the Anfield stadium tour, but not actually going to a match ?!
Any reason why Cellar Bar have lost their cans / bottles? I think I can definitely sense a shift in terms of can / bottle consumption in bars - noticed a few struggling to shift, possible due to the ease of buying direct from breweries, but then they were quite expensive from what I recall.
I did hear something about the market which That Beer Place is situated being re-built / re-located somewhere else, and the rents tripling in order to turn it into a gourmet artisan street food blah blah blah place. TBP turned down the offer and decided to look elsewhere, from what I’ve been told. No doubt some young whippersnappers will open a new beer place in there and succeed.
Ohh so much to absorb here
Preston is tad too far, for a quick trip to Lancs have a sip and back to Liverpool. Wigan looks closer, but my main thing or plan is after Anfield trip to hop on train (Merseyrail) go bit out of borders and then straight back to 'pool. Ain’t gonna do deep dive ticking there. Maybe another time.
We have now decides and already booked 1 night at Chester. So we arrive to Chester on Sat (26th) morning/noon (our check in is 13:30, but we are kicked out from Liverpool at 10:00). We might do a quick train to Shotton Wetherspoon (The Central Hotel) for Wales tick and then straight back to Chester. Rest of the day and evening and night we will be in Chester. Glad to meet up.
Unfortunately in those weekend trips we travel only with rugsacks so I can’t bring anything over since whole plane industry thinks that you can make something dangerous out of beers you bring through gates, but same things are harmless when sold in airports for double price.
Yeah no need to make a journey into Wales for a Welsh beer tick, unless you want a Welsh place tick. You will almost certainly see plenty of Welsh beer in Chester, like @blackhaddock says Beer Heroes is a safe bet for Pollys Brew beer… There are many others.
So now I have typed in my backlog and can share some light about the trip.
Overall it was a nice trip. Not everything went according to plan, but we didn’t miss much.
Plane landed quite late (23:30), so there was slight problem how to get to city, but we managed somehow. Our hotel was quite in the center so location was good.
1st day we did trip to Anfield and that too huge chunk of our time. Getting there and back, tour in stadium, walking in Stanley Park, walking in those narrow streets around stadium, LFC shop etc. good 3h+. We saw rain, hail, snowstorm, sunshine, hurricane in that time. Typical English weather init? It was emotional for me but those were good ones, so all good!
After Anfield we were cold and tired and hungry so we decided to skip train to Omskirk 'cause that would have taken another 2h+. And we decided to hit our first pub crawl. We did the Ropewalks area, starting with Philharmonica. Ain’t gonna go deep into details (you can find those in place reviews) but it was nice.
Our second day we did docks and Baltic quarter. That was a lot of walking, but still nice. Later some pubs again.
3rd day we hit Chester. Highly recommended city. Truly beautiful. And we managed to jump on a train and do Shotton as well. Coming back was adventure. Train was just so full that they didn’t let us in. So we had to take bus back. Return ticket gone waste. Hell with it.
Stats say that I did 30 different places combined and 61 beers in them. I’m happy.
By numbers my top places were: Keystone, Brewdog Liverpool, Love Lane Brewery, Head of Steam, Lion Tavern, That Beer Place… Out of those places my local pub would be Lion Tavern, I felt home here.
My not to go places would be: Hole In Ye Wall (just nope), Vernon Arms, Lime Kiln.
Ship & Mitre haydays are over I guess, it was just ordinary place. Scouse was ok thou, everything went through me next 2 days instantly. That wasn’t cool thou.
Liverpool as a city was nothing special. I wouldn’t imagine living here. Chester in other hand is lovely cozy city.
I think I might come back to this region.
