Blog

LBC WINTER GIVEAWAY

12/12/2019

Yes indeed. It's a giveaway!

We have some beers that we've put together from our various Brewery friends and from our Bottle Shops across Merseyside.

It's really easy to enter this competition and to potentially win yourself a pack of various lovely beers. How do you go about entering? Read on...

Firstly, please note that this is a TWITTER only competition, so you need a Twitter account to enter. Secondly, we will only take one entry per person, so make sure you pick your best attempt!

1. Take a picture of a locally brewed (Merseyside based or LBC member brewery) beer in a lovely setting, or a picture of you enjoying said beer. You can also take a picture of a beer in any Merseyside pub or bar, just say in your message what beer you're enjoying and where you are enjoying it. Drop this picture and info into a tweet.

2. Include the hashtag #LIVEBEER in your tweet and be sure to tag in the Liverpool Beer Collective Twitter account (@livbeerco) and at least 3 friends. Send your tweet.

3. That's it!

The Committee will pick a winner from our favourite entries throughout December and January (don't forget to use the #Tryanuary tag too in Jan!) in early February and then let the winner know, we can then arrange a drop point/collection of the beers for them. Players must be at least 18 years of age. Beers will be for collection only at a pre-arranged location in Liverpool.

Please just drop any questions in the comments section if you have any, or get in touch via the contact form (linked in the menu on the left of this page. <-----).

Best of luck!!

The LBC x

Belgian Beer and CHEESE w/ Ladies That BEER

10/27/2019

Beer and cheese is a match made in heaven, especially when the cheese is paired up against beers from Belgium; a country which takes its beers very seriously indeed. Almost akin to the Italians and their delicious wines, these beers are often (or so it seems) intrinsically brewed to work with food.

Cheeses often provide the perfect foil for the flavoursome and diverse styles that are brewed across the lowland country; some fatty, rich and creamy, whilst others are high on funk, some carry a woodier mushroom type taste and others can be driven by acidic, tart flavours.

Carbonation is a key element in Belgian beer; a stark contrast to British cask which itself holds a much lower carbonation and really is designed to tick other boxes for the drinker. This carbonation provides a fresh acidity, good for cleansing the palate and for bringing out or complimenting the flavours in the food the beer is paired with.

On this occasion, two of the Ladies that Beer, Julie O’Grady and Fiona Hood were presenting a crowd, gathered at the Head of Steam in Liverpool, pairings to showcase the versatility of Belgian styles. As a frequent visitor to Belgium, Fiona brought a lot of knowledge on each of the carefully selected beers whilst Julie selected some cheeses to match from local favourites, the Liverpool Cheese Company. The breadth of the beers selected took in sour Gueze, fresh and lively saison, heady and malty Tripel and an aceticly sharp Flanders Red ale, as detailed below:

Pairing one – Brasserie de la Senne - Taras Boulba / Gorwydd Caerphilly

Pairing two – Oud Beersel - Oud Gueze / Vacherin Mont Dor

Pairing three – Saison Du Pont / Monte Enebro

Pairing four – Westmalle Tripel / Comte St Antoine

Pairing five – Rochefort 10 / Munster

Pairing six – Duchesse Du Bourgogne / Forme D’Ambert

A great evening with some excellent pairings, where obviously everyone has their favourite – but something to consider is that some beers (indeed other drinks too) and food really do bring the best out in each other. Occasionally you’ll try something together where one element is not something you regularly enjoy – the pairing can really make it sing! Head of Steam once again stepped up to the plate too, providing a smoothly run beer event with minimal fuss and a great vibe.

Another similar event is planned for some time in the New Year, so stay tuned to the Ladies that Beer social media feeds or this site for tickets and event information.

Pedro & Angela.

Cask Ale Week 2019

9/15/2019

From Thursday 19th September until Sunday 29th September, Cask Ale Week will be taking place across the UK once again.

As Cask Beer is something quintessentially British that we can be rightly proud of and something that many of our talented brewers produce, it really is worth celebrating.

