A few drinks in …Warrington

Warrington, the town of my father’s people, and where he has his shop, Premierfoto, on the mezzanine of the new market. (Promotional consideration supplied by Premierfoto). Herewithin lies a craft pub crawl for your amusement, a Kenny H classic crawl, recommended measure a pint per stop, took us from 2.50pm to 8pm inclusive.

Participants: Kirsty, Kenny H (Crawl Designer), Neil M, Lewis G

1. Costello’s Bar, Time Square

I haven’t bothered to look into why this area is called Time Square but there isn’t even a clock, so not sure what they’re thinking. I do remember coming out of the Odeon on Buttermarket St after watching Hook, in which there is a scene where all the clocks are broken because the titular Captain doesn’t like the sound of ticking, to see a massive broken clock, roughly where the new market is now, so maybe it’s a throwback. Costello’s is in the Large, Square, Warehouse bracket, originally in in Stockton Heath about a mile away and added a second location with the redevelopment of this area. It’s attractive enough inside but this being July in the north west of England we only had one sunny day that week and it seemed a shame to waste it so we sat outside to enjoy the view of…a square and the market. I had a Bridgewater Blonde by nearby Lymm Brewing co which was very pleasant and very popular with the wasps which assaulted us. Not sure if you want to add that the marketing materials, Lymm.

2. Hop Emporium, within Warrington Market – Good Beer Guide

Obligatory bulldog content

In a fantastically bare faced rebrand, what was the Real Ale Shack in Warrington’s old market is now the Hop Emporium in the new one. The old market was your typical sixties style market hall which smelled of fish throughout and had stalls selling anachronistic gubbins like washing line and carpet cut offs. The Real Ale Shack was an Oasis of craft in a Carling desert but the smell of day old cod permeating the air made it difficult to really appreciate the nose on a lovely saison. The new Hop Emporium has four cask, four keg and a wall full of bottles and cans as well as oddities like Cherry Cola Vodka Strawberry Slush. I avoided the novelty and stayed pale with Only With Love’s Jester single hop sunshine ale. I tell you, it’s getting hard to log things on Untappd these days, every beer name is like a sentence in a James Joyce novel, or for young people, a Fall Out Boy song title. The market is full to the brim with food outlets and has your more traditional stalls round the edge, for example, Premierfoto on the mezzanine, for all your photographic needs, weddings and portraits a speciality. You could spend all day in the market to be honest, but this was a crawl damnit and the people had waited long enough. Onwards! To Hop Co! Which didn’t open until 5, so Onwards! to…

3. The Odyssey, Bold St

This was previously called The Volstead only a few months ago but has a new name and a refurb. Seeing as the pints everywhere were at least a fiver and because they had nothing on which was particularly ground breaking I decided to go off piste and had a Spicy Mojito which was outstanding, nice to see a 241 cocktail offer which is on in the evenings and weekends this one was available until 9pm all week unlike most places where you can only get cheap cocktails at times when you probably shouldn’t be drinking cocktails. Although a pleasant place, we were really here for a beer and so when 5pm rolled around we were off across the road to..

4. Hop Co, Bold St

Your standard dive bar-esque craft cavern. There’s a great beer list on the wall which is very exciting until you realise it’s not draft, it’s bottle and cans. Ho hum, they have a good enough selection and I decided upon an old friend, Mango Unchained by Shindigger. Hop Co is another place where you could happily just sit and make your way across the pumps. They have live music at the weekends when they also open a bit earlier, and they do £5 cocktails but unlike The Odyssey they are limited to Tuesday to Thursday, 5-7pm which is a bit ‘read the small print’ for me. On we go to…

5. Hideout, Sankey St

We were denied this due to corporate Britain

Two bars next door to each other makes me feel like I’m in Downtown New York, so cosmopolitan. Hideout is like the TARDIS/Mary Poppins carpet bag, choose your reference. Once in there is a pleasantly half arsed attempt at a tiki theme with a prominent picture of Magnum PI as if someone had just done a google image search for ‘Hawaiian’ and used it for a mood board. Sticking with the theme I had a Big Wave by Kona which was cold and well kept, about all you could ask for. The hidden gem of Hideout is their attractive terrace which unfortunately for us was off limits due to a corporate hire, so we ended up drinking in the main bar like rejects. Next time. As the time for departure was approaching we decided to sneak in one last half next door at…

6. 9 Gallon, Sankey St

A warning that sometimes…SOMETIMES, this place is filled with the pungent perfume of its own toilets so definitely a smell test to be done but the hygiene in the bar itself is top notch, I promise. Another quirky little place, sewing machine tables etc but with three cask hand pulls. On this occasion however I did have a Camden Hells because I needed to be able to neck it if the 110 bus arrived, but I did sample the cask the following day and the White Rat I had was tip top. Also they do have these nice glasses which I find it hard to resist. Until next time friends! Cheers!

So small, so cute, so Kirsty