Grove Beer Tap & Grill

Grove’s sleek, minimalist darkwood interior, broken up by some eye-catching digital-print art and a bed of plants growing above the bar, may feel Scandinavian, but its emphasis is firmly on US craft beers. Up to 13 keg lines showcase many beers rarely seen on draught in the UK, from Anchor, Brooklyn and Flying Dog (try its remarkably complex, Easy IPA), as well as Liverpool Craft Brewing Co’s excellent, unfiltered pale ale, Love Lane, or that unusually tasty German pils, Rothaus Tannenzapfle. A bottled list goes deeper on the same US breweries, as well as throwing a few other great beers into the mix: various Goose Island, Sierra Nevada pale ale, Paulaner hefeweizen. The choices may seem “obvious” to hardcore craft geeks, but you could easily fritter away a pleasurable evening here. Incidentally, should you wish to visit it, you will find the Liverpool branch of Brewdog at other end of Seel Street.
• Pint from £4.20. Concert Steps, off Seel Street, 0151 709 7393; Facebook page

The Ship & Mitre

If pressed to identify Liverpool’s HQ of hops, it is difficult to look beyond the Ship & Mitre. With more than 30 cask and keg lines and a thick book of German, Belgian and imported craft beers to choose from, even the most contrary of beer enthusiasts will find something to excite them. Helpfully, all draught beers are served in pints, halves and third-pint “nips”, meaning you can try a lot of beers at low cost. I went near and far, sampling Cheeky Pheasant (well-made, mainline bitter) from St Helens’ George Wright Brewing and a third of Brooklyn Brewing’s stunning Sorachi Ace saison (quietly spicy and full of sour, hugely expressive tropical fruit flavours). The pub itself is designed to mimic a ship’s galley, while, in its rear lounge, amid the dartboards, bric-a-brac and endless pump clips, a small stained glass dome presumably nods to the ecclesiastical part of the pub’s name. The Ship also has a sister business, the Ship In A Bottle off-licence (45a Whitechapel, theshipinabottle.co.uk), where you can pick up, among others, bottles of its own label Ship In A Bottle beers, brewed for it by Liverpool Organic Brewery. Said brewery runs an annual winter ales festival at St George’s Hall (22-24 Jan, £8), which will feature beer from more than 100 small UK micros.
• Pint from £2.60. 133 Dale Street, 0151 236 0859, theshipandmitre.com

Baltic Social and the wider Baltic Triangle

This hip, artsy late-night bar serves a modest range of craft beers which, beyond the obvious Anchor, Einstock and Goose Island bottles, is notable for its focus on small breweries from both Manchester (Runaway, Tickety Brew) and Liverpool (Mad Hatter, Melwood Beer Co, Parker Brewery). One cask and a couple of craft-keg lines always include at least one IPA from Crafty Dan, Thwaites’ boutique brewing arm, which is the least worst of the big-brewery attempts to muscle in on craft beer. Its Lil’ Bewdy was fine but forgettable. The Baltic also hosts beer ’n’ food matching events and a series of lively one-day beer festivals with Melwood Beer Co.

Baltic Social is on the fringes of Liverpool city centre, in the Baltic Triangle – opposite the old Cains brewery site – and there are several other points of ale interest you should note, locally. Mad Hatter brews nearby (15-37 Caryl Street), and opens to the public as a “tap” at various times. Liverpool Craft Beer Co is also in the process of moving into the Baltic Triangle and should have a bar and visitor centre open by February.

Liverpool Craft also brews three bottle-conditioned beers for the Baltic Triangle bar, restaurant and warehouse events space, Camp & Furnace (bottles from £4.50). Considering that its Brown Bear is made with Wirral honey and malted wheat smoked at Camp & Furnace, it was not as smoky as I had expected. It tasted more like a good, full-bodied English bitter: malty, with a well-balanced sweetness and a true, lingering bitterness.
• Pint from £3.25 Parliament Street, 0151 707 1137, thebalticsocial.com

The Baltic Fleet

This historic dockside pub (now convenient for the Albert Dock and Echo Arena) is Liverpool’s only brewpub. Its Wapping beers, brewed downstairs in the cellars, tend to be more traditional in style, but they are fresh, elegant ales. Craft fanatics should keep an eye out for its hop-forward Baltic IPA and its occasional Indian Summer and Amarillo pale ale specials. A sample stout was bright, light and ripe with dark berry fruit flavours, its dry smokiness punctuating each mouthful beautifully. It lacked a little body perhaps, but it was a very tasty pint. The Baltic Fleet itself is an unapologetically no-frills affair, a bare-bones boozer – its small collection of nautical memorabilia as outlandish as a the decor gets. On a cold day, hunker down by the log burners in the back room.
• Pint from £2.70. 33 Wapping, 0151 709 3116, balticfleetpubliverpool.com

The Kazimier Garden

The Kazimier’s garden is more akin to the kind of hidden, ad-hoc space you might find in East Berlin, than a bar off Seel Street. There is an old railway carriage to keep warm in and glitter balls wrapped in twigs twirling under recycled, plastic-sheet roofing. The soundtrack, on Thursday afternoon, veers from Billie Holiday to scratchy avant-rock. Beer-wise, three cask and four keg lines dispense a mix of regional real ales (for example First Chop, Nethergate, Magic Rock, Off Beat), and more obviously cutting-edge stuff from breweries as geographically diverse as Brooklyn and Beavertown. Unique to the Kazimier is Organo, a beer-series in conjunction with Liverpool Craft Beer Co. As darker, wintry beers are in season, Organo has now morphed into Organo Kazm, a damson and oatmeal stout which, while plummy enough, lacked the thick mouthfeel you expect from an oatmeal stout. In the fridges, you will find a compact collection of craft bottles and around 40 German and Belgian classics and curiosities (Taras Boulba, various Paulaner, Geuze Boon, smoked Schlenkerla Rauchbier).
• Pint from £3.30. 4-5 Wolstenholme Square (entrance on Seel Street), 0151 324 1723, thekazimier.co.uk