Cask Ale Week is and has been organised by Cask Marque for well over a decade, with the intention of improving awareness and celebrating one of Britain's most famous beverages, which is often misunderstood, but frequently celebrated when brewed and conditioned correctly.

Here on Merseyside, we have a wide selection of pubs and bars that are now keeping excellently conditioned cask beer as it should be, served with care and full of flavour.

On 20th and 21st September, at the start of Cask Ale Week, Liverpool will experience the Modern Cask Festival, to be held at Gibberish Brewpub in the Baltic Triangle. The mini-festival will see a mix of styles from breweries across not just Liverpool, but the rest of the UK.

More information through here:
https://moderncask.com/2019/09/05/modern-cask-fest-start-the-conversation/
Tickets:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/modern-cask-fest-liverpool-tickets-66750782387

The official Cask Ale Week website (link below) has a list of events that are happening across the UK, although there may be some which are missed off or not added just yet, so it may be worth keeping an eye on it! More locally, below is a list of some of the the excellent places in Liverpool and across the city region that stock a brilliant pint of cask ale, be it best bitter, pale, IPA or a rich deep dark stout.

Find out more about Cask Ale Week here.

Pubs serving great cask ale across Cask Ale Week and all year round:

The Ale House, Prescot Road, Old Swan
The Bard, High Street, Prescot
Beer EnGin, Greenes Road, Whiston
Beer Station, Victoria Road, Freshfield
The Belverdere Arms, Sugnall Street, Liverpool
The Bow-legged Beagle, Victoria Road, New Brighton
The Bridewell, Campbell Square, Liverpool
Cask, Queen's Drive, Stoneycroft
The Cornerpost, Bridge Road, Crosby
The Cricketers, Peter Street, St Helens
Dr Duncan's, Liverpool
The Fly in the Loaf, Hardman Street, Liverpool
The Freshfield Hotel, Massam's Lane, Freshfield
The Grapes, Roscoe Street, Liverpool
The Grasshopper, Sandon Road, Hillside, Southport
The Handyman, Smithdown Road, Wavertree
The Head of Steam, Hanover Street, Liverpool
The Lady of Mann, Dale Street, Liverpool
The Lion Tavern, Moorfields, Liverpool
Love Lane Brewery, Bridgewater Street, Liverpool
Maghull Cask, Liverpool Road South, Maghull
The Pen Factory, Hope Street, Liverpool
Pi, Rose Lane, Mossley Hill
The Pilgrim, Pilgrim Street, Liverpool
The Roscoe Head, Roscoe Street, Liverpool
Sanctuary, Lime Street, Liverpool
The Ship and Mitre, Dale Street, Liverpool
Tap and Bottles, Cambridge Walks, Southport
Thomas Rigby's, Dale Street, Liverpool
Three Piggies, Allerton Road, Allerton
Trap and Hatch, South Road, Waterloo
The Turk's Head, Morley Street, St Helen's
The West Kirby Tap, Grange Road, West Kirby

LBW19 - Runaway

6/21/2019

So, less than twenty four hours after brewing with Blackjack, we returned to the Dantzic Street area of Manchester to brew with The Runaway Brewery. Despite a few sore heads in the brewery following on from their 5th birthday party at the weekend, we were all able to hit the ground running for our collaboration brew.

The grain was loaded into the mash tun when the hot liquor had reached the correct strike temperature and as the grain in the tun steeped, our next job was to weigh out the = bittering and whirlpool hops for our beer.
After a generous round of sparging to ensure that we had obtained the residual fermentable sugars from the grain, the sugary wort was transferred across to the kettle to boil and sterilise, but also to receive bittering hop additions from what we had weighed out.

The next step was to dig out the mash tun, again! By this point we were all getting quite a bit of déjà vu from moving spent grain out of a tun and into empty sacks?! Though good fun was had by all with the porridgey spent grain; it is an honest and cathartic pleasure at times.

