Liverpool - the City that Craft Forgot

Update: As this page still receives so many views, I feel I should direct you to my second, more favourable post on the subject, after you have read this one. 

You should attempt to grow up in Manchester with a Liverpudlian mother and extensive family heralding from the Merseyside city. As sacrilegious as many of my Mancunian friends have found it, Liverpool has long been my favourite city. It has a lot of history and character that Manchester was always lacking in my youth. There were several areas to explore. Everything from the engaging design of the cathedrals to the oddity of the dock area made it a much more fascinating citadel than I was accustomed to. But, in my older years, I have struggled to convince my friends that we should go drinking there, as they hide behind their rather terrace-like prejudices.

It is because of this that I have only been around Liverpool’s pubs on a couple of occasions, the main instance being quite a few years back. It included my first visit to the Philharmonic Dining Rooms, instantly presaged as my favourite pub interior of all time and one that has yet to be ousted. Last week I enjoyed the chance to revisit and discover a few pubs here and was excited.

I’d done my research prior to going (mainly looking for nice bars which proved difficult) and listed those pubs named on several blogs as the best bets for decent beer. It was with optimism and eagerness that the couple of days in Liverpool started.

The truth about Liverpool is that Ringo Starr was probably right about the place. It hasn’t really developed into anything. Liverpool still has history and still has character, but what was charming to me in 1996 has now become nostalgia and nothing more. The city on a whole seems to love its past too much to have a future. Yes, the Liverpool One area has been well generated and yes the docks have had their attempt to be turned into a swankier pre-theatre area. But in the main it feels like Steven Gerrard will be viewing the same city as Kitty Wilkinson did. There is a reason London’s aristocracy want a faster train service between Manchester and Leeds and not this city.

The same that can be said of Liverpool’s businesses and shopping areas can apply to its pubs. We started with the chance to go in the Philharmonic Dining Rooms and it is an opportunity I never miss. Don’t get me wrong, internally I don’t enjoy sitting and enjoying a pint more anywhere else. And with eight varied real ales on, for a sadly Nicholson’s owned pub, the beer was good. Nothing to complain about here much, though I’d rather see it in independent hands again.

Just down the road is the Fly inthe Loaf, probably the pub I was most anxious to visit. The reason for this was the phrases I’d seen on various blogs about the place. “Best pub in Liverpool – easy,” “Tucked away gem,” “Outstanding choice of beers.” So when I found the pub on a busy road and discovered that inside it is just a vaxpacked Wetherspoons serving Okell’s beers, I was more than disappointed. Don’t misunderstand me; there was nothing wrong with the pub. The bar staff were great and I did have a decent pint of Rooster’s Wild Mule. But the pub itself and its beer selection were just very ordinary for the “best place in the city.”

Later we made our way down to the Ship & Mitre after the compulsory visit to their sister bottle shop Ship ina Bottle. I very much like both places unquestionably and the German range in both is impressive. But both are noticeably devoid of something, and it is a word I hate to use, but its craft. The so called craft UK and US breweries that dominate everywhere in Manchester and Leeds are nowhere to be seen in the Ship & Mitre. In fact, they seem completely absent from Liverpool as a whole. Sure there is Liverpool Craft brewery, and Liverpool Organic brewery brew beers of those sorts, but they are the only presence within these city walls.

Then again, I didn’t exactly walk into every pub in Merseyside, scanning the bar for a key keg pump so I’m hoping some do-gooder is going to storm this post with a list of hundreds of places I could have gone to be wildly impressed by the beer selection. In fact I would welcome that rather than being terribly misguided into places such as the Shipping Forecast again, only to find myself supping Robinson’s Unicorn with a lot of students in the middle of the world’s easiest and least funny pub quiz. I’m just wondering when this “craft revolution” (eurgh – sorry) is going to arrive here. In point of fact, isn’t it strange that, whilst BrewDog try and open a bar in every city in the UK, I’ve not heard mention of one here?

Liverpool is still brilliant to visit with family or partners. But those Manchester raised friends I couldn’t convince to come drinking with me in Merseyside would eventually get here just to ask, “Is this it? Is that what you’ve tried to coax us into for eight years?”

The trip was rounded off and summarised with a quick pint in the Head of Steam in Liverpool Lime Street station. When I was last here in 2011 it had eight real ales on and was in a nice old station room. Now, though the hand pumps remain, only one of the eight beers was actually on (see right) and it happened to be an avoidable Marston’s Pedigree. You could tell this wasn’t a bad night, rather that they had given up with the idea of real ale. Terrible shame. Plus now there is a truly awful smell.  


UPDATE: I have revisited Liverpool since this post and have a subsequent second post to this regarding Liverpool.