Fly In The Loaf

Owned by the Isle of Man brewer, Okells, this big old barn has never been the nicest environment in which to drink. It has some cute interior features, such as the mosaic around the bar, but, again on this visit, the lighting was too bright, the music bad and, for me, football playing silently on numerous TVs is a stone cold atmosphere-killer. What Fly In The Loaf does have in abundance, however, and which trumps any reservation, is good beer. The choice is a little undiscriminating, perhaps. The presence of a handful of bandwagon-jumping craft beers from large breweries, Crafty Dan bottles or Fuller’s Frontier lager, jars a little among such a wealth of genuinely wonderful beers from, say, Camden Town, Wiper and True, Thornbridge, Oakham and Beavertown, but that is a minor caveat. Across 23 cask and keg pumps and a sizeable, constantly evolving bottled menu, which contains interesting US imports, you will find numerous excellent and unusual beers, not to mention the occasional bargain. Magic Rock’s lemon and lime, radler-style fruit beer, Pith Head (tart and refreshing like fizzy lime cordial) was being sold at just £3.10 a pint.
• Pint from £2.90. 13 Hardman Street, 0151 708 0817, flyintheloaf.co.uk

The Grapes

With its salmon pink interior and eclectic decor, the Grapes is one of those (much loved) pubs that seems to have evolved organically over many years. Note: there were strangers at the bar next to me discussing, not as you might expect the weather or what Brendan Rodgers needs to do about Gerrard, but Derrida. The Grapes also hosts a Sunday jazz session. Its real ale selection (nine pumps) tends to the more traditional – Wainwright, Brimstage beers, Bishops’s Finger, on this visit – but you can usually find something more crafty on there, too. Liverpool Craft Brewing Co’s Toast was precisely that, a chewy and stridently hopped rye, amber ale. The Grapes also carries various Mad Hatter bottles, as well as better quality mainstream beers (Budvar, Blue Moon, Erdinger), and a large selection of speciality rums and gins.
• Pint from £2.75. 60 Roscoe Street, 0151 708 6870, thegrapesliverpool.co.uk

The Pen Factory

Opened at the start of December, this relaxed basement bar and (if you feel peckish) canteen, has been packed out ever since. The reputation of its owners, Paddy Byrne and chef Tom Gill, who used to run the Everyman Bistro, clearly precedes them. On this fly-past, its five real ales included beers from Liverpool Organic Brewery, the fantastic Mallinsons and Salopian. The latter’s Oracle, bristingly hoppy but full of delicate apple and melon flavours, was in sparkling form. In the fridges, you will find several Liverpool Organic and Fordham’s bottles and a core selection of reliable Belgian beers, such as Duvel, Maredsous and Brugse Zot. I loved the look of the place, too: a whitewashed, bare-brick space which, in its post-industrial simplicity, already feels like it has been there for years.
• Pint from £3.13 Hope Street, 0151 709 7887, pen-factory.co.uk

The Caledonia

The area around Hope Street is home to a network of brilliantly basic, unreconstructed Liverpool boozers; something which Liverpool still has in abundance compared with many other cities. Roscoe Head and the two-room Belvedere, where you will usually find a couple of Liverpool Organic Brewery beers on, are two such classics. However, the Caledonia is your best bet if you want unpretentious surroundings and forward-thinking beer. Home to various folk and live music nights, the Caledonia serves four real ales, one craft keg beer, a few interesting cans and bottles (Sly Fox, Mad Hatter etc) and three beers from Portland Craft Beer Co (personally, I have been underwhelmed by its American ale). Those real ales are usually a mixture of traditional and, as the pub’s pump clip collection elaborates, occasional edgier beers from the likes of First Chop and Magic Rock. Reminiscent of a light ‘n’ zesty, refreshing South Pacific pale ale, Melwood Beer Co’s Stanley Gold was fantastic easy drinking: sweet but earthy, with a distinct grapefruit tang.
• Pint from £2.80. 22 Caledonia Street, 0151 708 0235, thecaledonialiverpool.com

The 23 Club

On par with the Ship & Mitre, but with a more radical craft bent, the 23 Club is another Liverpool beer hub that will leave craft geeks drooling in excitement. A small basement space beneath the Clove Hitch restaurant (which serves an astonishing 16 keg beers), its eight keg and three cask pumps, not to mention its huge bottled beer list (there are 200+ bottles available to takeaway), read like a who’s who of the planet’s most innovative brewers. Burning Sky, Brew By Numbers, Brau Kunst Keller, Buxton, Brewfist, Birra Del Borgo are highlights – and that’s just the Bs. I opted for two one-third samplers. AD Hop’s Tongue Twister is an IPA/ brown ale hybrid which, in its citrusy sharpness, gritty rye edge and distinctive Belgian sourness, lived up to its name. Liverpool Craft Beer Co’s White Fox, tasting so sweet after that relative hop bomb, is another innovation (a wheat beer bitterly and tropically loaded with US hops), whose flavour dimensions are so layered and well-balanced, that it is one of my favourite new wave beers. Look out for various meet-the-brewer and tap-takeover events.
• Pint from £3.20. 23 Hope Street, 0151 709 6574, theclovehitch.com

Travel between Manchester and Liverpool was provided by First TransPennine Express