This took us up to lunchtime, and for this Runaway’s head honcho, Mark Welsby, took us on a little adventure into the city centre to visit beer festival favourites, Holy Crab in their current home at the Arndale Market. Put simply, their food is to die for! For any food enthusiast (that isn’t averse to seafood of course) Holy Crab are a must visit if you’re ever out and about in Manchester! Top tip - keep an eye out for their in-house mayonnaise, which is funnily enough, made using Runaway Brewery beer!

Now, let’s be honest, could we really have walked past the Pilcrow Pub without calling in for a swift scoop? For the second day running, we s decided that the lure of some very ‘smashable’ beers were too strong to ignore before we decided on heading back to the brewery; this was actually just in time to catch the whirlpool hop additions going in, luckily enough.

The hoppy, sugary wort was then finally transferred to a fermenting vessel via a heat exchanger. Our old friend, US-05 yeast, was then pitched to do its business and add the finishing touches to the beer with fermentation and then the fermenting vessel was airlocked. This signalled the end of our participation in the brewing process, with Mark and his team going on to dry-hop the beer to give it a massive aromatic boost before final conditioning.

We’d like to say a huge thank you to Mark and his team for hosting us (and watering and feeding us)! We can’t wait to sink a few pints of the beer at the Liverpool Beer Week launch party at Black Lodge taproom on Friday 21st June!

Ladies and gentlemen, The Runaway Brewery and Liverpool Beer Collective proudly present to you, Beau West – a 6.0% West Coast IPA.

Angela, Ian, Danny and Neil in attendance for LBC.

LBW19 - Black Lodge

6/21/2019

It was an obvious choice to collaborate with Black Lodge for this year’s Liverpool Beer Week – not only do they sponsor Liverpool Beer Expo, the culmination of LBW, but they are on our doorstep and it was great to work in their recently opened location on Kings Dock.

After stopping for coffee at Red Berry Club around the corner, we were fashionably late for the morning brew. We met with Sean, the head brewer at Black Lodge and made our way around the back entrance where an open barrel fire was already roaring, ready to cleanse some barrels the rustic way. Although Black Lodge have expanded into their new space, we were working from the some of the old kit, which although not as shiny as the new equipment, are a token reminder of their smaller beginnings but no less effective.

After heaving the bags of grain and malts in, we got stuck in with the mash tun. Both Angela & Natalie had turns mashing in as this was a hefty amount of oats, making the mash begin to turn quickly into the consistency of a thick and almost cemented porridge – this made for very tough work. As Sean was feeling experimental, we added a thick layer of flaked oats to the top, to release more sugar, body and oaty-flavour into the brew.

After another coffee break (the oats making the brew take while longer than usual during the mash/sparge), both Angela and Natalie clambered up the step ladder to dig out the mash which satisfyingly slopped into the empty malt sacks, ready to be taken to the farm to be reused. With Rammstein’s deep guitars thrumming in the background, we went into the coldroom to have a sniff of the hop stock and pick our weapons of choice for the collaboration brew. We eventually settled on varieties of Waimea and Aurora, something Sean hadn’t tried together before. With the hops weighed, out came the snacks and beers – some popcorn, pretzels and nuts with a side of Knoxville Girl. We then added the sour pitch at 27 degrees, the temperature aiming to restrict the sourness, adding a hint of cleansing acidity rather than a full punch of puckering power.

Black Lodge’s new taproom on Kings Dock street has everything the original place had but better – including a bit of sunlight! They will be hosting our Liverpool Beer Week launch party happening Friday 21st June and will include food, drinks, music and a special art exhibition from artbyvolume.co.uk featuring our collaboration brews including this one.

Black Lodge and the Liverpool Beer Collective present, a DDH Sour IPA; Behind the Curve (5%), which we be available to try at the LBW Launch Party this Friday!

LBW19 - Box Social

6/20/2019

Road trip! A first day-trip for the Collective to Newcastle-upon-Tyne was always going to be a highlight in the calendar in the run up to Liverpool Beer Week. We’d come across Box Social at the Liverpool Craft Beer Expo and as part of the incredible Northern Powerhouse collaboration, led by their Wylam mates, and through the Black Lodge Liverpool connection.

