An evening in the sun showed me just how vital Liverpool’s beer scene is

A trip to a beer festival was the perfect way to spend a sunny Thursday evening.

Baltic Triangle Black Lodge Brewery is hosting this year’s Craft Beer Expo, bringing breweries from across the UK to Liverpool for a beer festival. The event started on Thursday (June 6) and runs until today (June 8).

The sun was shining on Thursday evening, so my ECHO colleagues Liam Thorp, Paddy Edrich and I made our way across town to the Baltic Sea. What greeted us when we arrived was heavenly for anyone interested in beer.

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Around 40 craft breweries had set up shop at the Black Lodge, each pouring a small selection of their offerings. And if you needed to line your stomach or drink some beer, there was a range of food vans to help you out.

After parting with some cash for tokens, we got down to sampling the goods. Spoiled for choice, I started with a fuzzy number from Wylam Brewery in Newcastle, which always serves as a welcome reminder of university.

The brewery’s Jakehead IPA is exceptional, fruity and very hoppy. Exactly what you want from a craft beer.

Overture – a pale ale from the new Bootle Colbier – was a favorite for all three of us, but the standout for me was the interestingly named Football Friend – a fantastically crisp Helles ale from Manchester’s Sureshot brewery .

I’m a big fan of any beer festival, but the Craft Beer Expo was everything you could hope for. The sun was out, there was plenty of interesting beer to try and the Black Lodge created a great setting for such an event. The brewery and its neighbors Sub Rosa and ping pong bar Wiff Waff boast plenty of outdoor space, and the post-industrial surroundings, if a little clichéd, feel right for craft beer.

The Expo was a superb event and came at the right time for the industry. As reported by the ECHO, times have been tough for breweries recently.

Our region has lost three in recent months – Speke brewery Big Bog collapsed into administration and closed in March, while Bootle’s Top Rope and Runcorn’s Chapter call it a day at the end of this month – with this exhibition one of them . the last screams.

Events like this expo not only give smaller breweries a chance to showcase their beers, but serve as a reminder of how important it is that they can survive and thrive. Many of them are tiny operations, experimenting and doing interesting things with beer, pushing boundaries and creating exciting new products. Pubs and bars would be poorer without them.

As we left, somewhat worse for wear, their importance was not lost on us. You can’t ask for much more than a sunny evening at a beer festival. And you can’t have a beer festival without breweries.

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