Radar: Liverpool Beer Festivals

Why do beer festivals tend to happen in Winter? Is it, as we suspect, because these long, cold January and February weekends could do with a bit of brightening up? There’s nothing like a few ales to give you a rosy glow on your way back home after all.

The Liverpool Beer Festival in the Metropolitan Cathedral’s glorious Lutyens Crypt is one of the high points of the year - for us at least - but tickets can be hard to come by, thanks to a convoluted ticketing process, unless you’ve done a spot of forward planning.

If you can get hold of a ticket we thoroughly recommend it – there’s scarcely a finer place to sup and the range of beers is staggering (something you may be doing if you partake of the heftier drinks on offer unguardedly). Need we mention the home-made pies, range of cheeses and live music from the likes of Loose Moose too? Good.

Meanwhile, as the rise of microbreweries in Liverpool continues, so do the number of beer festivals. There are at least two more in coming months, both of which have a local bent and get our wholehearted backing.

First off is the confusingly-titled Liverpool Beer Festival at Liverpool Cricket Club, promising 40 beers, half a dozen ciders and a whiskey bar. It will feature brews from the Springhead Brewery - not a local business but one which started life as a tiny microbrewery in the wilds of Nottinghamshire.

Entry is a pittance if you’re a CAMRA or LCC member, but it’s hardly breaking the bank at three quid if you’re not. Cricket clubs are great settings for a day of boozing and you can follow in the footsteps of WG Grace and Freddie Flintoff (by visiting the club - not by getting drunk, obviously) at the Victorian clubhouse.

Finally the Waterloo Beer Festival is back for a fifth installment, sponsored by the excellent Liverpool Organic Brewery it promises over 200 real ales and ciders, including lagers and continental beers if ale’s not your thing.

There’ll be food by Peninsula Pies and the Liverpool Cheese Company for when you get peckish and live music if you need aural entertainment. Set in the lovely Old Christ Church, a stone’s throw from the marine lake and beach, this festival can, perhaps, stake a claim to being the most locally-minded beer festival of the three.

Whichever one you attend, we suspect you’ll have a whale of time. Just remember the rules of a beer festival: pace yourself; eat a pie; avoid any beer whose name sounds like a threat and leave the 6%ers ’til last. And plenty of water when you get home.

Liverpool Beer Festival (CAMRA)
Lutyens Crypt, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral
Thursday 21 - Saturday 23 February

Liverpool Beer Festival (non CAMRA)
Liverpool Cricket Club, Aigburth Road
Thursday 31 Jan Open 5pm - 11pm
Friday 1 Feb Open 5pm - 11pm
Saturday 2 Feb Open Noon - 11pm

Waterloo Beer Festival
Old Christ Church, Waterloo Road

18 April 2013
6:00pm - 10:30pm

19 April 2013
12:00pm - 4:30pm
6:00pm - 10:30pm

20 April 2013
12:00pm - 4:30pm
6:00pm - 10:30pm

21 April 2013
12:00pm - 7:00pm