Pedro, Ange and Ian had an early start to get on the M62: a reasonably clear Friday morning at the end of April. A stop at a slightly chilly Tebay services notwithstanding (breakfast coffee and lunchtime snacks were very necessary!), we made it to the Box Social brewery tap in time to mash-in around 9:30am. Shame it wasn’t the brewery – and thanks to a very friendly delivery driver, we were quickly put right that the “new” brewery was a couple of industrial estates further along…

It was great seeing the brewery already a hive of activity – Ross Holland was hard at work already mashing in the beer we’d designed (more on that later), Steve was with the canners at the back, transferring an FV into a sizeable pallet – the first of three planned that day. Boxes were being made, and moved, filled and sealed; Hectic might be one way of describing it – and needless to say we felt a little like we’d intruded a bit!

, CaliThe reason for that activity is simple: Box Social make a boat-load of really excellent beers. We tried pretty much everything they had, in all honesty (pun intended): Try Honesty a West Coast pale was first, Cry Agony – a smooth peanut bourbon milkshake pale, and Die Tragedy – a berry and marshmallow sour (tip of the cap to Lally @ Mad Hatter on that one) swiftly followed. Incredibly generously, they have donated a range of four-packs for inclusion in our charity raffle – be sure to pick up tickets before the draw at the end of Beer Week.

There wasn’t a great deal of time for standing around and drinking, however. All hands to the pump as the pressures of transferring beer, weighing cans, and monitoring the underback: We did our best to muck in where we could to help out with the regular brewery business. It was a real eye-opener for the pressures that microbrewers are under to produce and package beer consistently: Ross, Steve, Calum and co were incredibly calm under what was a highly pressured day. Definitely earned a beer themselves at the end of it – as did we, and we partook back at their City Centre tap, alongside some of the other crafty sights Newcastle had to offer.

We can’t wait to get Sirius B back West. Catch it at the Ship & Mitre A&H vs Box Social Black vs White IPA event on Friday 28th June and now in many good craft retail outlets. Box Social will be at the Liverpool Craft Beer Expo 27th-31st June.

Everyone, say hello to Sirius B - A 6% White IPA with tonnes of wheat, and hopped heavily with Idaho Seven and Idaho Gem to give it a great, juicy pineappley hit; A perfect pivot for the Anspach & Hobday Black IPA.

LBW19 - Chapter Brewing

6/19/2019

Another collaboration and another unassuming location for an upstanding brewery in the Northwest. For those not familiar with its wares, Chapter Brewing is located in Sutton Weaver, not too far from Runcorn and the beers all bear the moniker from various phrases in literature, be it poetic or prose.

The second collaboration brew between the Liverpool Beer Collective and Chapter Brewing was set for another early Saturday start for Ian, Mike and Pedro along with some other guests in the brewery in the form of two members of the Liverpool Homebrewers’ Club. This gave the brewery team of Noah and Damien some respite from the rigours of digging out the mash tun, adding the hops at various stages of the boil and indeed risking life and limb to pitch the yeast.

The day began with briefing, hot beverages and some marvelling at the small feats of workmanship performed by Noah to create brewing aids as a necessity for the brewing kit and restrictions on space of the brewery itself. As with many breweries at the moment, the necessity or urge to create a taproom space along with other necessities such as cold store, offices, wash space, packaging areas and indeed the brewhouse itself can be problematic. But the ingenious additional items of kit to help streamline the brewing process (such as a very Heath Robinson Hop Funnel and low-tech grain dispersion deliver device) really do help the team get the most out of their kit.

Incidentally, Chapter is now making space at the front of the brewery to host an occasional brewery tap, very much worth a visit to try some of their sumptuous beers at source – just make sure you don’t take the “it’s just outside of Liverpool” too literally for the purposes of your travels (get the train to Runcorn and don’t be tempted to pay for a taxi all the way across!).

Last year’s interesting, flavoursome and cleansing brew was ‘A Crowd of Distractions’ - the watercress and grapefruit sour ale, but this year a more conventional approach was taken; a pale combination of base malt and a speciality sugar to aid body and fermentation will give rise to something very easy to drink but with plenty of body and flavour. The hops in this new brew were a good balance of bittering and late additions, plenty to provide a chewy bitterness and heady aromas.

No mishaps, no drama, a few beers, a dog walk and a lot of chatter made the day a long but enjoyable one and all that remains is to see how excellent the beer comes out. We know it’ll be excellent, because it’s us… and Noah and Damien of course.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Chapter Brewing Company and the Liverpool Beer Collective give you: “Out of Pique” a smooth session DDH session IPA.

Pedro, Ian Goodhead and Mike Corbett.

LBW19 - Blackjack Beers

6/17/2019

At a far too early hour to be up on the Whit Bank Holiday Monday, members of the Liverpool Beer Collective Committee converged on Irk Street, hidden away in the back streets of Manchester city centre. Excited to be pushing the boundaries of our collaboration range outside of the Liverpool area, we were pleased to join the team at Blackjack for a special one-off brew to be ready in time for Liverpool Beer Week.

The split grain bill (Pale Ale, Carapils and Mild malts - plus Oats) was loaded into Blackjack’s remarkable and oddly shaped square mash tun (the Blackjack brewers love the efficiency that they achieve using this bit of kit and proceeded to give us a lowdown on what that meant – it’s a technical business this brewing lark!).

After the grain had steeped for an hour or so, the wort was then recirculated through the mash tun, whilst an additional 15kg of lactose sugar was gradually poured in to bolster the liquor for transfer to the kettle. After further circulation - to ensure even distribution of the lactose throughout the wort – the grain was sparged to release any last sugars before being transferred to the kettle for bittering hop additions (Saaz and Marynka) and boiling/sterilising.

Once the boil had started to roll, it was time to dig out the spent grain from the mash tun; This technical task was carried out expertly by our very own Angela and Sam (with the help of Dave and Pedro). Nailed it.

This led conveniently to lunch time! Those of you who are familiar with the area know that the Marble Arch pub is a couple of metres up the road from the brewery; a spot of lunch wouldn’t be quite complete without a sneaky half of something tasty, always on the card at Marble’s establishments. On our return to the brewery, the flame-out hops (Jester) had been weighed out and prepared by the Blackjack team. Our man Dave had the honours of tipping the green gold into the precious liquid ready to get some heady fruit aromas into the beer along with the magnificent flavour that Jester can often impart.

At this point, the hoppy, sugary wort was then transferred to a ready-prepared fermentation vessel via a heat-exchanger, dropping the temperature to allow the yeast best conditions to start doing its work. On this occasion, a batch of US-05 yeast was pitched and the fermenting vessel sealed, marking the end of our involvement with the brewing process. Rob and his team at Blackjack went on to dry-hop the beer and add in pineapple during fermentation to ensure maximum fruit flavour and quaffability.

Ladies and gentlemen, Blackjack Brewery & Liverpool Beer Collective proudly present to you – Hawaiian Handstand – a DDH Pineapple Upsidedown Cake Pale!

Neil, Angela, Dave, Sam and Pedro.

LBW19 - Ilkley Brewery

6/17/2019

The most interesting thing about the brew days that the Liverpool Beer Collective has undertaken is the variety of brewery that we have worked in. From small, two to three barrel kits with breweries that have huge fermentation vessels and the capacity to produce beer on a scale befitting a brewery that supplies supermarket chains, we’ve see quite a broad spectrum.

Ilkley Brewery fall into the latter; whilst they are not supplying any of the ‘big four’ supermarkets, the likes of Booths (who do have a remarkable range, blazing the trail for other supermarkets with the quality and breadth of selection) benefit from stocking beers made on Ilkley’s premises.

We first met Ilkley’s head honcho, Luke, at the Liverpool Craft Beer Expo about five years ago and he gave a very impressive talk about Ilkley’s beers and remit, so much so that we have felt it’s a shame not to have seen much of their wares here on Merseyside since. With the aim of rekindling the camaraderie and producing a stunning beer, we made enquiries to Ilkley about getting involved in Liverpool Beer Week and thankfully, they were only too happy to oblige.

Due to the rather fraught experience with traffic around Manchester en route to Ilkley, we arrived post mashing in, but were present for the sparging on the smaller brew kit, which did require some manual encouragement from time to time! Whilst we weren’t able to brew on Ilkley’s ‘Big Kit’ on the brew day, we did get to see some big brewing and also meet another collaborator for the day in William’s Brother’s Chris – present to help brew a Spruce IPA in conjunction with a third party in Harviestoun Brewing. The brew we produced on the day was one accommodating an idea from the Liverpool Beer Collective of a four grained and four hopped IPA or Pale Ale; with some fine tuning and amendment Ilkley produced an enticing recipe.

A combination of rye, wheat, golden promise and flaked oats on the malt bill met with some substantial hops – restrained amounts of Southern Cross for bittering (as we suspected the dry and occasionally aggressive finish provided by the use of rye would provide enough to work on) along with Enigma and then some big fresh Centennial and Bravo for a dry hop would provide something with a bit of a difference in aroma, flavour and body. We’re hoping the mouthfeel and finish are as smooth as the brewday went (special shout out to Midgley’s Chip Shop round the corner from the brewery for their chip barm too, best in years! This was confirmed as a dangerously close temptation for many of the brewery’s staff), because if so, you’re all in for a treat.

We’d also like to offer thanks to all at the brewery for their generosity and hospitality, but especially Adam and Charlie for looking after us and helping make the brewday great fun.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Ilkley Brewery and Liverpool Beer Collective gives you; Four x Four (an all terrain IPA, of sorts!).

Angela and Pedro.

LBW19 - Neptune Brewery

6/14/2019

After last year’s success for a Liverpool Beer Week collaboration with Tempestivus (a grapefruit dry-hop saison) brewed with Neptune, we decided to team up with them again to brew a very different beer for this year’s Liverpool Beer Week.

Les O’Grady, Head Brewer at Neptune, was on hand again to keep us in check and manage the brewday.

It was safety first, with dust masks handed out whilst mashing in (we were smiling behind these for the pictures) and while we worked on the mash tun. Pedro hefted the sacks of malt and grain into the new, larger mash tun which Neptune have recently acquired whilst Angela stirred to ensure no claggy lumps of grain; neither an easy task and a good workout! All lumps and clumps successfully eradicated, it was left to allow all the sugars to release and the enzymes to do their job, creating the wort ready for transfer to the kettle.

The fun part, or so Angela said, was digging out the mash tun with the help of the manway, which is particularly helpful for us shorter folk. After digging out the spent grain from the tun, we weighed out the hops ready to introduce some heady aromas and big flavour to our beer; an extravagant amount of Citra hops was used in this beer and the single hop. Added to the boil before adding some additional sugar (dextrin), we then waited for the hot liquor to cool down before transferring across to the fermentation vessel. Our day way done upon pitching of the yeast, but there was some additional dry hopping of the beer by Les, with more of the big, oily Citra hops to introduce yet more flavour and aroma.

Neptune now have a tap room open every Friday 5pm to 9pm and Saturday 12pm to 9pm. We were lucky to be invited for a soft launch where we got to sample our beer – a very cheeky, sneaky preview of what we could look forward to and we won’t be disappointed! Although still requiring an additional few days for fermenting, this beer was punchy and powerful and will be a huge hit during this summer’s Liverpool Beer Week.

Neptune Brewery and the Liverpool Beer Collective bring to you, the whirlpool that swallowed the sea, Charybdis - a 7% Citra IPA.

Angela and Pedro.